Many firsts many lasts..

The date of 16 February 2009, Monday would remain etched in my memories for many reasons. It was a day of many firsts and many lasts in my life, more specifically my academic career. This was the day when I officially attended the last class of my studies, finished MBA (barring exams J), made my last ppt etc. There were various firsts as well which were a perfect ending to the various things I have done over the last 2 years here.

Firsts

• First time a professor slept through my presentation. He was sitting on the first desk and a mere distance of 5 feet separated his resting body and my restless soul
• First time I had or more specifically I attended a class at 8 AM in the morning. Funnily, this had to be on my last class as if the class scheduler was waiting with me to give this final blow
• First time I have seen a person sleeping over in a one-to-one conversation. Sleeping in a class listening to a ppt is fine but asking a question and then sleeping is a thing I realised is possible only today
• First time we went to write a quiz after a whiskey shot. The shot was a toast in celebration for a friend who got a job an hour before the quiz. Nothing could come between our traditional shot-for-job celebration and us
• First time I saw a guy using a camcorder in the class. He even made a video of me presenting the case to the sleepy professor with funny images of mine getting flustered at the obvious mockery of my night’s sleep and hard work

The various lasts that happened that day were:

• Last class of my academic career, at least for a long time to come
• Last academic presentation, a random case was an apt end to the stride of presentations I have delivered here
• Last quiz of my academic career
• Last exams of my academic career for a long time to come

The last day did not come without its glitches; I had to work till late night to prepare the case, a thing which I did only in the very first days here around 1.5 years back. It was almost an academic night out, a thing which happened only in first year. The case reminded me of the very first case given by the OB professor when all of us were perplexed as to how to analyse the case, here it was a bit different, I was alone but was equally perplexed nonetheless.

Looking at the last day and the first day, I believe a normal curve would fit in the description. However, it would have to be a really skewed normal curve as far as effort put in is concerned. The start was with a huge amount of effort which tapered with the time spent here. My earlier post on “Life as exponential functions” would summarise most of it. Nonetheless, my MBA is over now and I am all set to move beyond academics, into the real world where case presentations are not so fraud, where audience generally does not sleep in the presentations. Let’s see how it turns out…

Life at a European Business School

It’s different, very different from what I was used to back home at IIM Kozhikode where the boundaries between days and nights, between weekdays and weekends and between courses and exams seemed to non-existent. Even if they did, they were too blurred for mortals like us to realise. It was a constant engine, where every inch of your horsepower was used to move yourself ahead. Time was a luxury and pressure was the best friend people had.

Here, life is simple. I still have 9 courses and will have to pass all of them but I am sure of many things about them. The professors are different and to a certain extent I like their way of teaching better than I liked at IIMK. The pedagogy followed is less demanding and I have a lot of time to spend beyond reading cases and worrying about quizzes. A short reference list with differences between EBS and IIMK:

1.       No classes on weekends here compared to just 2 weekends free in the whole term at IIMK.

2.       Classes generally don’t end at weird times and neither do they start at weird times. The duration of classes is also manageable. Back home, I can’t tell you how ridiculous it became sometimes.

3.       Very small class strength compared to humongous 65 people at IIMK.

4.       No cases to read and prepare here. This I feel is worse compared to IIMK where the cases were sometimes good but many a times there were too many of them. Its difficult for me to transition from infinite cases to no cases. J

5.       Slides prepared by the profs are very very professional as compared to slides prepared back home with weird backgrounds and funny animations which almost always became a pain to be printed. Here professors provide the print-outs of the ppt before every class.

6.       No set textbook prescribed in almost all the courses and hence no textbooks distributed by the school for the students to mug-up. I like this system of multi-reference studies (though haven’t studied at all till now)

7.       Students come to class very nicely dressed up compared to us where we would just get off our hostel beds and rush to the class with red eyes and dishevelled hair.

8.       Most of the students would have read the reading material or cases (if any) definitely for the class as a home work. I don’t remember that happening back home very often.

9.       Teachers respect students’ time and end the lecture on time with appropriate breaks. Back home, the teachers took pride in making sure to extend time.

10.   Students don’t do CP just for the sake of doing it, no marks for CP, hence they speak only they really want to say something substantial and valuable.

11.   Very few components of grading compared to infinite components back home. No surprise quizzes, no graded assignments, no midterms and in a few cases, no end term.

