Want to climb the social ladder? Study hard

The secondary school examination results in places like Maharashtra are front-page news. In fact this year's coverage was quite extensive, with the toppers being interviewed and comparative performance analysed over several pages.

A country and a people who take education so seriously cannot go wrong. But the results showed much more. They reflected the role that education is playing in increasing social mobility.

In my time, which was of course more than 40 years ago, you could assume that the toppers would come from Bombay's English medium schools.

Most of them would be middle or upper-middle class in origin with parents in business, or professions, or gazetted government jobs. This has changed dramatically.

Moffusil scores over metros

This year the Mumbai division, which usually has the highest pass percentage, has given way to Latur, a district way in the interior of Maharashtra.

The topper is from the Pune division and hails from a rural area and never went to coaching classes. The Mumbai division topper is not from a city school but from a Marathi-medium school in Badlapur.

Within the city, the much-maligned municipal schools did better than several top-flight schools.

But, more than geography, it is the class background that is most interesting and encouraging. The boy who topped in the state is the son of a teacher in a zilla parishad school, while his father is a state service officer.

The two who jointly topped the backward class group did practically as well as the general candidates. Both of them are the first in their family to get this far.

Perhaps the most heart-warming stories are from the night-school students, most of them from lower-middle class families.

The girl who topped the night school list is the daughter of a ticket collector; the boy who came second helps his father to run a back-lane laundry, and the one who came third is the son of a fruit stall owner.

Passport to mobility

Higher education has been the passport to mobility in modern India. It was true more than a century ago, when the upper castes in the three Presidencies (Bengal, Madras, and Bombay) used it to break into law, medicine, and the civil service.

Many who are part of today's elite are the beneficiaries of the investment their parents and grandparents made in educating themselves and their children.

But, for a long time, the passport was available mainly to upper-caste, middle class, and urbanised Indians living in or near metropolitan towns. This is changing fast.

The new entrants to the educated elite now include larger numbers from backward castes and from smaller towns. They may well be the children of working class or lower-middle class parents.

They are as likely to have studied in the regional language as in English. They are often the first in their families to have reached the higher levels of education.

The evidence of social mobility is not limited to the school-leaving examinations. It can be seen in the outcome of the entrance tests for higher professional institutions like the IITs and the IIMs and in the induction into the central and state civil services.

It can be seen even in the new economy of BPOs and the Infotech sector. A relative told me about a recruitment to an MNC that he was involved in, where the chosen candidate was the son of a bus conductor and quite proud about admitting it.

Why things change

The reasons for the change lie in some things that today's elite often complains about. One reason is the rapid spread of high schools in rural areas and colleges in moffusil towns.

The charge is that these schools and colleges are set up by political bigwigs without due regard to needs or standards. But it is this widening access to higher education that is at the root of the mobility.

And if standards have declined, then why have these upcountry schools and colleges done so well in terms of academic performance, as the recent Maharashtra SSC results referred to above indicate?

Another reason for the change is the availability of discretionary income in working class and lower middle class households.

A ticket collector or a bus conductor today has the surplus that allows him or her to finance his children's education. And there is a strong commitment on the part of such parents to help their children to break out of the shackles of the family's background.

The complaints about the impact of Pay Commissions and of Trade Union protected wages have to be seen in this light.

Entrance exams work!

The examination and test system for access to higher education, run more or less honestly, is another reason why those without power have been able to move up.

This system has been criticised for the pressure it puts on students and for the fact that it discriminates against the student who is able but somehow not good at exams.

But the fact is that in our society a more discretionary system of access would inevitably favour the privileged. It is good that even a rich man's son has to go to coaching classes to pass the entrance exams rather than being able to buy his way in.

Finally, the issue of reservations, which also is much criticised. But the performance gap of the toppers from the reserved and the general category does not seem to be that substantial.

This could be used to argue against the need for the system. But it is necessary to persuade poorer backward class families to invest in their children's education by assuring the prospects for access and for jobs later.

Higher education is the key to greater gender equality and the breaking of caste barriers. Every child should be brought to the threshold of higher education as a matter of right.

No child who is able and willing should miss out on higher education for lack of money. Above all, let us not do anything that compromises the meritocratic basis of higher education, which is the only hope for millions of the underprivileged.

Hiten Desai
The author is Honorary Professor at the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations.
As Appeared in Rediff.com on 29/7/2005

Passion

May 12, 2002 | 2230 IST | Updated - May 13, 0345 IST - Rediff.com

Fourth Test, India versus West Indies, Antigua

Courageous Kumble steels his jaw, pushes Windies on the defensive

Faisal Shariff

Day Three

With juice in the wicket for the tweakers, Tendulkar waged a lone battle until Kumble freshened the sultry air with his courageous entry on the ground.

Despite having been declared hors d'combat with a cracked jaw, Kumble, inspired by the turn afforded by the wicket, got team physio Andrew Leipus to swathe his face with bandages and turned up to do duty for India.

With a strapped face that offered a palette of expressions, Kumble bowled his first over writhing in pain every time his front foot landed on the bowling crease. His mates could clearly feel his agony.

Umpire David Shepherd placed an avuncular arm around Kumble at the end of his first over. Leipus kept circling the boundary fence checking on Kumble and strapping him up after every over as Harbhajan Singh watched with concern.

The saga of raw courage soon turned into a fairytale when Kumble in his fourth over pitched one on middle and off and trapped Lara plumb in front. Lara's dismissal seemed to inspire Kumble who ignored his face swelling up.

