Quarter 9 - Week 2

The pace hasn't really picked up yet, there's this 'friction' that tells you that hey, there's one more week that you can relax for now. That doesn't stop the quiz or case study from happening though. And so, you attend both half-prepared, knowing fully well that you're going to get whacked out of your senses. The profs are slowly beginning to show a slight impatience, since they're raring to go, and they're not going to let a class of 70 slow them down. So, on we go, to weeknights of readings and weekends of learning.

Consumer Behaviour

This week continued to deal with perceptions and elements related to branding and loyalty. We essentially spoke of how products need to be slowly embedded in the consumers mind - through both behavioural and cognitive learning. The first is more related to the emotional aspect, how you motivate and reinforce the perception in the consumer's mind, that he SHOULD use this product. In fact, if you stop reminding the user every now and then of the product, it actually gets removed from his mind and then it becomes extremely difficult to place it back in there. Another way of learning is by drawing a parallel between that brand and some experience/relationship you've had in your life, maybe a father/daughter thing like in Titan or the mother/son thing in Bournvita, or the boy/girl thing in Fastrack. So you liken it to something and remember the brand everytime one of the associations is drawn up. A few more examples came up of different modes of learning.

Strategic Leadership

This week, we spoke of two cases, Park Hotels and Bharat Forges. Interestingly, the prof seems to have picked up cases where the person started off in the role at the age of 23 give or take a couple of years. These aren't cases of people who got leadership roles by 30/35. The soft matter aside, we were trying to focus on why and how people make decisions that take their companies forward. In Park Hotels, we were grappling with the fact of whether the right clientele was being targeted, whether they should pursue restaurants as a primary business instead of hotels, about whether expanding to the next few locations was the right thing to do etc. Towards the end, we start drawing connections to what the management thinks of the Parks hotel, and where is it that they really think they want to go to. Honestly, I was like eh?

Bharat Forges was a much more interesting case. It looked like these guys were being highly proactive, in choosing customers and expansions, and moving forward all the time. Of course, it took the guys 15 years before he really starting breaking out of the cocoon in terms of humongous decisions, but hey, he took it all the same. And the entire class was constantly looking at how did this guy really get to where he was going. Was it based on luck? Was it based on the fact that competitors weren't moving? And as the prof tries to make us arrive at the reason of all the decisions that were taken, we grab at straws here and there, trying to figure out if the decisions were right for the time, and was there anything else that he could have done. Again, I better try to analyse some of the case, or it's going to be more 'Eh?' moments.

Personal Interpersonal Effectiveness Workshop

Today's class dealt more with choosing if we're doing what we really want to do in life, and what is it that we want to be remembered for. The class started with a discussion around the mission and vision, and an assignment the prof had set for us - What would we do if we knew we were going to die in 1 year, 5 years and 40 years. By the end of the discussion, the basic question was are your priorities aligned, and do you know what your priorities are in the first place. We then moved on to meditation and we spoke of what it was expected to bring to a person. Today's discussion was a little less meatier than what I remembered from the time before. Let's hope that I get more out of the next session, or that the discussions go deeper towards where we should dig further.

Back to the daily grind, two weeks are up!

Quarter 9 - Week 1

A month's vacation later, we hit the books hard! It's always invigorating to dive in after a good long break. You completely forget the internal struggle and heated brains that you've put up with and you set out to wrestle the courses again! I've apparently taken up some really hard courses this quarter, so I've prepared everyone back at office to forget me on Fridays while I bury my nose deep in the readings.

Consumer Behaviour

Easily the scariest subject in our electives list, mostly due to the feedback on the prof that we've received. Stuff like "You guys are screwed!", "He's >= Three demanding profs!" etc. tend to take their toll on you, so much so that you arrive an hour early to the class. A legend in the corridors of IIMB, this professor is known for the clarity that he draws out in the concepts, provided you're willing to give away a pound of flesh. And then we sit in class, trembling, waiting... when all of a sudden...

The man humbly welcomes us to the class, and sets forth his conditions. He describes the rigour with which he'll approach the content, and gives people one last chance to try and exit the course. He explains why he focuses so much on the theory, and with a smile wishes we understand the concepts clearly. A little difficult to draw parallels between the described and the description, but hey, it's just one week. Let's see what happens.

So this week, we study the basics of Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning , like a sort of primer, and then we start moving towards perceptions and how they affect the way people approach certain products. The brands that are created are worth their weight in gold, and he goes on to explain what brands used what strategies to what result. Cool stuff.

We did have one quiz on Saturday (so friggin' early??!?) and one extra class till 7 PM on Saturday. Strenuous, but manageable, that's what I say.

Strategic Leadership

Yet another celebrated professor takes us on a ride down the corridors of power, where he teases us unrelentingly. Dissing us this way and that, he tries to ask us, what do we hope to learn in Strategic Leadership that we wouldn't have picked up in Strategic Management from Q1. And then after a few feeble answers here and there, he says "You guys have spent two years in this programme, so tell me, what do you think you'll learn here that you didn't learn before?" Then this master of magic goes on to lead a presentation, where he actually shows us the difference between what we learnt, and what we would learn.

Then we begin with the case.

I've never seen a prof tear through a class so efficiently before. Within ten minutes, he had the entire class tongue-tied. Nothing anyone said was good enough. He pokes, he prods, he looks amused, and then he intentionally tries to misdirect people. On the second day, he must have teased us out till around 15 minutes before the class ended. And then finally, he unveils the presentation and explains to us what the difference is between the way a manager grows and the steps he chooses, and the way an organization grows and how these two don't usually mix. He ends saying that what you do for your growth need not be for the growth of the company. So then is the step the right one? What do you do, to take the company forward? What do you do, that sets the direction for the company, and makes it a little more certain about where it's going, even if you're not directing it? And doing the right thing for the company, my friends, is Strategic Leadership.

Nice!

Personal Interpersonal Effectiveness Workshop

A very different course from what the others are, this is being taken by a prof we're quite familiar with. And the same prof approaches this topic more gingerly and carefully than he did the previous one. A very exclusive course, only 20 people are allowed in it. And the motive? To learn from ourselves, and look inward to realize what we want to do, and where we want to go. We saw the application of a couple of very cool exercises, one of which sent shivers down my spine as a person practiced it in front of us all. At the beginning, everyone smiles as someone comes forward to volunteer for a class exercise. But within 3 minutes, everyone's quiet, looking down and serious as hell. 'Powerful' doesn't describe this tool.

Beyond that, there was just the fact that we were all sitting together, telling each other stuff out of our own experience. Seemed like only half the class was saying anything, the rest keeping entirely quiet. Guess we'll see how often this lasts before the prof gets the noisy guys to keep quiet.

The articles for this week were 'Knowing Yourself' and 'Winners and Losers'. They both seemed to look at what a person needs to do in order to realize what he is, and where he wants to be. Nice interesting emo stuff.

And so the first week drew to an end. Three of the most celebrated profs, all teaching intensive courses... I couldn't think a better way to start my final year.