Quarter 2 - Week 6

After a good long holiday last week, I rolled up my sleeves and blew the dust off my books. Caught up with everything that was covered until now, since we had our MacroEconomics midterm coming up. Oh, did I mention we had a retest also sheduled this week for our QM1 disaster? (We seem to be making this re-test thing a habit, no wonder I'm studying all the time!)

The week passed by like a bad English movie in theaters. And then began our classes. In Macro Economics, we studied a little more about the IS-LM curve, and how they dance together. For those who don't know, the fiscal policy and monetary policy are handled by the government and Federal Bank respectively. And as two distinct bodies (or however distinct they can be), they need to ensure that balance is maintained in the economy. IS talks about the investment behaviour, LM talks about money supply and demand (The amount of ready cash, or liquid cash and the bonds). For now, just think of the IS-LM thing as an X mark. As and when one of the curve shifts, a change is made to the other to modify the position of equilibrium (the centre point).

Managing Organizations took an interesting turn this week. First, we discussed how an organizations lifecycle is. We learnt how it starts off as a dream, and an entrepreneur takes it on and brings it to life. Then it has to be "disciplined" and you need to look into the finer details, and that's something entrepreneurs are not good at. They know how to dream, the bird's-eye-view they got down pat, but on the ground they're... vulnerable. So you need to bring in a professional manager with an eye for detail, who'll get down into the nitty gritties and hammer processes and rules in place. He's the one who tweaks the company to bring it to an efficient body. Once this is done, another crisis hits the org. People begin to ask for more responsibility, they resent the one-man-tell-us-what-to-do approach. So then you need to give way to "divisionalism", give the sub-teams more responsibility for their domain. Once that phase gets over, the next crisis is how to bring these divisions that are too far apart, to the same vision. Once you've managed to again bring all these teams under control, after a while it becomes a little looser, and then you see your firm become a place where all the teams collaborate, and share information. And this is so far the last stage of the org's growth.

I think I just understood why we need to differentiate, and then integrate. It sounds stupid to an engineer, but it makes the parts stronger. In many ways, this seems to show how we grow up from kids to adults. You start as a baby with infinite possibilities, you're the most flexible thing, and you zip around in every direction stopping to sleep,eat or poop. And then begins our "education", where it's hammered into us that 2+2 = 4, not 5. We're taught that 42 is the answer to everything. At one point, we begin to question this 42. Why's it not 43? With our new-found knowledge of how the world works, the me-teenager goes out and rebels against everything, and asks for some control of my own life. Once we go and make all those mistakes that our parents kept protecting us from (Dont put your finger in the fire, kid..), and come back wiser (Ouch, mom, where's that balm?), then slowly our parents now getting a little wiser treat us like adults and involve us in family decisions. Differentiation and integration right there. So, does this mean that apply human life to org life and you dont need to do an MBA? Sounds far easier, can tell you that. And that was just the first session!

In the second session, we got to know of a bunch of organizations that did things in a completely different way from what our ancestors/wisemen/leaders/writers told us. And they succeeded! Stuff like letting people decide their own work-timings, giving all information on the company (including everyone's salaries) to the employees, letting the employees decide what other companies should be bought over! How was it even possible, how did it even work?! And life seems much more nicer for the guys who work in those companies!! And then we began to wonder, wtf?! What was all the last half-quarter (octer?) all about?! Our prof expected this, he's most probably been seeing this reaction for ages now. He just calmly tells us that this worked for these companies, doesnt mean it will work for everyone. FYI, the companies are SEMCO, ABB, Imagination and some company in Copenhagen, Denmark (dont remember the name, will get back on this). Try seeing how things happen there!

BizStats, wow. After an octer, ok, half a quarter, we get to *really* hear the word statistics. I dont know how we didnt wonder about that before? We NOW got to see how you take a sample from a population, and how you make sure it's a RANDOM sample. Not haphazard, but random. This word is apparently taken very seriously by people who poll (pollers?). And then we got to see how every possible random distribution will ultimately get mapped onto a Normal Distribution using their means. Basically, just think that there is one curve called a Normal Distribution, and that EVERY possible random chart that you have can tend to move towards this. The rest of the class was a blur in some math calcs, need to read up and get back, nothing specific to summarize here right now.