"This one takes the cake," remarked Leipus who has seen players take the field with injuries before, but never as serious as the one sustained by Kumble. But in his blueprint for winning, the Karnataka leggie counts on fighting harder when the chips are down.

West Indies ended the day at 187/3, having scored 99 runs in the extended third session that saw 39 overs being bowled. Kumble finished with figures of 14-5-29-1.

But Sunday certainly saw him give all those fans watching the game a lot of goose bumps.

B-schools make managers, not leaders

Vipul Jain | July 19, 2005

B-schools don't teach you leadership. The job of a leader - as distinct from a manager - is to unflinchingly believe that tomorrow will be better than today.

That's what keeps you together when you don't know how you are going to get to your goal. It makes you get out of bed and get to work. As a leader, people look up to you; they draw energy from you. Many of us are managers; few are leaders.

B-schools don't teach you the importance of personal space. A leader has to believe in his people. He should be able to step back and let them discover their own management styles.

Giving your employees room to grow is critical when you want to create leaders in the second line. If you try to impose your values on them, you will only create replicas of yourself. Remember, diversity is essential.

Another lacuna in a B-school education is that it doesn't teach you integrity. This goes beyond corporate governance. Integrity implies transparency, fairness in all your dealings, respect for others and sticking to what you say.

It shows in the way the organisation acts with its employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers and the government.

Also, B-schools don't discourage you from striving for instant success. They don't lay enough emphasis on ethics and values and on the fact that grit and determination are important attributes.

Of course, ethics and values go back to learning at home and at school. So you can't put the onus only on B-schools to teach you values.

But you need to learn constantly, and B-schools don't emphasise that. Learning opportunities exist everywhere - you can learn from your subordinates, from conferences, from books.

You shouldn't be afraid to have people around you who are smarter than you are - you should take pride in them. Constantly raising the bar in whatever you do helps both the individual and the organisation grow. But B-schools ignore this aspect.

Vipul Jain is the CEO and Managing Director of Kale Consultants. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in 1980.

As told to Rituparna Chatterjee
As appeared in Rediff.com

Best school for corporates: Rural India

Prerna Raturi And Gouri Shukla | June 29, 2005

Management thinker C K Prahalad strongly believes that focusing on the poor represents an opportunity rather than a problem. In India, companies that subscribe to this view, from ITC to HLL, have been constantly trying to cater to rural India, spread across 6,27,000 villages, which is home to 70 per cent of India's population. What's more, 90 per cent of the rural population is concentrated in villages with a population of less than 2,000 (Source: HLL).

But while exploring unchartered territories, opportunities occasionally throw up problems. First, break-even points are much longer than expected. ITC executives claim that the break-even for the eChoupal initiative can be as long as seven years. Many companies have even had to cut back on their efforts.

For instance, multi-national beverage giants Pepsi and Coca-Cola could not contain their attractive price point of Rs 5 for more than two years -- rising input costs was the culprit. The Strategist looks at the lessons that companies pick up while selling to what Prahalad calls the "bottom of the pyramid".

Social re-farmer
Tobacco to hospitality major, ITC launched eChoupal in June 2000. Soon, farmers got Internet access at a distance of one-three km away from home. The computer terminals were operated by a farmer who was the sanchalak (co-ordinator). The learning had just started. ITC experimented with having postmen, village teachers and panchayat pradhans as sanchalaks, but finally settled on farmers.

The logic: farmers would relate to their peers. The portals at eChoupal provided information on prices of crops across different mandis (markets), tips on best practices in farming, weather information, answers by expert panelists and so on, in local languages. Till date, 33,000 villages have been connected through 5,300 eChoupals. In its fifth year, the company has picked up some valuable lessons.

"The key barrier was a small number of individual farmers in a single area," says S Sivakumar, chief executive, Agri Business, ITC Ltd. It led to related issues such as a wide geographical dispersion of villages, substantial heterogeneity in demographics, psychographics, resources and weak infrastructure. Dispersion was inevitable because the eChoupals were present in villages having a population of 1,500-2,000, of which about 100 to 150 are farmers.

To tackle the issue of dispersion, ITC optimised the distance and the number of hubs and spokes. There were two issues. First, how much would a farmer travel for accessing the eChoupal and what would be the infrastructure costs. For instance, for a query on what fertiliser to use or whether it will rain the next day, a farmer was unwilling to go beyond walking distance.

However, for selling his produce or making purchases, he was willing to travel an average of 25 km. Hence, ITC set up two meeting points. Information was accessible through the eChoupal in the sanchalak's house and Choupal Sagar, where transactions take place, were located not more than 25 km away.

"They would love to do transactions next door, but that would send our infrastructure costs for a toss," clarifies Sivakumar.

The profiles of sanchalaks or samyojaks (a traditional grey merchant who manages the Choupal Sagar and takes care of logistics, operations and so on) is another area that had to be fine-tuned. As ITC expanded the number of its eChoupals from a paltry six to 5,300 in a five-year time frame, it was becoming difficult to find good quality sanchalaks.

"When you are working on a smaller scale, you can pick and choose. Now you have to take what is available. Then, you have to spend more time and resources in training them," says Sivakumar.

Even the infrastructure had to be revisited. When the scale of the eChoupal project was small the company could work with BSNL exchanges. The BSNL bandwidth was below 30 kbps (at present, 128 kbps is considered a decent speed) and worked as long as you just had a website to surf. If the farmer had to download anything more, or use videos or web cameras to learn, this bandwidth was insufficient.