12.   No compulsory attendance. Back home, people lose a grade for missing 2 classes. I particularly like this system since in a post graduate course like MBA, students can decide what is good for them and what is not.

13.   Smoking not banned in college though there are non-smoking zones in the college. Same maturity principle applies here as well.

14.   Students here take submissions and presentations very seriously. They would prepare the ppt 2 days in advance and would have had at least one dry run even when the submission is not a graded one. Indian students would laugh at this J

15.   Haven’t seen people free-riding here. In India, we find plenty of them.

I am not going to say which system is better and which is worse. It’s a huge change for me and I love it. MBA can’t get easier than this for people from India. J

From 601/MPA/01 to PGP/11/132

These numbers may look strange to many of you, at least one of these to most of you. But for me, these define who I am today and who I will be later in my life. The first of them is my engineering roll number and the later is my current roll number at IIMK.

Roll numbers have a greater effect on a person than a prisoner number. Roll numbers decide whom you sit with in the class, roll numbers decide who would be your group member for a team presentation, roll number decide your sitting position in the exams which greatly influence your chances of passing the course, and sometimes roll numbers end up deciding the person you are going to spend your life with. Actions are also defined by roll number; people sitting in the front row due to roll number behave in a certain way which lucky chaps sitting in the last row don’t need to. Sitting with a pretty girl makes you study for a quiz so that you can help the damsel in distress and score some brownie points, not to mention the sober look on your face throughout the day irrespective of the professor or the course.

But for me, these numbers have a meaning far beyond this. For me these numbers represent the institutions I belong to. A part of me is not Alok, its either 601/MPA/01 or PGP/11/132. I become 601 whenever I see a lathe machine or an engine assembly, curiously wondering why am I not working on this. Opening and closing gates of a metro train remind me of the pneumatics and hydraulics learnt as roll number 601. I still remember that a single phase motor drives a fan or a cooler and why diesel engines make more noise than a petrol engine. I am no longer baffled when I see new inventions around me, I know exactly how rotating things rotate and moving things move. 601 made me a computer hardware engineer expert also making me dexterous in installing new RAMs or adding a friend’s hard disk to copy some nice and new stuff. It taught me to live in a hostel and enjoy with people from different parts of India. It gave me my best friends who are still with me sharing my joys or sorrows.  4 years at 601 made me an expert in writing exams and acing them without slogging hard. It made me a decent presenter and speaker, and it also made me a gossiper. Being 601 was my first head-on encounter with life.

Life as 132 is a bit different. Life is more complex, more hectic and more confusing. But 132 brought some changes in me nonetheless. Sleeping in the classes is something 601 never did but 132 does it almost every day. 601 bunked classes but 132 cant. 132 is more aware of his surroundings and is no longer an easy target for manipulation. 132 fights for what he feels is right while 601 generally did not know what was right. 132 is more mature while 601 enjoyed with the child within him. 132 will make more money than 601 but 132 has lesser friends also as compared to 601. 132 can blurt out gas for hours while 601 could speak on technical stuff for hours. 132 is hollow while 601 was as solid as stainless steel. Teachers still remember 601 but hardly anyone would even recognize 132.

Many times 132 envies 601, for the innocence and the freedom 601 had. And 132 misses 601 too. In the end, it was 601 who made 132 and not the other way around. And hence, Alok will always be an engineer before an MBA, no matter what he does or for what is he paid for.

Memoirs of an year

As the entire class huddled up shouting and cheering after the end of the last session which ironically belonged to HRM, it all came back to me. The first day of first term here was similarly drenched in water and marked by thunders as if it was an ominous sign of things to come. Things came and things passed by; acquaintances became friends; professors came, spoke and went; exams and quizzes became a part of life; in a way things changed, for good or for bad, depends on viewpoint.