Finally, to talk about the exams. Sigh.

How is it possible that you study so much for a subject (Macro Economics), and then when you're just about to write the paper, you forget the basics of the IS-LM curve. For God's sakes, I just read it yesterday!! And I totally understood it!! The paper was awesome, like last time it tested the basics. And unlike last time, I was lost. That's all I want to say about that. So, just to remember, reading for 20 hours for a topic does not necessarily mean u understood it.

BizStats was easy-peasy. I'm just hoping our prof doesnt think we're not worth his time, and just wants to get it over with. Hang in there prof, we're not dumasses, we'll get better! :) In any case, this paper was very easy to do, an almost no-brainer.

And the surprise entrant! We had a Managing Organizations surprise test on Sat! He asked us to describe what made SEMCO do well. If only most of us knew what the hell SEMCO was. Apparently, a surprise test covers not just every reading meant until that day, it also includes the reading FOR the day!! I just wrote something, came back and read the SEMCO material. I couldn't have been farther off from the truth. But that's what happens when you try to act like you know something, when you dont. And you get caught with your pants down. On fire.

One thing for sure though. That SEMCO process, it stands against everything we've learnt so far, and yet, I still want to experience it. Sounds like a real fun place to work. Look it up, here's a link on it:

http://www.schneede.se/assets/files/Ricardo_Semler.pdf

Here's one of the CEO's talks:

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/308/

Quarter 2 - Week 5.5

A weekend with nothing to do. Bliss.

Now, back to hit the books for the upcoming exams next week. Sigh.

Quarter 2 - Week 5

Funny how when you have exams coming up, every topic seems to make sense.

I must have spent quite a lot of time trying to read the Managing Organizations class binder AND the book, or even BizStats (Complete Business Statistics, ahem!) for that matter... I would invariably (and very bizarrely) fall asleep after 4 minutes and 22 seconds.. either that, or my mind would wander and I'd end up thinking of horses(wtf?!). Weeks would just pass by, and my book would be open on page 3. everyday.

But when midterms come up (like the ManOrg one this week, or the BizStats quiz on the very same day), suddenly the book opens up to you, and you actually understand the stuff that's in it. Remember I was cribbing about how I wasn't understanding jack about Random Variables in the BizStats class? One look at the book, and the two and 2 came together.. :). I was on a roll, in two days I had managed to read up the portions for the BizStats test. On Thursday, good ol' me started reading up for the test on Managing Organizations. THE mid-term I might add. The exam was on Saturday. *The mission impossible tune was running through my mind the whole evening, with a horse galloping for good effect*. In any case, I managed to cross 3 pages and reached the end of two articles... TWO! Unfortunately, it was 1 AM that night (or morning), so nobody came by to give me an award.

The next morning, I groggily woke up at 6(the alarm rang at 6, but the bed was really glued to me and wouldnt let me go, so I somehow fought it and got out by 6.45... The Battle of the Bed, every Friday and Saturday at 6 AM, watch it to believe it), and rushed to class by 7.45. In the Macro Economics class, we got the results of our last quiz, I'd got a 5 on 10. Whoopee, I thought! And then the prof says "Anyone with 6 and below, please come by and meet me, we need to go over your fundamentals.. If you have any doubts, we can clear them up". Whaaa?!?! I thought 5 was good..! We then proceeded to discuss our quiz, and we watched as all our defenses went out the window (or were unceremoniously thrown out the window, is more like it). That quiz was just too cool, tested all our fundamentals with the most basic of questions! Damn. And some guys had the audacity to get 10 on 10 in it. The nerve!

