Quarter 4 - Week 9

The last week of classes is the one where you get to see all our classmates determinedly staying awake, or reaching class early enough, in an attempt to absolve them of the guilt of their past broken resolves to "Study hardest this quarter, and get all the As". No matter, we have another 6 more quarters in which to meet our resolutions. Atleast once, I hope.

Of course, the last minute groaning and grunting for project completion is still on its way. We're trying to wrap up the MPPO project as I'm writing this post right now. My mates would be pissed if they got to know that while they were trying to delve into the innermost parts of their mind for more junk to drop on the assignment, I'm sitting here... well... writing a diary. Not too much difference between what they and I are doing anyway.

OperMan - The last two sessions were related in part to process improvements and what we're really trying to achieve when we say six sigma, and finally on a course wrap-up where it was like "Ok everyone, all together now", where we tried to tie in the vision of what the course was supposed to embody and how we had gone about it. You know, those aaah moments, when you realize what the hell you were trying to learn in the past ten weeks? Something like that. The last case of the course had us comparing two distinct manufacturing companies that went about their production operations very differently even though they were really in the same space. Too much competition, cost and quality priority, and yet the choices they make are based on their "strategy", and their strengths that they've developed so far. Common sense, but wrapped in reason so you know next time HOW you can arrive at such a solution. That's what this MBA is about, isn't it?

CorpFin - For whatever reason, the prof gave us a little baksh by not conducting a case discussion on Friday. Apparently a small proportion of the class had read up the case, the rest were probably working on the projects. So a little chastising later, and he got us to read both cases for the last session of the course. Combine that with that resolve I spoke of earlier, and for the second session there was hardly a person who HADN'T read the case. I'm so proud of my class, and our last minute guilt pangs, and our following up on it! :)

Anyway, there was practical application towards the case. In fact, since I was busy working on the OM project, both cases suspiciously looked like OperMan cases to me, and I was thinking of solutions on those lines. It's only after an hour of coming up with those answers, that I realized it was really a CorpFin case. The second case was actually very interesting. It spoke about how a company chose to merge with another company, and transfer it's debts to the accounts of the second company that was doing quite well. Due to that, the merged entity started showing some losses, but it soon came out of it. Now, the interesting thing is, this complete shenanigan was completely within accounting rules. So, even though what the first company did was unethical, you couldn't fault it. And so, the course ended with us left to ponder on the fact that even if nature took its own course, and everything turns out fine in the end, doesn't ethics play a part in this play? Because everyone knew it was wrong, but even then, if it doesnt hurt anyone, is it still wrong?

MPPO - A final case which was actually very disturbing. While most of the other cases had some sort of happy endings (generally), this one was truly puzzling. It dealt with how there was an employee who apparently was very hard to deal with, and about an incident where he went to the extent of abusing his boss, who was actually being nice to him. A lot of analysis later (which I frankly thought was highly open-ended), we closed the case under a cloud of doubt. I dont know, but I think the prof was trying to tell us that sometimes, you never really know what should be done, because people are just that, not machines. Their actions can not be predicted. There may be a lot of history we're not aware of, and there's so much that can affect a person's attitude. The trick is in taking the effort to stand in the other person's shoes, uncover what might have happened in the past, the circumstances under which the event transpired, and maybe, just maybe you can deal with this somehow. And yet, you may be wrong.

As the profs winded their respective classes, we applauded, as usual. But there seems to be a marked difference between this quarter and all the previous ones. The energy seemed to be missing. The number of people who gave the standing ovation seemed to have reduced. Which brings me to a fork - Are we all just tired, or are we so used to seeing such brilliant people coach us, that it just seems commonplace? I hope it's the former... because it's too early for us to start thinking we've seen it all.

I hope we continue to feel that sense of inspiration as our future guides take us through the clear yet murky world of business management.

Quarter 2 - Week 8

Ahaah! I see the "My time's more important than blogging" a.k.a "I'm lazy" is raising it head yet again... Gentlemen! It's time to roll that mouse, scroll it and keep the keyboard at the ready, we've got a long fight ahead of us...!

WTF? Who writes such stuff, this is a PGSEM diary, not a rant spot (It's not?). On to what we're here to talk about, Week 8. This means we have just two more weeks left of classes in this quarter after this (Awesome!!!! Cant wait!), and then we'll have exams (SHITTT!!!!). Now anyway, why would this quarter be any different from any of the others?

