Lessons from MBA

Reflecting on my lessons on my mba for each term has been this:
Term 1: Time is irrelevant. Day or night does not matter for a task to be done.
Term 2: The best comes when one is not competing against others but collaborating with others.
Term 3: How to find motivation to do things.

The Toto Nana Marketing assignment

Absolutely brilliant! :)

Any MBA guy will absolutely love this one and can relate to it very well...

http://www.pagalguy.com/2010/03/the-toto-nana-repositioning-assignment/

An unexpected default

I saw the following terms and conditions that the prospective candidate has to agree to on the MBA application form for a B-school.

"If I do not appear for the Self Introduction, Personal Interview and Group Discussion, the Selection Committee holds the right to allot a Course to me on the basis of my qualification."

ROFL...

Seriously? I think it just shows how desperate the school is to admit whoever it can.

Losing it all

Dec 10 should go down in my history as a day of losses. From losing a lot to losing it. I have never before said so many goodbyes to so many people ever on a day. On other occasions, I know that the byes are temporary till we meet again somewhere, but this time some of the goodbyes are just that, Goodbyes. I may never get to see some of them ever again. It feels bad to know people so well and then lose them all.

After leaving the IIM, I was on my way to attend a wedding ceremony of my roomie in Indore and on the way saw something horrible: A head on accident of a lady with a bus. The girl's legs were stuck in the vehicle and while her head was on the ground and I saw a pool of blood. Nobody was even helping her and I am not sure if she will live or lose her life. Though the fault was of both the lady and the bus driver, I am sure, the way the Indian police and society works, the driver will be blamed 100% for the accident. A sad state of affairs.

After coming back from the wedding, I came to a guest house and put on the tv. I watched a song on tv for the first time in 6 months. I felt lost watching tv. I couldnt relate to anything on tv. I didnt know so many new channels, I didnt know the songs, the actors and actresses or the movies to which the songs belonged. All the advertisements were new and nothing I had watched before. It felt strange and felt totally out of sync.

I think I have lost my head too. This is the first time I am having a homesick feeling for a few days now. Never before have I had a homesick feeling beyond a day or two. Maybe it is the effect of the gtalk status messages my friends put up "home!", "Want to go home", "Back to Bangaluru" or the fact that I am tired of saying goodbyes and actually want to meet some people I know back or that I am tired of packing full international load baggages with so many unnecessary overheads I am still carrying around which I couldnt dump at home or a potent combination of all these.

The one most important thing I have learnt in my MBA is losing/sacrificing, all kinds, from sleep, friends, family, music, decent food, tv, movies, interesting subjects, hobbies, etc and coping up with the losses and moving on. I guess the end of MBA just reinforces that lesson for me.

Feelings

Shock

amusement

sadistic pleasure

sadness

frustration

why am I not lucky for once?

The same order of feelings repeat itself everytime the grades are out...

Turning point

My first personal turning point in my MBA is the following instance:

Sometime in october last year, when our group was solving a case of accounting, we had two issues in a case for which there were arguments. I had a different opinion on both the issues compared to another groupmate who had an opposite view on both. We argued for long and both of us convinced the other on one issue. So he won one and I won one. The next day, when we went to class, we discovered that both of us had convinced each other on the wrong answers. What a fool we had made of ourselves.

This one instance made me realise that nobody can be right all the time and since then, I try listening to other people's ideas without prejuducing their options if they dont match mine.

A true MBA learning lesson.

A big difficulty

One of the most missed things being in India compared to Manila when with friends is the absence of a language with which we can speak anything without caring about who hears what we are talking about. We miss talking freely in hindi in Manila with friends - giving the harshest remarks, choosiest of gaalis, scheming or talking bad about someone right at his face while the other fellow smiles without understanding a word of what we are saying.

Ok, jokes aside. We dont always do what I said above, but yes occasionally. The freedom to criticise about a prof., student, politician, politics, sensitive national things like coruption in army, police, nasty jokes could be said freely as the only other people who would understand us is the other Indian students, not at all worried about the general public reacting in any way or offending anyone. That is the real freedom to speech.

Knocked out but not out

Been hit hard, hit very hard, so hard that I was totally knocked out, no idea of who I was, where I was, until I gained my consciousness hours later. Never expected this fight to be so fierce, thought I had won the fight, until it hit me so hard today. I shouldn't have teased it, shouldn't have provocated it, and at least shouldn't have ignored it, but then it wouldn't have hit me so hard. Nobody was there when I was out cold, nobody called for me, nobody came to me, when it hit me so hard. But now, as it dawns on me, the prolonged fights are very strenuous, tiring and dangerous, its effects can last more than a day or two, and the body needs a lot of rest to cope up with the fights. Not much damage done, no permanent scars, just a few vital lessons to be learnt, and I have to be on my toes for the next round of fighting.