The sky is pouring as if it wants to wash away all the pains and miseries we went though over the last three terms, supposedly a year, here at IIM Kozhikode. The rain Gods are pleased to see us through and are making this day as cool as possible for us. It may be the weather only which is making us all so happy on reaching this small but significant milestone. It was nice to see all the supposedly serious and crème-de-la-crème future MBAs forgetting everything and cheering together for that one momentous group photograph. It looked very innocent to see people running and shouting pleading to the camera man to click one photo of them in that one unique and arbitrary pose which they are gonna see 1000 times in their lives and laugh nostalgically.  Even the professors joined the fun and posed for the group photograph in their own unique ways, some even doing it just during the quiz. Never seen a crowd of 66 people running rout in the campus during a weekday right in broad daylight, so much so that we even gave bumps to someone in the administrative block itself…

What is this or why is there so much euphoria on completing just one year when all of us know that the next year will be much more eventful? Probably this has something to do with the belief that all of us now have, “Surviving this, we can survive anything coming our way”. And of course the end of this year marks the end of some of most ridiculous (for someone or the other) courses taught by boring professors who take pride in stretching the class just to show how much they want to give to their students. Whatever maybe the reason, everyone is happy including the rain Gods, so have fun and party…

The next 1/6 of my MBA (total 1/3 )

Here comes the account of my adventures and learnings (pun intended) over the course of completing the next 1/6 of my MBA. It may seem like a sequel similar to some stupid never ending Ekta Kapoor soap, but hey there is at least one difference, this doesn’t start with a K.

 Coming back to the main plot of the story which is to crisply narrate these 10 weeks as they went by like a whoosh (not the pet name of a classmate at IIMK), it would be totally unfair if I don’t give due importance to the biggest extravaganza any MBA student experiences during the course called summer placements. Every B-school organizes it and every student has to grab a place to intern for two months. They say it is an integral part of an MBA and enhances learning giving practical and real life learning beyond the shallow books and crappy assignments but as I went through the process I found the process itself so rich that it itself is enough to teach all virtues supposed to be taught by the internship. Not wasting any more time describing this circus since I have already given an elaborate account in an old post here, let me get on with things beyond summer internships.

Continuing on the steep learning curve which you started climbing in the first term, you learn more jargon. Your talks become more gassy and lesser in substance. If you could speak for 15 minutes on nothing in Term 1 now you could add 15 minutes comfortably to this. This term the best possible subjects which enriches your jargon vocabulary hugely are OB2 (yes, it is back again) and Business Ethics (sexy, funky name). OB2 is all about learning about organizational culture, structure, functioning and everything which has the remotest linkage to an organization. It starts with teaching what an organization is and continues to pop new terms like differentiation, integration (nothing at all to do with calculus you morons), horizontal, vertical (again no geometry in this) and many more 2 by 2 grids, only that this time they classify organizations instead of individuals. At least they are more sensible this time since organizations are at the least non-living. I was amazed to learn the linkage between the technology used by an organization and the structure followed by it, and learnt how the structure influences the culture of an organization. Fellow students were brain-washed that whichever organization did not take a bottom-up approach (I love doing it, though in a pub!!) and indulged in a non-participative mode of decision making is the biggest culprit in this civilized society. Just imagine workers and laborers running a manufacturing facility where the average education standard of these people is senior secondary at the best.

The best possible course any MBA student can encounter is Business Ethics. I can say this on the basis of only two terms, and I guarantee it. Nothing can beat it; nothing can even come close to beating it. The amount of gas involved is overwhelming to someone who has a bad appetite for non-solid/liquid states. The course is intended to make socially aware and more ethical corporate citizens but in itself contain mutually contradictory statements like, “ethics works”, which basically means whatever works for you is ethical and is circumstantial. Wow, in one statement ethics redefined to suit everything which is workable. Many many frameworks grace this course too as this basically is a spoilt, younger sister of OB. People doze off in the class listening to the scintillating intercourse of spirits roaming freely in the classroom, and the best thing, you need to write about the learnings of the course in the exam for 3 hours. People who ran out of gas during these 3 hours of “who is the biggest gasser competition”, are labeled as unethical students with a D grade to shine boldly on their grade sheets.

More economics was bombarded this term with many more curves, revolving again around demand and supply, and many more theories more than enough to give goose bumps to poor souls like us. But still it was a course which looked sane, sensible and logical. Accounting came in a more horrifying disguise dressed as Cost Accounting which made students search frantically for cost drivers every time they see an empty wallet. 100 types of costs made lives hell of already accounting scared people. Corporate finance was one beautiful course which added tangibly to my knowledge database. I actually have started understanding markets, shares, bonds etc. The most beautiful concept was present value or Time value of money which somehow fits itself snuggly in everything which you can lay your eyes on. A decision to do an MBA can also be quantified!! Now that’s learning, isn’t it?

Other intangible learnings which can be termed as side effects of an MBA like intolerance, frustration and back stabbing will be dealt in a separate article for it deserves much more air time than a paragraph at the end of some other article.