Well, to begin with, we had a project (that's like fourteen times bigger than an assignment) to submit by Friday, and as fate would have it, nobody was done (or started) with the assignment... so someone asks the prof a week ago - "Sir, when's the last date to submit the project", and the prof says "The next Friday", and the whole class went "Whaaaaa??? Sirrr!!! No time!! Pleeeeeeeease Sir...!". The prof cut everything short by saying "I expected this, ok, I wont stretch the deadline... next week is our last week of sessions, we will be doing presentations after this, so those of you who submit on Friday, I'll take your assignments. Those who dont, have to get a hard copy to the PGSEM Office by the Thursday after that. I WILL NOT ACCEPT ANY SUBMISSIONS ON THE FRIDAY AFTER THAT!" Glad that we got an extra five days, we went "phew!". But our bag isn't complete yet, we also had a QM assignment set for Sunday, a QM quiz that was on Saturday, and trust me when I say this "The QM assignment is like two normal projects." What, an assignment bigger than a project? That's right, it is... you'll find out when you come here.

So a couple of week nights, half of Saturday and the whole of Sunday was spent at IIMB while we tried to figure out what questions to ask to make our data fit the question, er, i mean get the right answers. I think we finished by Sunday 6 PM, and immediately got started on our Managing Organizations project. That's right! ON A SUNDAY! That's family time! (In fact as we speak, in the mid of the next week, I have just sent out a draft of our latest doc for review). So junta, rest assured, if you plan to do this course, and you wanted to be on the IIMB campus, you'll BE on the IIMB campus, even if you'd rather be elsewhere. No doubts of that.

This week in Macro Economics, we had another prof come in, since our actual prof was away on leave. She spoke to us about fiscal policy and what the government can do to influence spending. Maybe I was stuck on the impending QM quiz the next day, or the couple of assignments, that I was unable to pay much attention to what was being said. I mean, I was listening, but I wasnt really listening. Like a block between the short term and long term divisions of my brain. Divisionalized form, anyone?

Managing Organizations went neatly, we were supposed to look into the working of organizations that go from "Good to Great" and how they ensure their employees are driven, and how a common vision goes a long way for everyone. It pretty much said that for an organization to succeed, your primary resource is your people. Keep them happy, keep them motivated, and give them direction... they'll be efficient inherently. Yea, yea, common sense you say, but this had pictures! and nice bold headlines, and even had the not-so-unimportant distinction of possessing DATA! It had stats in it! Hah, in your wildest dreams you couldnt come up with numbers to match your common sense, so there! (Come to think, all our articles have had the exact same attributes, some of them have gone further to lend credibility by appearing in the Harvard Business Review. Guess someone thought it would be a good idea to have this stuff published, so people can refer to a one stop spot for how to "Manage an Organization"). We studied Aravind Eye Hospital again, and saw how they went on to become a highly efficient and successful hospital. All with minimal donations/funding by "badde bhaiyas"! The next day, we studied "Why transformation efforts fail", which I think everyone really wanted to know, as in why can an org not maintain the changes it proposes... So we saw the 8 reasons for it (yes, there are eight. I'd show you the article, it's bold and black, and highlighted on another chart as well!). In brief, it said that you need to stress the urgency of it across the org, make sure your employees GET it! and then purposefully put in small successes along the way to keep morale up, and maintain it for 5-8 years, that's when it gets into the actual org psyche. Useful pointers here are there...

QM, well, remember I said if you read and come, you'd get everything the prof said? Well, with the coming quiz, couldnt read the stuff... so a lot of nodding here, shaking there, sleeping everywhere. The first day was pretty much a recap of the portions for the next day's quiz.. so that was ok. The next day we did "ANOVA - Analysis of Variance". Even the name sounds important enough, so I can say without hesitation that I've not understood one of the most important fundas of all time in statistics. So need to read up (atleast now) and come prepared for the next class. The quiz was, well, let's just say... well, it was easy to read for certain! Interesting problem and all that, my analysis may have gotten a *little* derailed... I think I reached Chennai instead of Bangalore, when I started at Madurai. Yep, a little derailed.

Oh, totally forgot! We were supposed to have a surprise quiz in Managing Orgs on Saturday. Only, everyone knew it was the last week of "actual classes", so EVERYONE read the article of the day. The prof comes in grinning with a bunch of test papers, to find all the students grinning back! And he knew, for the first time, that the class was ready for the surprise quiz. And hence came the line I'd remember for quite a while "I take it the surprise quiz is no longer a surprise quiz.". Our classmates sure are a fun lot, I'd never thought I'd be playing hookey, throwing tantrums and pleading the hell out of a prof, trying to convince them to postpone a test/cancel it/give out the answers anyway (wait, the last hasnt happened... yet). It's good to be back in school.

Quarter 2 - Week 3

Last week, our Business Statistics prof gave us an interesting assignment. Given a bug database (I dont know how he got it, the source remains a mystery) he asked us to find out all the information that we could, given this database. As an example, we could find out how long people took to fix bugs, whether the developers were working effectively etc. etc. The techie in me wondered "What the hell?! People are fixing bugs, and you're not happy with that?" The answer to my own question dawned pretty soon, "It might be loathesome to sit and look at all this, but you probably want to find out if they can do something better or faster. Or you can find out if someone needs some help, but is probably too proud to ask for it. Or in the worst case, probably isnt even aware that he needs help". The manager talk has already begun... is it a good sign?