In Managing Organizations, we tried to fish for the type of questions he'd give us... there were constant questions about "Sir, what should we read for tomorrow? The binder or the book?" and the prof, time and again, said "See, whatever is covered till today is coming tomorrow. I cant say that nothing will come from the binder, but you definitely have to read from the book." After all these questions had been answered, one student asked "Sir, what should we read for tomorrow? The binder or the book?". I think the prof got pissed. His voice seemed just a leeeetle more menacing than usual. After he STRONGLY addressed this question for the last time, we got down to the day's case. It was about a company which had quite a few divisions, and they were struggling with coming up with new innovative products because of their horizontal/differentiated structure (Ahaah! Article 2!! It's useful! For those who dont know, when work is broken down into specific areas/tasks, then those particular areas/divisions kinda get divided from the others, so they're distinct. They can then focus on that area and get a whole lot better at it. Unfortunately, that tends to bring communication down by quite a few notches due to inter-team alienation).

So we discussed and decided it would be a good idea, to pluck one guy out of each division, get them together to build and innovate, and once they're done send the prototype to the normal divisions to efficiently build it. That way communication is not an issue, since they're in a temporary team and you overcome the issue of working together. Apparently, this is called integration (bringing these different teams together). So when you do both differentiation and integration, that's when you are being ambidextrous, since you can be efficient and innovate at the same time. The engineer in me kept yelling all the time, which idiot would first differentiate and then integrate, you could have left it as it was in the first place! Stupid engineer should have read Article 9. (I wasn't there yet.... yet!). I remember something about complexity, formalization and centralization being thrown around (All from article 2!! Looks like I wasnt the only guy reading the articles for the first time!), the best thing was the prof was agreeing with us. Looks like we were doing something right after all!

In BizStats, we discussed the Continuous (Uniform and Exponential - distributed over time), Normal Distribution. I had read this because it was coming for the quiz, so yeah, I already knew the stuff he was going to talk about. That was till he started talking. That jackrabbit can still hop around randomly, even when you've read the random stuff in advance! Goes to prove, you can't predict random, even if you've read random. Aaargghhh! Anyway, he was talking about how we can map these variables, and proceeded to give us some pretty cool live examples.

When class was done, the newborn manager in me began calculating. You have another 7 articles to read. Around 6 chapters in the book too... which everyone was saying was an irritating book in the first place, apparently the articles were way better. On top of that, my facebook horoscope had very plainly said that I was supposed to focus on the task at hand, and not worry about distractions, not now. Taking the advice of a virtual fake, I ended up not going to work so I could study at home. I had taken the horses into account, so according to my calculations... I would be done by 7 AM on Sunday(Wait, what??!). I didnt have the time, so me-manager decided that I should skip the book, and only read the articles. I was finally done by 11 PM. Then the me-engineer who was happily sleeping all along, woke up and said, you've read the articles, you can read the book till 1 AM. At 20 pages per chapter, you only have to read 80 pages, skip the first two chapters. Stoopid logical me-engineer. But very tempting advice, so I did it. And promptly kept falling asleep, even the four horses that were galloping around were not able to wake me up. Once I was done (or had given up), I fell asleep and thankfully, didnt have any nightmares about the two oncoming tests. Funny, how the horses always ride without the mares and vice-versa.

The next morning in Macro Economics, we studied the IS part of the IS-LF model, honestly, I was thinking about the two tests, so I only remember the part where we talked about how the GDP will rise only if the investors WANT to invest and the banks want to lend. That's why we kept seeing articles like "RBI prods State Banks to lower interest rates". There were some math formulae which linked all this stuff, and other blah blah. It was interesting, but my mind was elsewhere.

In the Managing organizations test, I wasn't lost.. but I wasn't found either. Some of the terms were alien to what we read in the articles OR the book. Even the me-engineer remembered that some terms weren't there in the book for sure! Anyway, the prof had been smart in ensuring that there were negative marks. Since half the course was full fundas, he didn't want us coming up with our own.. so he said for every wrong answer, minus one mark. That hopefully deterred some of us from guessing. Didn't deter me though, so I look forward to one big egg when the results come out.

