Quarter 9 - Week 4

Nothing very special from the classes this week, a couple of guest lecturers and a few cases. The highlight was the Pehel fest, thrown by the first year students. It's the first fest of the year, held in the first quarter, by the first years - therefore, the original name - Pehel. The amount of time invested in this was very visible, looking at the number of events organized and the intricate logos and t-shirts designed. A few confusions on stage, but nothing out-of-the-ordinary, and definitely a brilliant means of learning for the incoming batch about the rigour of managing the show despite the heavy workload. It was a good way to end the weekend at college! :)

Consumer Behaviour

This week, the prof decides to take a break and make the students do the presentations. So we had a couple of cases, one around the rollout of a shampoo for the rural masses of India, and the other about Canada Dry. The prof seems to focus primarily on the process of how we analyse the case, rather than the actual results itself. And yes, the typical dindora-peeting of the 'Use the data! Use the data!'. Apparently, we're not using it enough, and this is after two years in college. I don't get it! We spend a full 25 minutes on analysing the data, what does he want? 8 hours?? In any case, our case comes up in another 4 weeks, so we can just chill...

(P.S. For those of you who don't know, you ARE supposed to spend 8 hours atleast on case analysis alone. Reading time before that is a given.)

Strategic Leadership

The two cases for this week were FabIndia and Bajaj Auto Limited. Interesting cases, but they're now slowly lacking the punch that I've seen in the first three weeks. Maybe we're getting a hang of how this chap goes around the cases... but more importantly, he still sticks to the new fundas that these chaps have brought out. FabIndia seemed to be about how the basic industry was transformed, into something profitable and meaningful for the actual producers. More importantly it goes into how something that used to be almost equivalent to daily labour was transformed into something that enabled wealth creation (that's a cool phrase beyond your basic daily income. Essentially about 'munafa' over and above 'income'. Still don't get it, ultimate profit sharing.)

Bajaj Auto Limited was a case that essentially talked of the difference in opinion between two generations. The basic thought processes that define where the company is, what is should concentrate on, can be thrown into a tizzy - and the only way around this, is if one of the two sides win. So the case talks about how they went about the transformation from becoming an almost-monopolistic-incumbent in scooter production to the second-highest-player in motorcycle production. For those of you who think 'Two-wheelers right? What's the diff?', it's a big diff my friend... big diff. Come on over, and we'll spend an hour-and-a-half pakaoing you about it.

Personal Inter-personal Effectiveness Workshop

This week we're talking about how and why we react the way we do. Apparently, there's this major connection to the way we've been brought up, and we typically revert to the type of reactions we show as children to our parents or authority figures, when we get stresses. So for e.g., if your boss yells at you for not getting things delivered on time, your typical reaction is the way you might react to your dad when he yelled at you for not getting good marks in school. If you were berated enough to be scared, you're likely to get into that same feeling when your boss is yelling. If you yelled back at your dad, you're likely to yell back here. Of course, there are certain constraints - you will look at the surrounding environment, the person to whom you're talking, the relationship you both share... but in terms of deep stress, irrespective of who, where, when, you'll get back to your basic instinct. We also spoke of how giving strokes to people (when I say stroke, I mean 'feedback' in the simplest sense of the word) is important, and how people crave for strokes. As it turns out, negative strokes is better than no strokes at all... which was pretty surprising, but makes sense in the end. You'd rather have SOME feedback than none at all.

The second half of the session was about yoga, mainly breathing actually. The guest lecturer was explaining the merits of breathing, and how it impacts us. So we speak about different modes of breathing, and he also goes in depth about what are the changes that happen in your body, and how does it help you avoid getting stressed. Pretty interesting, and it looked like my classmates concurred! :)