And then, I was looking through some old comments on this blog, and was pleasantly surprised by the following blog. I think you'll find it a very interesting read. It's by a fellow PGSEM-er.
MSP - This week we had what I find the most involved session I've ever had at IIMB. We were looking at Brainstorming, and how to conduct it in organizations. What seems to have been drilled into us, is that we will find ourselves thinking together as teams, and the team has someone to bring it to order - the facilitator. He's pretty much the boss, and the servant of this group. Boss, because he's to control the group and ensure it doesnt deviate from the topic, servant, because he's there to ensure the OTHERS can have a fruitful discussion and not to give any opinions himself. That's a little difficult for us, we're all opinionated people right? And we want to tell everyone how we really think the world should be run, right? Well, wrong. Stay with the trend, maaaan! We're not really here to lead, we're here to facilitate! Yes, that's right, you read it here first!
Before I continue to deviate, let's get back. We were treated to a hands-on session, where we were split into groups and each group was assigned facilitators and observers(the minute takers). In the absence of the facilitators, the groups were asked to take on roles of "troublesome" people, just to ensure the facilitator had something to facilitate and some problems to fix. As if our teams weren't gleefully waiting for an opportunity to make life hell for the few of us unfortunate souls, now we got an official go-ahead and marks for it! MAN! We made those facilitators WORK for their marks. Chaos in the room as we tried to figure out what we could do to double India's IT/BPO exports by 2014. It was all such good fun, I still dont know how time passed. But I actually understood that decisions CAN be taken within an hour, hell, we just solved a major issue of the country! Now let somebody else implement it. Seriously, we definitely can come to conclusions within respectable time limits, for stuff at work.
The next session was about use cases, I'm guessing everyone had assignments for this day, hence they had all forgotten to read up for the day. The prof was a little foxed, but he gamely took us on and tried to explain the necessity of writing good use cases. There was constant pounding on the fact that the days of using Excel to maintain your cases and requirements are long gone. Now we have tools that we can use, such that if we want to change one use case, we can find out everything that depends on it, and everything it depends on, to figure out what gets affected. So stop using notepad, when Word is out! It's redundant. Our prof isn't specifically trying to sell any particular software, in fact he's a open source enthusiast himself, so he doesn't really mention WHICH software. But I'm guessing it's not hard to find.
I think the hard part would be to convince your team (not even your org, that's a long way off) about the necessity of such a tool. I already got a glimpse of it, when I suggested we use Clearcase for tracking some stuff. The irony was, just a year ago, I was sitting in one of those chairs, telling the guy who suggested we start using such tools that "we don't need such tools, it's too much documentation that only ancient organizations use". Fate knows its stuff, I'll give her that.
LOC - Our prof, innocent harmless giraffe that he is, told us that we should probably try to read a major portion of an assigned book for reading by this week. I dont know about the others, but I earnestly picked up the book, and every two hours slept for another four. That thing should be easy to read! But it's got so much introspection, that I keep drifting off into what I should do (ahem, the managerial term is "reflection") and then I feel so exhausted, I fall asleep. Anyway, by the time I had read half the book, it was already Thursday and the next day were the classes, so I had to hurriedly prepare for the other subjects.
But I dont regret it. This week was more about "Who am I? What am I doing for myself?". Sounds selfish? It is. But not in the obvious way. This week was about personal development. The cases for this week reflected that fact. One was about "A manager and a parent" where the manager who's doing exceptionally well at work, comes home to find out that his personal life is so close to crumbling. And then he tries to "manage" in his personal life, and then "father" his employees at work. The poor guy got so confused, and it was difficult for him to separate his work life from his personal life. And that's the point. They ARE going to affect each other, so it is absolutely essential for us to maintain some sort of a balance. I might be on a roll at work, but if I'm not investing enough time at home, then tomorrow, when I am no longer necessary at work, I would have lost both parts of my life. We work so we can live comfortably right? So live a little. Be there. For yourself and others.
The other session covered something similar, about a man who was doing so well at work. He was so busy, that he probably had 10-15 minutes at max as a break. And as he reflected, he realizes that if he is to continue growing at this pace (he's scheduled to be on the board within three years), then he has to keep up in this rat race. He cant start slowing down now, even though he is growing apart from his kids, and his wife is drifting away too. But since he's so successful at work, he's able to wish it all away, so he may look into it later. But the point comes back. Just because we think today we need to concentrate on work, will the family be there tomorrow, waiting, so we can fix our relationship there? Relationships aren't tangible, and curiously enough the glue for it isn't available in the market. It needs time, and effort, to keep building it from everyone involved. So we need to stop acting like we can just walk in and fix things whenever we want.
And ultimately, all this affects our behaviour at work. And the way others look to us. What kind of role models do we want to be? What kind of lives do we want to live? One person questioned, that if we all started balancing work and home life, then will any more Gandhis emerge? It's because of their single-minded dedication that they achieved such greatness. So, is it really worth it? Deep stuff this week.
PM - We were supposed to submit some assignments this week. We didnt even get started till Thursday. I blame that LOC prof. (Yes, yes, we got the book a month ago, but since when did we managers start taking blame? I haven't yet done the Ethics course anyway.) So a little rush here, a little documentation there, a few crazy Skype calls everywhere, and a manager who's trying to understand, very hard might I add, if this course we're doing is really helping us, or giving us a reason to shirk work. (See, now if they had given us an Ethics course earlier, I wouldn't be reading my material in office hours. I blame it on the college too!). Anyway, this week was about the diffusion of new products in the market. What this essentially talks about is that people who come out with products overvalue their products by about three times. For e.g., let's say that a guy talks about his ergonomically designed, scented, always cool to the touch, exfoliating, skin-enriching, fairness-enhancing, UV-filtering, bacteria-killing, gold-shaving-filled cake of soap. So he's thinking, we dont need any other products! Just bathe with this, and you get the best of everything! Such a bargain!
Now in reality, this is just a healthy, wealthy(gold-filled remember?), beauty soap. Stylish if you really want to add more.
But to the consumer, it's just. a. soap.
And that's the point. The producer overvalues what he's got, because he understands it completely and he's so enthusiastic and caught up in it, that he tends to forget if normal people value it the same way. At the same time, the consumer is thinking that if he is to move away from his previous product, this new one better be, well, better! And if he has to change the way he uses such a product, then hell, this thing better be worth it's weight in a month's salary given in one-rupee coins! We saw how we can draw a two-by-two to decide if a new product can take off. The two axes being: Amount of behaviour change required, and actual change in product. So if there's too much change in the product, and very little change in the behavioural change required, then the person will pick it up. If it's the other way around, like hell that's going to happen. An example for the two cases? The first, power steering. The second, the Dvorak keyboard. Look it up. Apparently it lets you type a little faster, but check out the layout. Would you use it?
We also discussed "Crossing the chasm". Apparently, the world is filled with Innovators, Opinion Leaders, the Early Followers, the Late Entrants, and the Laggards. The innovators try out new products, a very experimental lot they are. The opinion leaders tend to catalyse the diffusion process as people look up to them, and it's due to them that the products are adopted at a faster rate by the early followers. The late entrants get in because there there's very low risk now, and everybody's using it. And finally, the laggards start using it, because there's NO OTHER option available. After that, the product just dies if there's something new in town. For e.g. Orkut and Facebook. Try guessing which stage they're in?
A lot of takeaway this week. Looks like I'm not wasting my money after all.
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