Wednesday, September 23, 2009

GLOBE

'GLOBE’, this 5 letter word became the mostly used word in the last 3 months of my life. After I joined MBA I came to know the real meaning of this word.

As part of the informal induction with seniors we were told to make a presentation on the topic “Did the chicken cross the road? “. We made India a chicken and tried to show off all the knowledge gained during the preparation for GD/PI round of selection into B-school by relating the road with all the hurdles that our country faced and crossed during all these years. We were not even 5 minutes into the presentation seniors shouted back “Stop the GLOBE and get lost”.

GLOBE! What is it? It is something where the speaker speaks anything and everything under the sky without evaluating the use of what he/she is speaking. I became very much conscious of this word whenever I speak or propose a solution to a problem. I ask myself “Am I globing?” If the answer is yes I try to unglobe the globe.

Now the question is, “Is GLOBE good? “ Let us try to evaluate it using non-GLOBE.

Suppose a manager says “The project is interesting, tough, challenging and blah blah” crap like that. Will the team ever understand the scope of the project except a bunch of nice adjectives?Obviously ” No”. The manager GLOBEd and I believe that it is not good. The manager instead should say,” The project demands 1000 man-hours, requires automation of accounting module and is reviewed frequently by the customer”. I think the second one makes much better sense to the team and it motivates it to work in a right direction. The simple observation is to substantiate whatever you say with solid facts and numbers at least in business scenario like above with out losing objectivity (sounded like Ayn Rand :)

I participated in a competition that requires the teams to come up with a practical solution to address child labour. Initially we pulled out statistics, wrote lot of globe like create website, create awareness etc. We proofread it and realized that we are talking something very trivial which everyone knows. Then we started to analyze the problem, analyzing stakeholders and hit upon a solution which generates income from a viable cottage industry run by parents of the children.

Let me share my resume preparation process. The most important document for a B-school student is resume. My first-cut preparation was absolute globe. I wrote points like helped client, manager applauded, interested in writing so on. Not that I have nothing to write but I didn’t know separating globe and presenting non-globe. Take the above points helped client (How?) , manager applauded (why? Is it because you ran marathon or Is it specific to your work?) and interested in writing (what? Do you write Shakespeare?). Taking care of “Globe vs Non-globe” helped me to carve a resume which is much better than my first-cut one though both of them doesn’t have much difference in the underlying meaning of the sentences.

Pondering more on this concept I feel that all those thick, huge books that I encountered (I won’t say that I read) all through my life should have contained 80% globe and 20% non-globe. The skill is to read non-globe and save lot of time from reading globe.

If everyone who contributes to information or who generates information understands the globe, non-globe thingy may be the world will be saved from information overload. Unfortunately we are all so used to globe and the so-called experts consider information to be meaningless if it doesn’t contain globe.

Does that mean GLOBE is bad? Not really. Think of this situation, a patient is dying. What should a doctor tell to the patient? I think that he should speak globe instead of giving him hard facts only to reduce his/her confidence levels.

So it is not black and white. We tend to use globe especially under stressed, time-constraint situations. At times it makes sense even though we don’t evaluate it consciously, like the one in the case of a dying patient.

My opinion , " Use GLOBE when required but ensure that the other person doesn't understand it :P". A practical advice to GLOBEing : Start the answer to any question you don't know with "IT DEPENDS"."It depends" makes the other person to pause and think.Use that time to prepare unbreakable GLOBE.

By the way Thanks for reading GLOBE

Watch out this funny video made by my classmates on GLOBE

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Tundey ke Fundey

It's April 10 , 2009. I came to know I got admission into IIML. I shared the happy news with my near and dear. Can you guess their response to this news?

You might think why is this fellow asking sitters? or Is he out of his mind because of stimulation - response analysis of Organizational Behaviour. After these questions run in your mind finally you may answer my question that they would have responded with obvious "Congratulations!".

Friends! the answer is NO. Let me explain the process. I said I got into I..I..M. Stop! till here it was fine.They were waiting for me to complete the word. Then I completed with Lucknow.They forgot the first three letters and started off with history,heritage blah blah of Lucknow.More importantly everyone left me mouth-watering about "Tunde Kebaab".For uninitiated, it's a very famous delicacy of Lucknow city.

The way they explained was wow! simple fantabulous ( searched oxford dictionary for this word :). Read on!

"Shadab! it is soooooo soft soooooo good. The moment you keep it in your mouth it dissolves. The experience you get while it dissolves is unearthly. It is not KFC that is Finger lickin good but it is Tundey ke Kebaab".