The BizStats quiz was even better. Two very simple looking questions. And I didn't know how to solve them. I was cursing me-engineer because I was awake till 2 AM that morning, but he was the guy solving those numericals then, so I didnt have the heart to tell him anything. 20 minutes passed by in a flash! I was still scratching my head at the end of it, me thinks that this was some kind of googly, and required the application of binomial distribution TWICE in each question. Grumbling at my great preparation, I left the college, never looking back ( I was driving, and didnt want to meet with an accident. If I looked back, then the hospital would have needed to be internet-enabled for me to write this article with a different ending).

I think I've digressed quite a bit in this post, what with the horses and all... but you now have an idea as to how a person who's deriliously studying for an exam is like, after the exam. With 5 hours of sleep everyday over the entire week, this is what you'd have to go through to. And I dont have kids, imagine the poor souls who do! Looking forward to the free week this week, since we have no classes on account of Diwali! Whoopeee!!

Quarter 2 - Week 4

When you dont have an assignment to complete, it's such bliss! :) And when you have two holidays in the week, it's bliss-squared..! Monday being one of those 2 holidays, I spent it trying to read Macro Economics.. we had a test/quiz the coming Saturday. I must have read 25 pages in 4 hours? No, dont get it wrong.. the book's easy to follow, I just kept getting distracted. That must be the most dangerous thing ever, it's very easy to get distracted, there's always something that is just a little more important. I'd come home early the entire week and try to read Macro Economics, and it was quite tough to trudge along. But I kept at it! Persistence... thy name is my name! Friday also was a holiday, and I managed to read up the sections for the test. Anyway, October 2(Friday) was a holiday at IIMB, so we'd catch up with the expected class schedule by coming in on Sunday. Sigh.

On Saturday, we started off with Macro Economics. We discussed what the government can do in times of recessions. How they can give "antibiotics" to keep the economy sustainable. We then began a discussion on the Great Depression, what caused it, what could have been done to avoid the difficult period at least to the extent we could take it to. The quiz was held in the last 20 minutes of the class. Man, I really liked those questions. Yes, they were simple, but they were crafted in such a way that we would have gone over all our fundamentals within 20 questions. What googlies! We're eagerly awaiting our results. The next day, Sunday, we continued speaking about the Great Depression and what were the mistakes we could have avoided and how this affected the majority of the western world. A question was raised, why should the government bail out the people who caused the mess in the first place, what message are we sending out. The words of our teacher ranked true - When a doctor has a patient who may have, let's say, a drinking problem. If the patient is in the ICU, struggling between life and death due to some liver-issue, the doc won't say 'I wont operate on you because you didnt listen to me, and you didnt heed my warnings'. He'll do his best to save the patient, and give the bhaashan later. Seemed sensible enough..

Managing Organizations was theoritical this week. Bugger, we were pretty sure that we'd have a surprise quiz on Saturday, and when our prof came in with this ghost of a smile on his face, there was such a rush for the books and readings so people would cram as much as they could. Amidst yelps, howls and pleas for "postponement by a day", he was quite sure-footed when he told us that the surprise quizzes were meant to test our readings. If you are unable to spend a little time reading the articles, then you wont get much out of the class. Dont share your worldly knowledge about the questions posed in the test he said, he was more bothered about whether we got the right idea. We must have grumbled for a minute or so, and then we got into the groove. I am learning to write loads of crap, and I must say I'm getting pretty good at it! We are still talking about Org Structure, and the reasonings behind wanting to restructure. We had a case to study for Sunday, but I was unable to read it up properly. Anyway, I paid attention to the discussion hoping to gleam something out of it atleast... Next week, the midterm examination. The horror!

Business Statistics. (Note to self: Why do I bother?) Waste of my time, and the prof's time... He's still talking about random variables and I'm getting zilch. No matter how many times he says "practice, practice", I seem gung-ho on testing the limits and not doing anything. We spoke about Binomial distributions, Poisson distribution, Normal distribution, Chebyshev made an appearance somewhere, Turing also said hi. I fell asleep in the class! Asleep!! Tell you what, when I'm studying for the coming quiz next week (yes, that's another nightmare I have to prepare for), I'll go over the discrete random variables chapter properly and then let you know what it was that he was trying to hammer into our brains.