"We didn't want the constraint of not being present in villages that didn't have fixed telephone lines and introduced VSAT," says Sivakumar. With just a dish and Internet accessibility, all this was made possible.

Then, there were other investments. Take power as an instance. The company has to install solar power and batteries as back-up systems in every place where it has a computer. But as more people started to visit the eChoupals, the computer usage time shot up from about 20 minutes to anything between two to four hours.

This is one area that ITC is still struggling with. "We also need to take into account that the farmer does not just use the computer. He also consumes electricity for the fan and lights," says Sivakumar.

Other limitations came in the form of warehousing and retailing. Earlier, ITC hired existing warehouses. But as volumes went up, the limitations in terms of space and quality came to the forefront.

Sivakumar reveals that the new Choupal Sagar -- costing nearly Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million) -- is an answer to the problem since it doubles up both as a warehouse and a retail store.

Also, scaling up would also mean more overheads because just setting up each eChoupal costs Rs 300,000. As the company plans to triple its reach to cover 100,000 villages in the next five years, reducing its break-even points would be high on the agenda.

HLL's angel
Project Shakti, a low cost distribution model, was rolled out in 2000 by Hindustan Lever Limited to attack the bottom of the pyramid. True, the company had experimented with mobile retailing for rural markets in the late-1980s and Project Bharat in the mid-1990s that focused on increasing penetration and raising awareness.

But Project Shakti was introduced with an aim to bring down distribution costs in rural markets. The traditional distribution systems used in urban markets were costly to replicate in smaller areas.

"We had to create a low-cost vehicle for markets that had a population of less than 2,000," says Sharat Dhall, business manager, Shakti, HLL. The company appointed women entrepreneurs from villages as distributors of HLL's range of products.

The 15-month pilot project in Andhra Pradesh turned out to be a good learning ground. For instance, the company initially decided to save distributor margins by cutting one layer of distribution -- the local distributor.

These savings helped in giving higher margins to the Shakti entrepreneurs and retailers. Stocks were directly sent to the Shakti distributor from the local C-and-F (carry and forward) depots. However, cutting the local distributor had its own shortcomings because they help redistribute stocks in smaller quantities. To expect that service from a large C-and-F depot was difficult.

Then, local distributors also managed issues like giving credit to the small retailer -- they had more information about the credit worthiness of local retailers or the Shakti entrepreneurs. Within six months, HLL had to reinstate the local distributor in Project Shakti.

Another learning was that most Shakti entrepreneurs had never ventured into business. Thus, hand holding became critical. HLL invested in creating awareness about the Shakti woman entrepreneur. HLL offered incentives to villagers who buy from the Shakti representative.

"If consumers cannot locate the Shakti woman easily, it naturally takes more time for her to establish the business," says Dhall.

However, Shakti's still trying to effectively bring down distribution costs. Dhall points out that targetting the BOP is at least 5-10 per cent costlier than selling in urban markets. "We need to keep driving costs down, especially while scaling up," he says.

Manpower costs is one area where a lot could be done -- it forms 80 per cent of total costs in selling to the BOP. The task is manpower intensive as employees are required to identify and develop new BOP markets, train the entrepreneurs and revisit existing markets to ensure that it has adequate stocks.

Hence, HLL is experimenting with three-four pilot models. It has rolled out mobile trainers who move from village to village and perform multi-functions from selecting entrepreneurs, training them and hand holding. It is also experimenting with exclusive trainers.

At present, Shakti accounts for 5-6 per cent of HLL's total sales and reached a break-even point on operational expenses in 2004. By end-2006, the company expects Shakti to contribute 7.5 per cent of total sales or 25 per cent of rural sales.

"It's a high investment model by traditional standards. Hence, one cannot expect it to account for more than 25 per cent of rural sales in such a short while," says Dhall.

The project is now extended to cover 60,000 villages having a population of less than 10,000. And HLL has 15,000 Shakti entrepreneurs (roughly one entrepreneur for four villages).

The company has taken inspiration from Shakti for other developing markets. In 2003, the company rolled out Joita in Bangladesh. The same model is being replicated in other markets like Sri Lanka, Mozambique and Ghana on a pilot basis.

Credit Policy
The estimated demand for credit in India ranges from $3 billion to $9 billion every year. However, the formal sector is barely able to provide $200-300 million.

There are more than six lakh villages but only 30,000 bank branches. More than 80 per cent of the rural population does not have a bank account. These statistics made it worthwhile for ICICI Bank to lend to the bottom of the pyramid.

When ICICI Bank acquired Bank of Madura in 2001, it added 263 branches to the network. As many of these branches were located in semi-urban or rural areas and had a healthy micro finance practice, ICICI Bank had a ready-made platform to spread its rural wings.

But it was not as easy. Nachiket Mor, executive director, ICICI Bank points out that despite maintaining standards like a 100 per cent recovery on micro financing and so on, the Bank of Madura model was not scaleable.

"We could not scale up because the cost in setting up a branch was very high," says Mor. Then, even as the transaction intensity in rural areas was high, the value of each transaction was low.

For instance, in a rural branch, customers will visit the bank every two days. However, the value of the transaction could be as little as Rs 20-50 on each occasion.

Hence, ICICI Bank had to look beyond a branch. It divided its clients on the basis of their socio economic classifications (SEC R1 - R4). The rich farmers (R1) would deal directly with a bank branch, while the R2 would go through agents and referral services, and R3 would deal with local financial institutions who deal with the bank and so on.

