Quarter 6 - Week 4

Immediately after an overloaded week of classes, when you get a half-week of classes, you feel so... free. While there was a lot of energy around the campus thanks to our ongoing business fest (IIMB Vista 2010), the calm moods within the classes of PGSEM seemed to point to one thing... "Finally, I can spend some time with my family/friends on a Friday night!". It's possible that due to the half-day off on Thursday (anyone wonder why Sep 30, 2010 was so much reason to be tensed about?), people weren't really wild-eyed/red-eyed/close-eyed in class on Friday. After a long time, I remembered what 8 hours of sleep felt like...

Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation

Five minutes into class, and the prof drives right into the case for the day, a case revolving around an online PC distribution model. He poses the first question, expecting the burst of energy he's seen in all the previous classes, and other than one/two hands lazily climbing into the air, the only sound we can hear is the AC. (No, our ACs aren't loud, I'm trying to say the class was so silent, you could hear the subdued hum from it!) In all my past quarters at college, a few such instances have come, and the professor wrings his hands in despair, and makes an almightly plea while reprimanding/motivating the class to read the case for the day! The truthful profs also add that even though they really like to only hear their own voices in class, they also like the occasional question, disruption, banter that the class involves in. And then the usual spiel of "I put so much into preparing for the case, I think you students should also do the same". All totally valid points. But the students typically always have a reason why they hadn't read the case... the "Sir, we have internals today", "We had to submit four assignments today", or the rare-but-typically-unspoken "Case was boring, I thought some other classmate would read it". And this time was no different! It's midterm season, so everyone's preparing for some exam or the other, this time I had B2B's quiz, I'll come to that later.

Anyway, our prof didn't say any of the above, but we could see it in his eyes. No, I'm not kidding! We know that look! And then the class gives the response look, and then after a short impasse, we continue with the class... participating in a subdued manner, and the prof taking every chance he can to tell us "Read the numbers at the end of the case!". Unfortunately, when you combine midterms with a first-time-situation in this class where we have brilliant exhibits which we need to crunch for information, it almost makes our class look juvenile when we argue on the qualitative merits, instead of hard quant. This time, the case revolved around how you need to remember that even if your enterprise is out to fix a major problem, if some of the most important parties is being affected more negatively than positively, it's not going to fly. Overall, what you propose may be a very well-warranted solution, but sometimes without safeguarding the interests of all affected parties in the business, you're actually going to have an extremely tough ordeal ahead.

Social Entrepreneurship

This week we spoke about agricultural co-operatives. After last week's session, one thing was quite clear, the fundamental value in a co-operative comes from the people involved, not from the patrons behind it. It is not meant to be managed by someone, it is meant to empower the people themselves, almost democratic in its own way. The prof minces no words when he says that well meaning do-gooders come to the villages and try to setup co-ops, and leave disasters behind. There's no point coming to a village with a solution, without understanding the problem. He mentioned a personal experience where he went to a village with a few other people, and first tried to understand the problem itself. Obviously, since he was an outsider, he didn't want to seem too intrusive, so he was casually asking about the directions to nearby villages, and slowly after circling started asking stuff like "what's the name of this village?", "How many people here?", "What do you do?" etc. Within a short while, the villager tells him "Sir, there are enough poor people here, just come and do what you want.". And this prof is taken aback since he hasn't said a word about what he wants to do, but this guy has already understood that this "self-appointed-do-gooder" wants to do something, and directly given him the answer. and pat comes the moral of the story. Villagers aren't stupid, don't go there thinking anything along that direction.

They are used to city slickers coming down, and distributing money, baashans, advice, and clothes. So it's not new to them that someone wants to help them, even though its a passing fling. So, if you want to do something well-meaning, and empowering, you're definitely going to have to stay at it for a long time. More important than anything else, if you want the villagers to commit to an initiative that you start (irrespective of whether it's going to be driven by them), and take risks, you're going to need to earn their trust. To one of the questions "Can we assume they'll be capable of managing such a co-operative? They're not as well educated as us", the prof gives us a very interesting answer. He says, even if you go by statistics, 5% of people anywhere are going to be smart. It's not like the smart people are clustered only in metros. So, you go to such villages, these 5% will automatically stand up and take leadership. He also gave an example where a lady who had only studied upto the 7th grades, was handling the entire accounts for a very successful co-operative in the area. So, don't worry about the capabilities of the people. In fact, it's very important to let them run it, because if you do everything for them, and protect them from mistakes, when will they get a chance to learn? They'll always be dependent on an external entity, when in reality the external entity should only be responsible for the initial impetus, nothing more. So, let them make mistakes, let them learn from it. All we need to do is help them build a system of transparency, and accountability, and let the people take care of themselves.

B2B Market Management

This class was the reason why we hadn't read the cases properly for the other two. I think today was a perfectly valid reason. We had three chapters to read, from an extremely intense book, and you could easily fall asleep in 3 paragraphs! So much jargon and intense reflection-packed statements make people reflect on their own lives, and totally forget about marketing. I scarcely remember a time while reading these 3 chapters (actually, I could only make it to two, I had to rush through ppt slides for the third, god bless this prof and his advance provision of slides). By the end of day Thursday (or should i say the wee morning of Friday), I had read so much about value, that I was beyond thinking of "value". This is like a repeat telecast of last week. This "value" thing is getting to be very addictive. I am still trying to quantify the value of me writing this blog now, instead of sleeping. It's really tough. Good thing we recently learnt about intrinsic and qualitative value. I can now postpone this blog quant value tradeoff to another day.