This time around I am not that fearful of going home in the company of more civilized people since it’s the second time and I have learnt how to keep my jungle life separate from normal human life. I no more use jargons in day to day conversations hence don’t have the fear of being termed, “Not fit for civilized society” by my loved ones. The girl whom I talked about in the last article is no more in pursuit since the market wasn’t pure competition after all.

I would end by reiterating, “I love being an MBA student”. The reason also remains the same, to complete the remaining 2/3 of an MBA. I have become so dexterous in dozing off in class sitting at the last bench that I count at least one hour extra when I plan my sleep every night before retiring which helps in sneak in an extra hour of movie watching and enjoying myself. Long live an MBA course J and hopefully investing in an MBA would be as profitable as investing in mortgage and junk bonds.

The Curse of Mediocrity

A recent discussion over a stupid 10 marks quiz being held again on the request of some students who couldn’t score well in the first quiz triggered this debate which I am going to elaborate with some more dimensions added to it. To summarize the entire debate which lasted for 2 days and died its natural death, let me just write that it was a debate between meritocracy and mediocrity. Some people might take some offence on this statement but, doesn’t matter to me.

 The love for mediocrity is not new in India. It started the very day reservations based on any factor were introduced in education, employment or any other field. Don’t confuse me with someone who is not in favor of giving equal chance to deserving but deprived section of society, what I am opposed to is the wastage of these chances over people who are neither deserving nor deprived. Economic reservation is justified but I am totally against the concept of caste based reservation. Somebody doesn’t become eligible to sit and talk with an intelligent person just because he/she is from a particular caste or tribe. This system has been grossly misused. First, the father was given reservation and he became an IAS officer, then the elder son became a doctor based on his caste and now his younger brother wants to reuse this to get into an IIM after wasting an engineering seat at IIT. By no means does he or his brother deserve this since they were given all possible facilities to study during their schooling. But they are given the chance and the seeds of mediocrity are sown which promise to pollute the entire system in the long run.

The second factor for mediocrity comes from the shoddy and “chalta-hai” attitude of people around. People are not ready to take responsibility for their actions. But they all want equal rewards as if the person who puts in efforts and takes responsibility is a fool. When somebody deserving wants to assert his/her right, beautiful words like selfish, perverse and self-centered etc etc are used. I want to ask one question, who stopped you from following the paths of the so-called selfish person at the first place? If he/she can do it, why can’t you? Are you not capable enough? Or were you so lazy that you didn’t care to think about the outcome in advance? If yes, then you are neither lazy nor casual, you are simply a fool fooling yourself and none else. You may get a second chance here since it’s just a training ground, but believe me mate, life doesn’t give second chances. A person who is better will always be better than you, he will always think ahead and foresee the consequences while you may be busy boozing around living in your own sweet dream world where everything works as you want. It doesn’t happen this way, and I pray to God for it to never happen this way.

Third factor is over emphasized love for social service, society and feeling of benevolence. These are noble feelings and should not be used for the sake of using them. Be benevolent to old, be kind to those who are hurt, be generous to the needy ones but be equally harsh to undeserving people. I don’t believe in the theory of “God made all equal in terms of thinking power and self control and deserve equally”, even if He did, the chaff is separated from the wheat very early in the life. People going to same school end up very differently, one may be a billionaire industrialist while the other may just end being his employee. What caused the difference, they both started together? The difference lies in their dedication, commitment and self regulation. One of them took responsibility of what he did while the other waited for somebody to feed him thinking that it’s the other person’s duty to feed him. Again, this doesn’t happen in real life. A person who feeds always remains superior to the person being fed.

I don’t know why people are so averse to hearing that whatever somebody does is for himself and for no one else, however disguised the actions maybe. Somebody who has put in many nights and days’ hard-work to setup a factory wants returns. He doesn’t care about the employment generated or the contribution to the nation a bit. Go and ask Ambani or Tata about why they started their empires, I bet on my life if they give the answer you want to hear. Nobody does anything for others for free. I am not talking about saints or God who are different; I am talking about poor mortals who are driven by desires of food, love and power. If somebody is in the illusion that the world will be generous to a lazy, irresponsible and undeserving bum, he is doomed for his life today or tomorrow.