Another way of dealing with customers is through Internet kiosks that are managed by the bank's partners. ICICI bank claims to have a presence through 2,000 kiosks in rural areas and estimates that the financial services industry will have around two lakh touch points in a five year time-frame.

Mor adds that another way to build a comprehensive solution for rural India is by cross-selling financial products to the same customer. For instance, the cost to serve a customer who takes a loan is as high as 25 per cent.

If the bank can also sell health insurance, weather insurance and other financial products to the same customer, then the cost to serve can come down to 7-8 per cent. As Indian companies are discovering, as they solve problems at the bottom of the pyramid, several business opportunities emerge. But that is another story altogether.

As appeared in Rediff.com

How to be a great manager

Daniel Vasella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG, delivered the Graduation Day Speech for the Class of 2005 at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad on April 2.He gives wise tips to the graduates to help them become great managers and better human beings.We reproduce his speech here:Dean Mendu Rammohan Rao, Dear Faculty and dear Graduates, Family Members and Guests,I feel deeply honoured to be here today with you celebrating first and foremost you the students and your terrific accomplishments.You are the living proof of the success of this school, which a few years ago still was just a vision and today is not only a reality, but a tremendous success.When Rajat Gupta, the chairman of ISB's Governing Board, asked me if Novartis would provide some financial support to build this school there was no way I could be sure that it would be a successful undertaking, but I trusted Rajat, his competence, his determination and his luck.My instincts were right.Many people have made this school what it is today and you all should be proud of what the India School of Business has accomplished and is accomplishing. It is nothing short of amazing that ISB, through the diligent vision and tireless efforts of faculty, students, and others involved, has achieved so much in so little time.When I considered what thoughts I would share with you today, I decided to start with a metaphor.As the fourth graduating class of ISB you are in many ways pioneers. First, I wanted to comment on the new territory that you will enter and add some of my own learnings.The drawbridge has been lowered today and you, the students, as you leave your educational activities, are about to cross over a large river to discover new lands.You will to undertake a journey -- which is the continuing journey of your work life. Some of you have already experienced a great deal -- and returned to school, feeling that you needed and wanted to master additional skills.These learnings that you take with you will help you to take full advantage of all the opportunities waiting for you.You are entering a wonderful land, full of pastures, creeks, fields of crops and fruit trees, and in some places one may -- with some luck -- even find some minerals and gold.What you discover and learn and how you master the terrain will depend on you. It is a hilly region and the horizon often limits the view, so when you cross the bridge today, you will not be able to see it all, and the best may be neither visible nor close.Some of you may find your personal field close by and you will spend a life time on it. Others among you may have to walk and search for a long time, working on the way, improving your skills and gaining experience.And if you ask me if this journey will be easy, I would have to tell you that for most of you there will be many crossroads, some with dead ends. You may even be tricked, finding that distant marshlands which looked like fields of the richest crops are barren after all. Or your path may suddenly end at a precipice, invisible until you reach it and are forced to turn back.In your quest you may be faced with disappointments, but don't have doubts about whether you should ever have passed the bridge onto these unknown lands.Despite feelings of disappointment or fatigue, you will always have the individual choice to move on. Have confidence in yourself.As you continue on your path, start to work and you will discover and learn how to best cut the grain, your arms will become stronger and your movements more agile and faster.Never be a passive observer, actively engage. Others will help you to harvest. Some of these strangers will become increasingly familiar, you will rely on them and they will rely on you. When you work with the sickle don't get too close to each other, if you hurt each other both of your work will suffer.On some fields you may work alone because you discover them first, for some trees you may not need a ladder to get to the fruits, but in most cases you will depend on others as others will depend on you. You will have to make the choice regarding what crop to harvest and which fruits to collect.It is occasionally better to walk for a longer distance until you find the right place, avoiding fields which are worked in an undisciplined way -- with too many people or too much disorganisation, fraught with people who fight against each other. The fruits of these fields will never provide an abundant harvest.When you choose a place look to the sky and check the elements, as this will influence your performance. Work will be easier when the conditions are right -- more productive during mild days, more limited when it is hot and humid.There are days and weeks with glaring sun at which time vulgar stones may shine like diamonds. Hours and money may be spent to get a claim -- just to find out in the evening, after a hectic day that you have filled your pockets with gravel.Which path you take and if you are successful in navigating will depend on you. Take your steps calmly, with enjoyment and with a sober mind. The compass and the map are in yourself, they will guide you, although the map may not yet be complete.Occasionally someone will provide you with a point of orientation, an initial segment of a new road, but nobody can complete the map for you, nor can you immediately get a fully detailed one.Over time you will fill in the roads that are not marked, charting the paths that cross your terrain as you consult your map and complete it. There can be no doubt that you will master your course, if you watch your inner compass and analyse your environment and the effect of your actions.Irrespective of your starting point and irrespective of the choices you have already made, you must go forward with open eyes and an open mind. Train and observe, evaluate, learn, choose and continue to build your experience.As (India's first prime minister) Pandit Nehru said, 'Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism, the way you play it is free will. . . There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.'As I wrote this down, I began to also think about the lessons that I have learned that I might share with you. I wanted to understand your aspirations. I double-checked the statistics of your class.I discovered that on average your class has already spent five years in a job that your average age is 27 and that 25 per cent of you have even had international experience. Nevertheless you went back to school. Why? Just to learn more? To have a better chance at becoming a successful businessperson or to enter general management?Have you ever asked yourself what your deep motivations to go into business really are? Irrespective of what you have told others and what you may have told yourself, you should probe to truly understand your motivations.Why did you choose to go into business -- for money, for influence and power, or for reputation and fame? Or did you know someone you admired who was in business and who you aspired to become or even to surpass?It really does not matter. These are all legitimate reasons as long as you acknowledge them, understand them and master them instead of their mastering you.You now have gained the skills necessary to be successful in business.I have no doubt that ISB taught you everything on economically sound behaviour: how to create