Back to basics of an MBA

It is that time of the term when the guns are loaded and aimed against us. And some of them have already started blazing. That means only one thing. Very less sleep and catching sleep in pieces of a few hours or even half hour naps between classes. Last term minimum sleep hours (not naps) were of 2 hours. Now it is further reduced to 1 hr (in the night, but we sleep in the day instead whenever possible).

Another day

At 5.47am, here I am by the pool side, just finished writing the WAC(written analysis of a case) deadline of which was 8am.

The poker is still on,
and so are the songs,
the vigour is a little down,
yet the drinks are flowing,
and the cigarettes are still burning,
and on goes life as one passes on,
from one day into another so seamlessly, 
and surprisingly the words are flowing so freely,
despite having an all night out,
and one peg of neat rum.

Now the songs are slowing down,
the bottles are going empty,
the people have started going back,
and as a beautiful night comes to an end,
and a beautiful day starts off !!!

There is laughter in the air,
there are janitors cleaning up in the garden,
cigarette butts in the ash trays,
leftover ice cubes melting away,
my can groupmate singing a college song for me at my table,
plastic cups on the tables,
broken glass bottles on the ground,
birds chirping on the trees,
sparrows searching for food under the tables,
slow old hindi songs in the air waves,
people sitting on the arm rests,
people talking of going to the nearest MacD,
people singing along even at this hour,
while being all concious.

Now it is 40 min past six,
the girls have left,
the guys have also left,
just one another guy with me,
he has now come to my table wondering what I am still doing on my laptop,
I told him what I was upto,
and he told "wow! you write poems too?"
I replied "my first one"
He says "sexy, many people think, but no one does it".

He sits on the other side of the table,
with a cigarette in his hand that is not yet lit,
thinking and hearing to the loud song in the background,
the birds are still chirping,
but the sound is less audible now,
he lights the cigarette,
takes a puff,
blows the smoke,
and I can smell the mild smell of cigarette as the smoke hits my face,
still typing unknown to him,
that he has become my subject for writing.

I have written a para and he still hasn't taken another puff,
he is deep thought,
his head is nodding,
he is surely enjoying the song,
the sound of glass bottles breaking as the janitors clean up the tables,
a 70's hindi song plays from the big speakers,
and a sparrow catches my eye,
but disappears under a table, still looking for food,
there is no wind in the air,
the tree leaves are still,
my friend is silent,
he is checking his mobile,
another para over and just two puffs till now,
ah, there comes the third,
and the fourth and he has dipped the cigarette into the melting ice on the table,
he has left the table,
he has told me to take the speaker to the dorm lobby,
the songs silences,
he has stopped the song,
he tells me again to take care of the speaker,
he is no where in sight now,
and here I am,
the last man sitting...
and i think I too should hit the place and get out of here!!!

Such is the nice and strange company you get here at all oddhours which will be missed after the B-school experience....

MBA - A tip of the iceberg

The MBA just gets you to know the tip of the iceberg of information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Consider the below 2 examples in finance: 1. We all have heard about debt covenants, but don't exactly know how they are structured... how long these detailed indentures are and how important these are in the court of law if there is a case of doing something against the conditions mentioned in the covenant. 2. I am pretty sure many of the MBA graduates dont even know what a treasury department in a company does. We have a long way to go, Baby.... before we really learn something well....

Cases and case writers

Some of the cases are getting on my nerves... especially the finance cases. They give you so much insufficient data, then give exhibits of cash flows without even a mention of which year it is, when dealing in cases where even the aim of the case is not clear. Statements like "the relevant market for the company is worth $7billion".... does it mean the whole market for the product is worth $7b or a fraction that the company will get? And that too for a start-up company... how can they go from zero to $7b in a year? It does make sense how. There is usually a production delay and growing to such large numbers takes years. When even interpretations of the statements have to be assumed and there is no other statement ruling out the alternative possibilities, I dont think the case is anything but sh**y. And on such statements 5 year projections of the company's worth is to be found out? Bullshit! I wonder how such confused profs. are even allowed to write/mentor cases. But then again, great theories in finance have been made made looking at random motion of pollen grains in water. Finance rocks! or not!

Class participation

There is this concept of class participation - meaning you have to speak in class and give a valid point in the context of the discussion of the case at that point of time to take the discussion ahead or to a better level. Now, that was the ideal definition. Practically, a lot of our grades depend on it. One can fail if he doesn't do enough CP(Class participation). There were these couple of instances today in the two classes and another instance in another class yesterday which hit me and made me think. The common point in all these 3 instances was the initial words "diversify the risk". After saying these sacred words, they explained their point further. This was their CP. Another instance today was when a guy in the class almost brought about an unrelated concept and said the words "they should differentiate their products and innovate". Based on all these sacrosanct CPs, I propose a basic framework for CPs: If the question is specific and about what a company should do, then say "Innovate and differentiate the products/services". If the topic is more general, then the consecrated words "Diversification" should work. If it something you have absolutely no idea about, then the absolute magic words of the genius should be used, which is "It depends".