I don’t know how many of you have read Ayn Rand but will like to say that thinking about yourself and your good is not perverse. What is bad is doing the same on someone else’s expense. Putting in hard-work to achieve what you aspire for is not being selfish; in fact it is the other way around. If you believe that someone else should come and give you what you want, then it is being selfish (you are living in a fool’s paradise is a different matter altogether).

My sincere request to everyone; think about what you want, try hard to achieve it and most importantly learn to take responsibility for your actions accepting failures on the way. And, there is no harm in thinking about you first!!!

Disclaimer: All the views are personal and not meant for anyone specific. It would be an utter misfortune if some people take it personally and feel offended.  

The Chetta Spirit Rockksss!!!

For the uninitiated, Chetta is the Mallu equivalent for Brother or “bhai”, and being in Kerala I need to use this word to attract attention of a passer-by if I want some help to find my way on the road. To avoid being sexist, let me also introduce the Mallu equivalent for the other gender, “Chechchi”, fondly used to address the lady working at the coffee vending machine in the campus.

Many of you may ask now, why am I teaching you Mallu at the first place? The reason is the adventures we had last night when we went to watch the movie Om Shanti Om. Being in Chetta land, we were highly fortunate to be able to watch a Hindi movie at the first place. The tickets are dirt cheap, you get to sit in a balcony seat, which we have long forgotten with the Multiplex era, and that too in 35 rupees (We spent 100 bucks on travel though). Compare this to the price of a pack of popcorn in PVR Gurgaon!!! And one more thing, you can stretch your legs also for maximum comfort. Coming back to the experience, I should divide the fun in two parts, the paid fun and the unpaid fun.

The movie was fun. The only condition is that you need to leave your brain either in the car or if you forgot to do that, put it on the seat next to you. Once you have done this, you are ready for an awesome joy ride. It starts with Rishi Kapoor dancing with Shahrukh, it shows you Manoj Kumar being beaten by the security guards, it shows you Deepika Padukone (God! She is Gorgeous, we will come to it later) dancing with Sunil Datt and Rajesh Khanna, it shows you flying Shahrukh Khan etc etc. And believe me, I enjoyed it!! The story is copied and the movie makes it clear in the first scene itself. The director nowhere pretends about showing a sensible and logical movie. Deepika looks stunning but is grossly underutilized. She doesn’t get any screen time, every moment of it is gobbled by SRK who looks ugly and malnutritioned dancing topless in the item song. Now here lies the difference, in Chetta land the entire crowd goes mad as soon as SRK makes an appearance on the screen and goes silent when Deepika appears. Whistling is on full swing for SRK but Deepika draws a blank crowd. From previous encounters with Chettas, it is also reported that the same was observed in the movie DON with Kareena and Priyanka failing miserably in luring Chettas with their pelvic thrusts. SRK is a craze here. I have never seen such loud claps, whistles and shouting for SRK before in my life.

The best part of the movie was when the projector stuck for 15 minutes. In such a case, some hooliganism is expected but we were shocked to see Chettas dancing and singing. Imagine 20-30 chettas singing Mallu songs and dancing bhangra to their own tunes, slapping chairs to generate some background score for it. The same situation in Delhi would have caused a silence resembling a morgue with a boy watching his girlfriend popping the popcorns with amazing grace and the same situation in Bihar would have caused a riot with the manager being beaten up. It was amazing to see the spirit of fun and enjoyment in a moment of frustration. Chettas rock!!!

I am longing to go back for a movie again there and praying for a power failure again. The net return on 35 rupees can nowhere be more than in a movie at Chetta land. Once again, Chettas and the spirit of Chettas surely rock. They sure know how to enjoy a movie. Way lot to learn, Delhi!!

The story of my 1/6 MBA

Now that I am a 1/6 MBA, I think I am in a position to comment about my experiences over the last 10 weeks or so. These include lessons learnt, mistakes made and more importantly assumptions changed. But all these come with a disclaimer: These are personal experiences and might not hold true for everyone everywhere.