wealth, how to use resources productively, about revenues, profits, assets and liabilities, gains and losses, free cash-flow, markets and NPV, ROI, RONA, ROE and EVA.I have no doubt that you assimilated skills to properly analyse and diagnose a problem -- forging plans and options for solving it, resulting in effective decision making and formulating actions with appropriate communications and control systems.I have no doubt that you have the intellectual strength, the capacity to work hard, the interest, the motivation and the imagination needed to graduate from a top business school.And I have no doubt that you learned to work in teams, to listen and to speak up, to teach and to learn from your peers.But what are your views on ethics and values? With all the corporate scandals ranging from Enron to WorldCom to Tyco and so many others, every business school today must also talk about laws, regulations, ethics and integrity, personal values, right and wrong.I am sure that you have developed a perspective of your own about these matters.To be successful in a firm this is still not enough. You will have to demonstrate ambition, competence, great work ethics, speed, flexibility and discipline with the willingness to contribute to others and be dependable.And you have to be competitive as in the end you must show results. You will have to build trust.And I have to push you even more. We in the corporate world will want you to demonstrate judgment and empathy, to be open and transparent, especially about mistakes and omissions, we want you to be a realistic optimist, have a sense of humour and on top of all of this, be lucky as well.By now you are -- no doubt -- either thinking that I am too demanding or you are beginning to wonder about your ability to fulfill all these criteria to the utmost degree.But I bet that some people would even add more to this list of skills and character attributes they expect from others, especially from their leaders.However, let me reassure you that I have not yet met anyone who has all of these qualities. We all have strengths and weaknesses. But over the course of our business life you and I can continue to learn, correct, change and assimilate new insights.In my life, I had great teachers, some taught me lessons intentionally, some by chance -- and the learnings may not always have been the intended ones.Let me share with you one personal experience. In the last year of my medical training I was working in the emergency room, when an old man with an unexplained abdominal pain came in.I did the initial work up, taking the medical history and doing the physical exam when the chief of medicine arrived and started asking questions about the case. He briefly talked with the patient, examined him silently while I stood beside him, hoping for his advice and instructions. The professor then looked at me and began to enumerate all possible diagnoses, why the pain could be this or that.He was like a perfect textbook. Then he turned to the patient and without a further word took the blanket, pulled it further up and. . . left. I was speechless. I had no clue what to do.This professor, who knew everything, had left without doing anything. He simply rearranged the blanket. Luckily for me, and the patient, a resident who had observed the interaction came over, gave me instructions on the blood work to order and on necessary X-rays. He placed the patient on an infusion, and later when the patient felt better, sat down with me to discuss the case, quizzing me on details.That day I learned that knowledge without action is useless. I realised that a good young trainer is sometimes more helpful than a well-known authority. I am sure that the professor did not realise what real lesson I learned from him.During your career look out for good immediate supervisors, who are willing to give you responsibilities and train you. Seek out the opportunity to work with demanding people, you will learn more from them.Lessons, which stress you, and even hurt, are in the end more memorable. It is good if your immediate supervisor is a fine tutor and you need many of those, but it is excellent when you also have a mentor.This individual may be someone more removed from your daily work, either inside or outside the company, willing to advise you, someone to whom you can turn when you have a problem or a joy to share. While tutors change and should change, mentors remain more stable.If you are lucky enough to find real mentors you must work to keep him or her motivated. Mentors give you their time, you have to give them something in return. It may be your fresh ideas, your energy, your idealism, your loyalty and your trust.As you know there is often a lack of clarity in life, and there is a tension which pulls into opposing directions.Ambiguity is something we have to learn to live with, without it creating discomfort for us.We must be able to make decisions and act -- even with incomplete information, accepting this imperfection with quiet self-confidence.We have to lay-off people while having empathy with the individual.It is important to remain confident and optimistic when taking risks hasn't paid off and conversely be cautious when everything goes well.We have to strive to create wealth, while we see great poverty around us.We have to press for short-term results while focussing on the long-term, and we have to invest for the future even while we cut costs today.Be comfortable with seemingly contradictory situations, feelings and actions. You will of course encounter many people who can not deal with ambiguity, people who always want simplicity and clarity.So, you as leaders will have to create the clear direction for them. This is an act of will and part of leadership. Your instinct and judgment will indicate the right actions and timing for you, as Alexander the Great knew when he cut the Gordian Knot, finding a stunningly simple solution for a complex problem.As leaders you will have to make a real difference showing the direction, guided by an implicit or explicit vision.This will allow people and organisations to achieve more than they ever dreamed they could. Ordinary people will become extraordinary people, realising together extraordinary things. This is leadership.Let me leave you with some additional points.I hope that you join a firm that inspires you by the purpose it fulfills for society. Work should not just be about money or power, but about an aspiration to contribute.As leaders, people will expect more from you than from others and they should. Accept this responsibility and act accordingly.Remember that money and power can corrupt. There will be temptations to misuse your knowledge and influence. You will need strength and character to resist. In any case you will know if you fail, although it may be invisible to others. This will undermine your self-assurance.Finally, I'd like to share with you some thoughts that are very important, but which you probably won't hear a lot about in your career.There will be days when you feel the pleasure of accomplishment. But the truth is, there will be times when you are disappointed, angry or sad. This is normal.Have the confidence to accept these feelings, trust your self, be genuine, and also transparent with others.Be yourself and don't try to play a role. Tough days never last forever and after follow the good days. Your family and friends will support you in difficult times, therefore understand and respect also their needs and strike the right balance for yourself and for them.Dear students, today I shared some of my beliefs and insights with you. I would have liked to pass on all my knowledge and experience, which of course I cannot.I wish you success, financial rewards and a great job, but above all I wish you wisdom, the ability to respect others, the fortitude to resist temptations, the generosity to help those in need, and the awareness that we are all humans, with all our human strengths and weaknesses.The new land is yours -- at least for some time -- make the best out of it, it's up to you. As Mahatma Gandhi said, 'You must be the change you want to see in the world. Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty, it is its own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.'God bless you.

