Quarter 4 - Week 4

As was expected, a few of my friends made a plan to go for a trip out of town since it was an extended weekend. As was expected, they've stopped asking me. I wish they had asked. I would have said no, but still. Even it was on Sunday, I'd have said no. Why's that? Because when every other person in town was either goofing off, or going to church at odd hours over the weekend, my entire class was sitting from 8 AM to 2 PM on all three days in the cosy comforts of IIMB, paying attention to teachers who were explaining stuff that BETTER BE USEFUL TO ME somewhere down the line, or it was yet another opportunity cost of an unforgettable trip getting the better of me!

Classes on a Sunday. Yeesh. But all for the future good I always say, or rather I say after CorpFin class. More on this later.

OperMan - This week we had a case discussion about a company that was in the manufacturing line. Now most of the funda of determining a process comes from trying to optimize some steps to ensure that a bottleneck doesnt take up too much time in the system. Essentially, if one operation in a series is a bottleneck, this means that whatever comes after it gets a little free time while this operation churns out its output at a slooow pace. This means more coffee time and mingling time for the guys after this step, while the guys before this step will continue to slog. Kinda like my manager sitting after I do my work, just so he can take two minutes to send a congratulatory mail every now and then for work that took me six months. Aah, I'm kidding. My manager's awesome. Anyway, the next two days we were going to understand the fundas of Supply Chain Management (Ooooh ! Yes, I know.)

We played a beer game (Yea! in IIMB! Whoever said that Indian education is conservative?) where we were fortunately/unfortunately not given real beer bottles, but using some tokens we simulated what happens when an order is placed by the customer, and if I'm the retailer, then my supplier, and HIS supplier, and the supplier's supplier's supplier are involved in a serial chain, then it starts predictable at my end, but at the final point the demand is erratic. You need to go through it to really get it. Or use wiki/google. Your choice. Fun game, and the analysis of it was done on the second day. Interesting learnings. Join IIMB to learn it. I didnt sit through 1.5 hours of class on a Sunday instead of going to a cool place, just so I can share my learnings here. (Sorry, I seem a little upset).

CorpFin - OMG! I ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND what happens in this class now. I dont know if I mentioned it before, but since we had a test this Saturday, I tried (read 'was compelled/forced') to go through the first three or four chapters in this book. It's in a way like the ManAcc classes from last quarter, boring classes, simple fundas. All you need to do is pay attention, and read before class. Any way, the whole funda goes like this: When you buy something, then you need to make sure that this thing is profitable, not just immediately but over the long run. So how do you know if it is? Simple, you understand Compound Interest right? Great... so what happens is you do this backwards, but the value of the 'rate of interest' you use is not what the SBI gives you (those cheap, mean misers!) but what an object of equivalent risk gives you. For e.g. if I was to buy some shares, I could have instead put that money into something else that was comparable in terms of return. So I will try to figure out using 'backwards Compound Interest' (for lack of a better term) to find out if the 100 Rs. I spend today will be worth more or less in the case of the investment that I'm going to make, when compared to the other benchmark investment I was going to make. You basically have two rates to compare now right? So use that to find out the 'Present Value' of investments. You'd be surprised that this can be even applied to stocks and bonds and the dividends that come out of it, it's growth opportunities etc. Yes, it's a way for you to realize if your fund manager is making a fool of you! Assuming you've attended a CorpFin class.

Of course the prof taught something much more this week, but I can only explain that to you next week since we have a test on it this week. Yes, another test, I seem so blessed.

MPPO - This week was more about interaction, communication between people and what the possible barriers could be, and how we can empathize and listen, I mean really listen to people, and finally the different theories of motivation. Pretty insightful weekend, with the class sharing a lot. I think the surprise test that was there this week shook people up, so more of them were reading the articles before coming to class. I even saw a few people READ the material in the class just before the MPPO class! Fine way to spend Rs. 1250 (Yes, that's the price per individual class session, according to my poor calculations!). In fact, I guess one of these people had suddenly woken up in MPPO class, that he sent a mail to the prof that we can be a little more effective in class, that the training was getting diluted by people's talk and discussion than the topic on hand. I think OperMan got the best of him, but all of us did agree with him on some level. Less complaining about our work, more connecting to the day's topic! So the last session, we did just that... and I frankly liked this class better. There was more discussion regarding THE topic, and we kept referring to the case. Was good. I liked.

Anyway, on to prepare for the next week's test. And OperMan midterm. I love my life.

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.