So this "fun" assignment comes with a catch... use open source database and all from Open Office. AND run some queries using SQL. Apparently, we have all the time in the world to learn up SQL and figure our way around Open Office for the first time. A part of me thinks he's doing it to keep the pressure up on us, to add those inherent capabilities that these IIM products are famous for - time management, prioritization, the works. Another part of me says he's doing it because he believes open source is a good thing, and he can spread the word in one way - bringing it to his work, i.e. us. And probably we can spread the word in our own way.

Right, so this was last week when this assignment was given to us, and I've spent almost 20 hours just figuring out how to use this damned software. Staying awake late, working on it in office (and feeling suitably guilty about it), waking up early, I'm slowly getting used to it (Question to self: Why am i here again?). Still, when Friday came along, I was feeling reasonably good. I had gotten a chart or two out, and my partner and I were ready to do some serious sifting.

The classes started off with Macro economics, we have now entered the realm of Aggregate Demand. This is basically the total demand for goods and services within an economy. We're going through the Keynesian(pronounced keen-see-yun) model, made up by the guy who brought the US out of the Great Depression. Fancy accomplishment, that. How did he do it? He told everyone that to build the GDP of a country, you need to spend-spend-spend!! To all of us techies, when the formula was shown on the board, it made sense. If you spent, you got a whole lot of GDP since that extra spending keeps circulating in the economy. If you save too much, then nobody buys stuff, and if no one buys stuff, then jobs are not there, and if jobs are not there, then nobody buys stuff. Vicious circle!! We understood how the US is a consumer-spending driven economy, China is an export driven company, India is an investment and services driven economy... if even one external factor is affected, everyone dances! We slowly have begun to appreciate the roles played by the consumers, the investors/corporates, and we had just begun understanding the role the government plays. What gets me, is that we dont seem to be noticing anything other than monetary stuff that can be valued. The implicit advantages/disadvantages, the stuff that can not be quantified or rather we dont want to quantify is nowhere in the picture. It's all about the money... well, it is Macro Economics after all.

Managing Organizations was pretty cool this week. On the first day, we studied a case of two companies - one very process oriented, good, cheap and effective, though it treated its employees like "horses" with blinders as one of our classmates remarked in a light vein. The other company had people who mixed with each other, spent enough time understanding every one's work and not just specializing in their own. Communication was awesome in this company, yet they were slower than the first company. During the discussion, we noticed that when presented with the chance of building a new design, the second company did better as they were more flexible and communicated well, while when it ultimately came down to production, at the end of the day, the first company got the contract. A sad story, in my opinion, where in the second company did quite well in getting their act together and thrived on the uncertainty of the project, but lost it in the end because they didnt have the cost effectiveness of the first company. And here, I learnt my first real lesson about organization structure. While an employee would love to work in the second company, a person would want to be the CEO of the first, where everything was clear and streamlined. I learnt that a company should be structured based on the industry it is in, so that it can thrive. Hurts to know that you cant have a fair and fun company, if you're in an industry which requires cost-effective measures and extremely high quality. It doesnt let you experiment with new ideas, or concepts purely because it puts your current system at risk. Sigh.

Business Statistics - what can I say? We had a quiz on day 1, and yours truly got battered! I dont know where my brain went for a walk at that moment, because it sure as hell wasnt in my head when the quiz was going on. Must have fallen asleep, due to the lack of sleep from the last week. We started studying random variables. These aren't really "variables" in the terms we use it in comp sci lingo. These are functions. Basically, we try to figure out our payouts(what we can get) considering the different results that can occur due to probability. The example given was simple - consider there's a fraud happening in a company, and you've been called in. Would you analyse each and every transaction to see where the fraud is? What if the cost of the investigation is so much that to check each and every fraud, you'd probably have to shut down the company as that would be far cheaper. So, this somewhat talked about how you "hedge your bets" carefully. I wont say I totally understood what the guy was talking about. Two days went by in a blur of formulae, and examples that seemed to make sense when he was talking about it. Man, that guy is a jack rabbit. I dont know how he manages to move around so fast, it's really difficult keeping pace with him. I must grudgingly admit - he's brilliant, seems well read... it's difficult to point fingers at inspiring figures like that. He can actually get away with taunting us, which he does, just because we're in awe of him. Awesome! Anyway, we've finished our assignment, somehow, let's just hope that he finds our queries enough. BTW, the results for that quiz on Friday came on Saturday - did pretty bad. The prof told us not to worry, it's apparently legacy. All his first tests, no matter how easy it is, people suck at it. Make me feel a little better.

Good thing the tests are best three out of four! :P