Some reality check

B-schools don't teach courageApril 26, 2005B-school for me was a mixed bag -- on one hand, there were some fantastic learning opportunities (such as researching future diversification options for Gucci's M&A team, and being flown to Milan to meet their highly-accomplished-but-now-former CEO, Domenico De Sole).My peer group was extremely stimulating and globally-minded. I was exposed to more than 400 companies across varied industries through case studies, and a number of classes helped me think like a CEO, and gain functional tools to enable better decision-making in areas such as finance, accounting and strategy.At the same time, I feel there are three areas where B-schools have limitations. The first is innovation and entrepreneurial ability. Following the dotcom boom, some B-schools started classes on entrepreneurial management.Having attending several such classes, I feel B-schools can only help in refining your entrepreneurial ability and general commercial acumen -- they cannot make an entrepreneur out of a manager.An MBA taught me more to run an existing business than to spot an opportunity and start a business.The second trait that B-school does not teach you is courage. I think as a professional or an owner/manager, more than risk-taking ability, you need the sheer courage to defend your decisions.For instance, a junior salesperson who wants to propose a new discount policy, or a marketing person who needs the budget to fund a product about which management is not convinced, needs to put herself on the line and convince her superiors of the idea, and her abilities to implement.Generally, most of us are concerned about what other people will think of us. There is always somebody monitoring us, whether we are leading the company or are professionals working in an organisation.Will this affect my performance appraisal? How? If I am running a business, I may decide not to do something that will benefit the company in the long-run, because the stock market may not understand it this quarter.I realised the importance of courage soon after graduating from Harvard. Two weeks after I joined one of our family businesses, BP Ergo, I learnt that the company was planning to distribute the products of an American major.After analysing the partnership, I concluded that there was a conflict of interest between our products and theirs. And financially we would not make a decent-enough margin from the deal.But the management of our company at the time felt we needed that tie-up to enhance our product line, as it was a quick way of getting much-needed new products.While I did not feel that it was the right thing to do, I did not have the confidence to defend my decision. It was my father, Dilip Piramal, who endorsed my decision of not going ahead, saying that our core competence was manufacturing office furniture systems, not trading in them. He took the long-term view.The courage to take sound, long-term business decisions, which may even imply short-term lost opportunities, is perhaps something that comes with experience.Perhaps one of the reasons courage and risk-taking is not explicitly emphasised in the curriculum is that many American B-schools themselves do not take too many risks when admitting students from emerging markets.If you are from India and you want to get into Harvard, you pretty much have to do one of three things (apart from a high score in the GMAT) -- get a degree from IIT, work at McKinsey (or an equally well-known multinational) or have a family business.This appears to make sense for the B-school in terms of final placements -- a group of extremely intelligent people who have worked at top multinational companies are assured good jobs when they graduate.But if the B-school itself does not take risks when admitting students from emerging markets, how will you ever get managers who can really make a difference in the world? Or aspire to be real leaders, beyond being just a CEO?Finally, the third area where I feel B-school has limitations is teaching operational processes in "softer" functions such as HR and sales. Two of the most important areas for any CEO today are sales and human capital.Sales, because it is an immediate concern in a competitive market, and human capital, because there is a war for talent, and without an energetic and focused team, there is no competitive advantage.There are almost no B-school classes where you can learn actual processes, develop skills and acquire tools in these two functions. For instance, what are different ways of planning and forecasting sales? Or managing a sales team? How should you set up a good performance management system? What questions should you ask when recruiting somebody? How should you define job competencies, chart your key resource areas or simply be a good manager?B-schools talk about how HR should be aligned to the organisation's vision and strategy.But that's at a top level, a 10,000 feet view. Harvard talks so much about being a leader or a great CEO, that it forgets that you need to do a lot of small things to become a CEO in the first place.Aparna Piramal is executive director, BP Ergo. She graduated from Harvard Business School in 2002

Got through? Good. Now what?By Arun 'Psychodementia' Jagannathan - March 29, 2005