A new way to live

For the last 2 weeks, I have trying to live a kind of daily life that you may think is insane, but I don't think so. A lot of words have lost their meaning in my world. I no longer have words called breakfast, lunch, dinner and morning coffee in my dictionary. I have replaced this with meals (even numbering these meals is difficult, it depends on the reference time you take). This is my new, flexible and disciplined schedule which I have been practicing: Come back from classes and sleep from 4pm to 8pm or 6pm to 11pm or so with the traditional dinner parcelled for eating later when I get up. I get up have a cup of tea/coffee and have my parcelled meal at 1am/2am. Spend time after getting up catching up on email, talking with home/friends and studying for the next day classes. At around 5 or 6am, go to bed again to catch a mid night nap of around 2 hrs. Get up again at 7am or 8am(depending on classes), get ready and go to classes. This may come as a shock to you about this kind of a schedule, but I think this has allowed me to discipline myself better and find more peacful time for studying/browsing in the night. In my terms, discipline is not about getting up at 6 am daily and sleeping at 11pm. Discipline is all about doing a thing regularly and at a particular time you decide.

Cases

I am sure a lot of the B-school students will relate to this :P

Pigeon holes

Every student in my school gets allotted a locker area called a "pigeon hole". This is where the students gets their study materials, test results, etc from. The program assistants drop in the materials in these 'pigeon holes'. Latest phrase "Pick up your pigeon droppings". :P

Families

Today in our class, as our group were presenting, my groupmate ends with this quote: "We are not a can group. We have evolved. We are now a family." This got me thinking - How many different families do I belong to? Starting from my biological family to the can group family to the dorm room family and the family of close friends. This is quite a number and I think the number of families I belong to will keep increasing with time.

Evolution in MBA

Before I joined my MBA I was constantly worried about one main thing - How will I ever manage with less sleep? I need my 8 hours of beauty ;) sleep. After joining the course, I said maybe I will have to adjust and make do with 6hrs per day. A couple of months down the line, I said "Sleep is a luxury". Those who get it are blessed.Now, at the end of four months, I say "Sleep is only an option". If you want, sleep, else you don't really have to and life will still run quite normally for 1 or 2 days without it.

This transformation is one of the key essences of an MBA. :)

Lessons from MBA

So what does MBA teach that is related to real life? Apart from the various accountings of financial and managerial and all the other MBA subjects, the one thing I think MBA teaches you is "giving up". Yes, giving up what you like, giving up what you love, giving up almost everything that means dearly to you. This will be forced upon on you in a way that you will be slow and very painful to accept. Slowly and steadily, one realises this as a way of life. People say it is about living your dreams, achieving your dreams and doing what you really want to do. Maybe in the long term, but in the short term, during the course one very vital lesson it teaches you is to accept failure and just walk on. First we are forced to sacrifice the time and distance with family, friends and the cosy, comfortable environment we were used to. Then goes the sleep. Then we give up some of those hobbies and things that used to enliven you during your normal before MBA days. Then once you are here, you are even forced to give on the very subjects you once loved to do so much. 
Song: Giving you up by Kylie Minogue 
"Deep in a perfect moment 
All it once it feels so right 
But when I wake I see reality turn back and bite. 
Your heartbeat's ticking 
And your cool starts dripping 
And you're tongue tied up on the phone 
Your backbone's breaking 
And your smooth starts shaking 
Like you can't stand being alone 
Your calm starts rocking 
Little doubts are knocking 
Like the whole world's slipping away 
Attention's killing 
But the ride is thrilling 
And you can't help going again 
What you want is what you don't know 
Turn me on and watch your ego 
What you want is what you don't need 
I can't start giving you up 
I'm lost without you 
Can't stop tickin the tock 
I can't start giving you up 
I'm mad about you 
Can't stop slipping it off"

Serial breakdown

This week has been quite horrible for many of my classmates here. Many people who had thought that they won't crack or miss their family or feel low or lose motivation have been wrong. My one roomie says he is recovering from a low and another announced today in all frustration that he just wants to go home. In the evening, at the canteen, I met another classmate who told me that he is feeling very low today and some of it is because of the bomb blasts in Bombay. I, myself missed quite some people very much in the week and was going through a low. I guess, it happens to everyone. People here cant tell the ones at home that they are feeling low of no proper reason whatsoever because, then, the people at home start getting worried. They have to find someone locally who they can trust and can share their feelings and get over it. The stress keeps building up here slowly, steadily and daily, till at one point you dont want what is there now and want the old nice status quo feeling with family and friends that was once there before coming into the course. Such is life here...