Everyone asks what you actually learn at a B-school. I too never used to take a business school more than a branding machine producing high reputation graduated to be swallowed by starving corporate to show “We hire from IIMs” or “We have XX IIM graduates” on their corporate brochures. But an MBA does teach you many things, some explicit and some implicit. It changes your personality and way of thinking. To start with it teaches you the importance of punctuality. You won’t want to miss your attendance or be thrown out of the class for 5 minutes extra of sleep when you know that this will hurt your grades (everything in a B-school is linked to grades, funny isn’t it?). Second explicit lesson you learn is to put in the best you can in everything. Relative grading makes sure that you are up on your toes always, so you slog till 4 in the morning preparing for some stupid marketing case for some XYZ firm or some assignment for some freaky professor. Now here is where dilemma creeps in. Its 4 in the morning and there is a class at 9 in the morning. Sleeping now will mean a probable attendance in the class but at the cost of some penalty in assignment. A quick cost benefit analysis (this is one thing you do every now and then without being taught in the class) and you realize that you can always sleep in the class (there are tricks for it, of course). So you continue and complete the assignment till 5 or 6. Other explicit learnings are to follow rules and respect the limitations, treat the professors like Gods (a fallback of IIM autonomy) etc etc. But I think it’s the implicit learnings and attitude changes that are more interesting.

You start walking, talking, thinking and eating MBA terms and jargons. A simple TV advertisement which till 3 months back was a nuisance now becomes more important than the cricket match during which it is aired. You start dissecting the ad in terms of product, place, place, promotion (affectionately called 4P). You look for brand dilution, brand extension, product enhancement blah blah. So when Crocin launches pain killer, you jump off the chair crying “brand extension” and when Pepsi comes out with new “My Can” you scream at the top of the voice “packaging strategy”. You understand that the Amul Macho ad thrived on the shock value of the message and launching Scorpio as a car instead of a SUV took a hell lot of analysis.  That was marketing for you that come packed nicely in a huge bulky book called Kotler. Best thing about marketing, books don’t help you any ways, it’s all common sense.

Next subject to creep into an MBA’s daily life is OB (organisational behaviour). You start analysing everyone and their behaviour trying to put each and everyone in one of the umpteen 2 by 2 grids classifying every possible action of a human being forcing to change the notion about human beings as species having complex behaviour. Maslow becomes your God father and you gleefully apply his theory everywhere. So when someone is hungry, you deduce that “his primary needs aren’t fulfilled”, this you never did that 3 months back.

An even funnier subject is Economics. The subject has so many assumptions that you begin wondering if there is anything practical about it. Every theory start with so many disclaimers that it can put a mutual fund offering to shame. As demand curves exceed their demand and supply curves never short of supply, you begin wondering the market dynamics behind them. Is it a monopoly or a competition? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Just another course out of 100s of them. At least its better than Business communications which starts with the assumption of all of us being illiterate and stupid. How to write an email, a letter etc is taught with the help of set rules. It will make all great writers commit suicide if they hear there are well defined rules for writing English!! I wonder if I am following them while writing this, he may fail me if he reads this J

I am dreading to go back home and talk to normal people with these implicit learnings. I may start deciphering an advertisement on the dinner table and my parents might take me for a madman. Or worse, I might try my hand in defining the behaviour of the girl next door in some of the grids of OB coupled with a demand-supply analysis only to discover that my assumptions about the market being a pure competition was wrong. This might lead me for an image changeover coupled with personal selling and trade discount along with referent power of my mother which might not be so easy. So you see, being an MBA isn’t that easy as it looks like.

But the bottom line (courtesy, Accounts), I love being an MBA student!!! Have to say this to complete other 5/6 of my MBA happily. It all depends on how good you are at filtering stuff and how dexterous you are in dozing off in the class J

PS: I don’t know which style of persuasion I used in this article. I don’t know whether I lived up to my brand image. I don’t know if you will ever try this product again (repeat value, that is) or if you liked it, was it problem solving or transformational or informational or some other appeal. Forgive me if you can, for I am a troubled soul confused between marketing, OB and economics, trying to make sense of these mutually exclusive theories in tandem. 

Rakhi @ Kampus (IIMK)

Here I was, again out of home on Rakhi for the third consequent year. It all started with me spending the entire day 2 years back in Inductis solving the after training test, affectionately called One Day Case and it did took one full day, meaning I was in Delhi but could not celebrate Rakhi with my family. Flash forward one year, me in Singapore around this time. Couldn’t help it so no issues, hoped to be there for next year. But it wasn’t to be this year as well, as I am slogging here at IIMK.

I miss rakhi for the sheer fun of meeting the entire family together, quite a big family I must say. So get to catch up with everyone at the same place and time.