Now is the time, the unrestricted, halcyon time before joining a B-school that has many a student worried. Ironical but true, if the numerous queries posted on various threads in this forum are to be believed. A question that often comes to mind is: How best do I utilize these days to equip myself better for the battles of the next two years? As an ardent advocate in the virtues of procrastination you just don’t want to be caught up in the vicissitudes of ever increasing RGs and ever decreasing CGPIs. Your seniors have warned you about the mind numbing and fanatical efforts required to get your rank up there for the I-banks to be philanthropic enough to cast a sight on your CV. Also, you are aware of the fiercely motivated and rabidly competitive batch your peers are going to be. You can bet that they are working the extra hours dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s. If you are not willing to make the same commitment honing your skills before the rigmarole of the classes commence, as they say in the US - your ass is grass (read as 'anyone and everyone will trample over your posterior')The truth, on the contrary, is that the admit letter lying in your document folder has just given you the space and time to focus on whatever you want to do, without palpitating about PPOs, mid-terms, submissions and quizzes. Now is the time to focus on your passions - reading the latest thriller from your favorite author to watching the latest Bollywood movies which are supposed to have some 'hot' scenes of your desired actress. For the less visually inclined, there is always sport and music. Try working on your probability theory by betting on the India-Pak series or practice harder on the guitar to get rid of your tag of being 'acoustically-challenged'. Whatever be it, let these 'last days' of freedom be as less immaculate as possible, and give into the indulgences that you might not be privileged in the next two years.Having said that, there is also an innocuous distort to the above prescribed maneuver. Just as you have let go of the failures of the past and are still savoring the success of having made it through your dream (or less-than-envisaged-but-will-do) school, it is good to be circumspect of the possible pitfalls that you might encounter in your journey ahead. Here are three things, which could possibly do only more good than harm. Firstly, get in touch with the current students and pull out all the stops in getting your doubts cleared. If it helps, a IInd class sleeper return ticket to your intended destination wouldn’t harm either. Secondly, if you feel you suck at some of the mandatory first-term courses like statistics, accounts, math, you could do well to browse through some of the prescribed texts on these topics. A caveat here is, not to get too paranoid by trying to solve any of the mid-term papers. Thirdly, it would do good to take a step back and try figuring out how to improve some of your soft-skills, inclusive of (but not expansive):# Networking - numero uno in most lists to help you land your dream job# Public speaking - making a defense for your case in front of 100+ equally articulate classmates is not stress-free# Making effective presentations - late night revelations like "Darn it was a ctrl+B which blanked out my PPT screen" are not unheard of in B-schools# More importantly improving your ability to think out-of-the-box - It is hard to have a winning essay when the entire class uses the same phrases like 'business process re-engineering' to augment their case to reach the 1000-word limit.It is your time and I wish everyone a wonderful time for the next two years at their B-schools!!Arun 'Psychodementia' Jagannathan(Arun Jagannathan is currently working for a US-based technology and business consulting firm. His interests apart from C++ is metacognition - "learn about learning". This stems partly from thetraumatic experiences of exams he faced as a student himself. This interest made him spent over 3 years teaching part-time in various coaching institutes for MBA prepration, mentoring over a 1000 students. Arun is well known in the forum for his no-nonsense answers replete with spelling mistakes.)