This week was negotiations week! There was a very interesting case, and our teams had to work either as a buyer or a seller, and work with the other party to decide on a final price. Looking at all the crunching we had to do, this price decision was actually very well thought out. We looked at all the factors, time of employees, breakdown idle time, annual maintenance, the entire shenanigan, and then we pitch our points. Results from all the teams were collated and then we did a final analysis, on what would be the right way to deal with such negotiation. Regarding the quiz, suffice to say that the prof nicely gave us some objective type questions. Knowing completely well that by the time, we'd be probably have only the word "value" in our brains and tick every answer that had the word "Value" embedded somewhere, he wickedly put "value" just about EVERYWHERE. Each question had atleast two answers that had this word, so the last minute gimmick of the unprepared did not work.

And now, on a Sunday morning, on to the next set of assignments.

Quarter 5 - Week 5

It never fails to thrill me when we hit the five-week mark. It keeps saying "50% of that step you're taking is done... now all you have to do is drop that foot on the ground". You'd expect that the act of raising your foot against gravity to leave it hanging in the air is the difficult part, and letting momentum take you forward to easing it on the ground is easier. Considering how a similar effect DOES NOT happen in each quarter, it's obvious I've drawn the wrong parallel. Does that make it perpendicular? (You'll be glad to know I'm not sleeping enough each night. That will probably explain this past paragraph. Oh, the joys of an executive MBA...)

MSP - Making the excuse that "I didn't prepare for the class" begins to get old, even when you're telling it to yourself. Now I understand that convincing yourself is the easy part... so that should be a sign that goes "Isn't it time you read those articles?" Anyway, this past week I was woefully unprepared for the classes. Luckily, it had to do with the Agile process, and what makes it different from waterfall. Now I thought that if I'd heard it once, I've heard it a million times. And I've heard this spiel almost five times now. Everyone from my lead, the guys from another of our company sites, our annual conferences, to a 'certified' Agile coach has told us about this magic pill. So I'm pretty sold on it, in fact I sell it everywhere I go. But when you listen to the same thing in a class, it's a different thing. All of a sudden, it is no longer about the practicals that you associate it with. It's about the theory. It's about WHY people use Agile. It's about who all are using Agile. It's about how it's no longer a fad, and that my clients, YOUR clients, and their clients are all saying they want that silver bullet. It's no longer about having the maximum number of people working low wage jobs so that work can be outsourced to you, it's getting to be about the quality and reliability of the work you do, and the associated accountability, so that the clients will require MINIMUM maintenance from you. Managing Software Projects, an art in so many people's eyes, is slowly but surely making its transition to a science.

Beyond the general theory of "Why Agile?", we had a guest speaker come in from (top secret) company working on a (top secret) project for a (top secret) client. I am not supposed to be saying this out loud on a public forum, but I couldnt hold myself back. Act like I didn't tell you anything. But in any case, this person described to us as to how they went about implementing Agile. The best part? His diagrams were convoluted and you could point off his problems so easily, that you realise, the theory that the prof tells you is one thing, practically whatever we're doing is still sufficiently unstable, just a little less so. The difference is that now we can observe where we're truly going wrong. There is a minor debate going on the side, that Agile requires outspoken team members, being given the opportunity to be self-sufficient and self-moderating. The argument being put to that is if you can find so many such people who want to be that way. It's one thing to be given the power, it's yet another to accept the responsibility. Thankfully, most of the experienced guys in class say that their companies have such responsible people.

LOC - Yet another class I wasn't prepared about. But listening (or trying to listen) to the discussion in class, I gathered that it's about the attempt to do a turnaround within an organization. The first session was about HCL, the second was about Surat. I dont really know if HCL's was a success, but I hear Surat's was downright amazing. Apparently the leader (S.R. Rao, I hear) empowered his team, put the whip in the hands of the common man by giving him the right to question and tracked his team. I remember a few words out of this week... cynicism on the parts of the IT employees on whether the company's promise to 'make the change' was going to hold, and accountability in the other where 'the ones making the change were being policed by the ones who had to live with the change'. Maybe there's more to these cases, let me get back to you on this. But if you want to take something away from this paragraph, remember: "Get the people on board, so you can make the change with their help... because if you fail, it will be easier for you if you fail together, than be the lone person being judged by everyone for having caused increased irreparable damage."

PM - I met a couple of old friends again this week 'Segmentation' and 'Positioning'. Did I tell you that Product Management is apparently actually an advanced Marketing course? So these sessions were all about how you target the appropriate customers for your product. And how you let them know about it. We started off with understanding how a market is segmented - basically split it up into four areas, where you dont have a product, have a product but either dont want to sell it to a particular segment (conscious choice) or dont even know that the segment exists, lost one of your segments, captured some segments, or had some from the very beginning and didn't have to fight for them. So it's important to know what the customer wants, and what your rival's customers want, so that you can use them like trading cards depending on which strategies you employ to garner more market share. The next session was about how you let the different segments know more about your product, and constantly keep giving out the same message so that it's imprinted in the customer's mind.

Since a few of our classmates were cursing that people like me don't have enough exams and assignments, I have some great news! We have two assignments for this week, two assignments for NEXT week, a quiz this week, another next week, so I too now have reason why I shouldn't be getting even the bare amount of sleep that I claim to be getting right now.

Quarter 5 - Week 4

It's funny, I seem to remember that our batch would interact a fair amount with our seniors when we were in the first quarter. You know, something like a.... drive to go back to a college atmosphere... a little buzz about the Student's committee, and the kind of talks we could organize. Whether we lived up to the hype can be debated till we leave college, and then some more...

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.

http://www.anmbadiary.blogspot.com/

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.