So rakhis were sent by post to me to tie them myself (I dare not ask a classmate hereJ ) around my wrist. But I was happily surprised by the idea of a few people here in my hostel to celebrate rakhi in almost the same here its done at home. We had snacks, sweets, teeka, the only different thing was the absence of sisters. We all tied rakhis to each other. A very novel idea to celebrate rakhi, afterall the spirit of brotherhood is what we celebrate. Looking at the pics I can say that this was a moment not to be forgotten. It made all of us sisters of each other and brothers vowing to protect each other J. Very interesting, right. Just imagine the sight, 6-7 boys tying rakhis to each other.

The pics corroborate what you imagine. All in all it was nice and fun. The entire evening could be summed up for the statement I made while leaving addressing the group, “Achcha bhaiyo aur behano, main chalta hun…” True, wasn’t it??

Team Work, Free Riders, Parasites and Leeches

The most overused phrase in corporate world is team work and team play. All organizations look for team players and only they are considered a good fit in an organization. Personally speaking I also believed in this concept till a certain extent because this allows proper work distribution and all that. I should say that this belief of mine was shaped by the people I worked with as a team in my corporate career. I had not worked with different kind of people till now who behave totally arbitrarily and are very interesting and simultaneously very irritating in their behavior.  

 An MBA teaches you many things, some explicit and some implicit. Learning from people and learning about people comes under the implicit part. 90% of tasks and assignments and tasks in MBA are group tasks which are supposed to teach you how to work as a team and cooperate. I don’t know if the primary objective behind these group tasks is to learn team play or to learn how to tackle non-contributing and negatively contributing team members and use this learning in your career. Before going ahead, let me explain the psyche of these two species in some more details and introduce one more category. 

Free Riders: Non contributing members who are a liability on the remaining team members are affectionately called free riders. Quite an apt description I must say. These are people who believe in the theory of symbiotic living but only partially. They will stick on with you, contribute nothing, take the benefit and move ahead. Their focus is solely on how not to come in limelight and how to hide their incompetency. They do not show any sense of self consciousness or shame in blatantly copying other’s work. They believe that it’s the duty of others to feed them as they themselves are so much incompetent. A true believer of social theory of justice they are: Distribute not in proportion of competency but of need.  

Parasites: Good thing about free riders is that if they don’t contribute, they don’t either disrupt other team members from working (incompetency is the reason), hence others can work and feed them considering them necessary baggage. Now imagine a case where some people don’t contribute and simultaneously spread negative energy in the group. These can be people who will work as well but will make sure that the team never works as a team. They try to show that others are wicked and shrewd and want to steal the credit which only they deserve. Everyone else in the team is a predator for them waiting for any opportunity to eat their hard work as if they are the only one who can contribute. Contributions made by others are insignificant and irrelevant for them. 

Leeches: The third kind of people you come across are those who are a combination of free riders and parasites. They dont work but keep on lamenting about what others are doing or have done. These act as critics to your work without knowing a bit about it. They try to show off about their knowledge but from the sidehelm only. They never enter the arena but try to make the rules of the games. Very interesting characters infact!!

Now why am I writing about people and their psychology is a question which can be asked. Reason: 2 months into an MBA and I have met and worked with all kinds of people. Sometimes it becomes so much irritating when you work and others either screw up your work (as a team evaluation) or others take credit for whatever you have done. I am not saying that everyone knows everything and ignorant and non-knowledgeable people should be ousted totally. What is more important is the will to learn and contribute in whatever way one can contribute to the team task, how much ever insignificant it may be. We all are here to learn and no one is perfect, what matters is how much are we willing to learn and add our bit to the team. Why should 3 people carry the burden of 3 other almost dead people on their shoulders when all 6 of them are equal and have same pressure to perform? Why shouldn’t they shrug and throw these people without caring for them? The reason can be only one, their own social life and attitude towards others. I don’t believe in social responsibility of carrying dead weight over my shoulders, but still I do it. I am ready to feed poor and helpless beggars who cannot do anything but not rats and cats who will tomorrow bite me if need be. Either they should publically declare that they are incompetent and need social help in order to survive or they should try to behave like respectable students at par with others.  

This might be a controversial topic to delve into but meritocracy and hard work is what I believe in. If all are considered equal, they should earn this status and not take this for granted. If they don’t, others have all the rights to consider them inferior and try to dominate them. Respect cannot be enforced; it can only be earned by your behavior and deeds. So try to earn your own self-respect and the world will respect you.