How to BELL THE CAT - A Consultant's Approach!By Psychodementia

With about a month or so to go, the question that junta is asking at this point is not "Do I have it in me to crack CAT?" as much as "Do I have it in me to crack me in crack CAT in a month?" Now let us presume that you present your problem to a management consultant like say McKinsey, what would they come up with? Remember they would give you only strategic advice, no actual implementation level micromanagement. Here are a few pointers that could actually turn up in their analysis report:(1) Don't boil the oceanSimply put, don't try to do something unimaginably huge (boil the ocean) to bring results that are not proportionate (get salt). This ways you will just cause more anguish when you realize half way through that the latent point of boiling for the ocean is pretty huge. Another way to put it is: Work smart, not hard. Try to come up with a list of possible tasks for CAT and try figuring out what the amount of effort required to do it is. At the end of it, you can either lessen the effort or cross it out completely. Here is an example. A lot of you may be wondering if it is really wise to "do" the word-list. Go through a realistic run of where you are. This is a good time to go through the kind of words given over the last 4 years (over which CAT has kind of streamlined the questions) and figure if you really need to go through those huge word-lists. Amazingly at the end of the exercise, you might want to do away with it all together, or go through a selective portion just to ramp up your rusted skills. (For example, you might decide to do only the "High Frequency" words from Barron's GRE.)(2) Pluck the low-hanging fruits firstAn important point that many students don't realize at this juncture, due to immense pressure, is that it makes more sense for one to consolidate what he/she knows, rather than make an immature attempt to try learning everything. Do not attempt anything that is difficult. I have seen many students coming to me at the nth moment asking if they should be attempting "Permutation Combination". My simple answer is - If you have not done it in your schooling, if you have not done it in college, if you have not done it through out your CAT prep so far, then the chances that on November 21st the neurons in your brain actually go into a synaptical surge and the answer will plop in front of you are .........well, to be frank - quite bleak! Rather I would strengthen topics I know well - percentages, profit-loss, mensuration etc.On the flip side, is it wise to be completely ignorant about these topics? The answer is a resounding NO!!!! I strongly suggest you take out some time (a few hours perhaps from an otherwise eventful study schedule) for each of these dreaded topics and figure out which are the formulae and basic types of problem. The test-setters of the more diabolic variety are known to sneak in a few deceptively. Most test-takers are blissfully unaware of this till the coaching institutes print a bold "SITTER" next to that question a day after the CAT and the cutoff seems all the more further away. Better safe than sorry!(3) Think out of the boxEdward De Bono once famously remarked "An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgments simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore."Try to ensure that whatever you do from now on is not something that is mechanical or by rote, but something that involves you actively in the process. So take up each problem and try figuring out stuff like - can it work with some variation? How can anyone twist this problem? Is there a simpler way of doing this? How I can design a problem for someone along these lines? etc. etc. In short - try to "internalize" the problem you are solving.A classic example is the mock CATs you have taken so far. Even for those questions which have helped you inch towards the elusive cut-offs - try to figure which were ill-considered attempts. I have seen many instances in the past when my reason for choosing a correct answer was preposterous to say the least (I have, in good humor and on occasions, picked up answers because, from among others, it "sounded" correct!) and yet managed to get them right. Try to sit and figure if the same problem has a better way of doing it. (4) Peel the onionLayer by layer......one thing at a timeLet us presume you have a problem with reading large data in DI. In short, number crunching is not exactly one of your virtues, (normally these are areas you would not touch with a ten-foot pole!), yet is a necessary evil which cannot be avoided (like say P&C). We need to figure out how best to deal with this. Take a couple of the mocks you have taken and try figuring out how you have done in it. See what is it that actually stopped you from getting in the top percentile. "I suck at numbers" is an answer which will neither aid your morale nor help you analyze yourself better. Be more objective and tough. Speed? Bad at approximation? The questions were too ambiguous? Whatever the reasons - try making a list of those things. Now instead of racking your brain alone over what can be done for that, speak to someone at your institute. Better still, catch a friend/mentor who has "been there and done that" for his/her insights on what can be done to help bridge this gap. Remember that you may also use the "boiling the ocean" principle here and remove any ideas of indulging in frivolous activities like learning Vedic mathematics at this point.(5) Pareto's principleThe 80/20 rule. Some of the variations are :20% of the time goes in doing 80% of the tasks, 20% of the business brings 80% of the revenue,20% of the world controls 80% of the money etc. The point here is: Try to figure which is the 80% that is bringing you the marks and focus on that. I read somewhere what one of the CAT 2003 100%iler had written - he had wanted to maximize on Verbal and tried to get cutoff in quant. And sure he maximized in Verbal with a score of 45 (and just around 17.5 in QA)!! There is no use spending all 1hour in quant and getting 2 marks more than the cutoff and spending 20mins in verbal and get barely get the cutoff. (6) Parkinson's LawThe law states - "Work expands to fill the time available to do it" I think the scourge of every self-respecting graduate is doing a "night-out" to write that college journal a day before the submission. And we carry this habit with us to the work place too. Just look around you it keeps happening all the time - software project, advertising campaigns, government decisions - you name it! So is it with CAT. Set yourself challenging schedules and stick to it. Tell yourself you are going to analyze those dreaded mock cats which have been piling on a corner for the last few months. Sounds impossible right? But as the Nike ad says "Just do it!" Even if you are not able to complete it, so be it, at the least you started and finished in a go. Keep challenging yourself; try sneaking out every last minute you have to get something done. Do those distasteful tables when you are having your smoke after lunch. Do those obnoxious RC practices when you are reading the morning newspaper. And remember you cannot really challenge yourself unless you have a hard target to achieve.(7) The fish cannot bat and I cannot swimWords from Boycott could not be truer in the CAT perspective. Realize what your areas of strength and areas of weaknesses are. But still at the end of the day there will be the odd ball "stud" who licks the field clean. So in your approach you would be wise if you remember to steer clear of any ego-issues. Don't try tackling that extra toughie DI problem set which goes into 3rd decimals of approximation or the arcane RC passage on Madhubani paintings just because you are out there trying to prove you too are one. The point in case is that if you were one, you would not have been struggling.Last year there was this guy in IIT Chennai. He was a math and physics Olympiad with an IIT-JEE AIR of 12. He ended up with a 100%ile (and a score of 103 in CAT 2003!). He went on to join IIM-B. Realize that there are always going to be guys like this. Instead of worrying about them, realize that at the most there are going to be around 100 odd guys like this. Forget about them. Think about the 1100 others who are vying for the same seat as you. And if you are really bothered about such guys, then stock your fridge with some cold beer!(8) Fail to plan then you plan to failPut in excruciating detail into the planning/scoping work before you start out. Make sure every waking hour is accounted for. Doesn't mean you have to go overboard and start planning to account for each minute. Rather, a detailed account of how you are going to spend time over the next month. A caveat to the fore-mentioned point. At times we do things just because it was in the original plan. Make sure your plan is flexible. If a week before CAT you figure that doing more practice in RC is going to pay off, so be it!! But make sure you constantly check your plan and ask "Is it the right thing to do?" rather than "Am I doing it correctly?"(9) Life is what happens when you are busy making plans - John Lennon (1940-1980)Some words of wisdom that I keep telling myself everyday, CAT or no CAT. "The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. "At the end of the day it is a just an exam. Nothing more. Nothing less. No reason why you should treat it differently. No reason why you should worry more. No reason why you should not think about other things in life. No reason why you should not keep your cool. If you were expecting a list of dos and don'ts I am afraid I might have disappointed you. But this is not meant to serve as one in the first place - the institutes are already doing a pretty good job of that. What I have done is tried summarizing a few points (which I believe are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive) to give you a checklist against which you can verify the usefulness of everything that you would be doing from now on.Arun 'Psychodementia' Jagannathan(The author himself is a consultant working as an Associate - Technology for Sapient Corporation, who gave up any notions of cracking CAT after having failed for the third time last year)As published in pagalguy.com