People talked to me so much about it that I started thinking about Tundey ke Kebaab rather than the institute, campus life which new admission should think about.The D-Day arrived. I landed in Lucknow on June 22. I looked around for Tundey ke Kebaab. I couldn't find, as it was early in the morning.

IIML is a microcosm of our country. You can find various personality types here. Don't worry I won't get into Type-A , Type-B of Organizational Behaviour. I found people similarly motivated by Tunde ke Kabaab. One fine day we embarked on the "Mission Tundey ke Kebaab". We went to Sahara Gunj. We should have gone to Hazarat Gunj. We found a joint selling Tundey ke Kabaab.

My friend shouted "Wow! Tundey ".I said "Chal re Mundey!".We ordered 3 plates for us. We waited keenly to have our first glimpse of "THE Kebaab". Much to our surprise it looked like cutlet. We thought "Tundey ke Kebaab" is a kebaab that doesn't look like a kebaab.Then I put it in my mouth and tried to experience all that unearthly experience.I am not sure about the unearthly experience but I would have tasted earthly experience with my back landing on the earth as someone pulled the chair on which I was about to sit.

Man! Tundey let us down. It was not that extraordinary. It tasted like cutlet. My mom makes much much better cutlets. Wait! we are optimists. We never lose hope. I said "OK! don't worry. We got kebabs from the wrong place.Next time we will do market analysis of kebab and go to the right place where we can get THAT unearthly experience".


Some one who knows easier access to Tundey. Pls pour in your comments that will help the new comers to Lucknow like me.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

My First Day at Campus

Landed in the place where I dreamt to be for the last 2 years. IIML the place that I longed to belong. Now I am part of this great community.

The Campus :-

---------------------

It is huge and beautiful.At the entrance gate one can find the statues of great national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and a scene of Mahabharatha depicting Krishna riding the chariot of Arjun.They mean that IIML's mission is to transform its students into leaders with a pedagogy that is interactive professors taking the role of Krishna and we taking the role of Arjun.

We are expecting a swimming pool andm ore facilities in the next two months.There will be loads of fun as ours is a silver jubilee batch of IIML.

The induction program is very well planned placing emphasis on ethics and social responsiobility. Coming to the pedagogy again Dr.Devi Singh explained that the professors provide us a model/framework.It is upto us how are we going to use it with our own commonsense and wisdom.I think this is the fun part of instruction where in we learn from each other , learn appreciating others ideas and emerge as independent individuals.

Prof.ArchanaShukla and Swamiji talked on Indian ethos , values and culture raising relevant questions like ambition vs conscience , short term vs long term and end vs means.

In the ice breaking session Prof.Das gupta gave the following map to choose specialisations:-

LIFE ---> CAREERS ---> COMPANIES(INDUSTRY) ---> SKILL SETS ---> SPECIALISATIONS

At the end of the day we had alumni talk by Mr.Vineet Chauhan , President of IIML alumni association, Global business manager JP Morgan.This was the best session of the day.He explained what it takes to be a star ? identifying various parameters cancelling the irrelevant oness and boiling down to four elements FOCUS, IIML , OVER & BEYOND , SOFT SKILLS.

In the night we had an ice breaking session with seniors . This was the most interesting and fun part of the day. I came to know inherent talents in my class mates .I am really privileged to be a part of such bright , multi faceted people.Looking forward to learn a lot from these guys.

The City :-

----------------

I ventured out of the campus with my father to catch a glimpse of the city.I travelled in bus , seven-seater/three wheeler, rickshaw(tri-cycle) to do Ganjing ( courtesy : Kanishka .It is visiting Hazarat Ganj).

I found Lucknow indeed a city of Nawabs ,very very slow.I may be wrong but being from Hyderabad where in a place like Hazarat Ganj will be teeming with people rushing fast.We visited some of the cloth shops and got into a restaurant to taste the much talked about BIRIYANI. Yes this is great much better than Hyderabadi Biriyani.Eating Biriyani listening to Gazals was pleasant and great.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

kitCAT - A Short Story

Detective Somerset and Mills are running after John Doe. Mills is in problem. John Doe is about to kill him. Will he kill him or spare him? PHEW... power cut. Oh! This has to happen at this moment. I am getting bored in this darkness. Let me bore you with my story.

I am Stalin Moosa. My mother is a Russian and my father, an Indian. Don’t expect much ,my diversity stops here. I did my entire schooling, college and everything else from Hyderabad. After my engineering I was confused on what to do? Then the MBA thing struck upon me because most of my friends were planning to do it. I gave this exam called CAT and got into one of those Temples of Management Education, IIM. As per joining formalities I got to get a fitness certificate and an X-ray report from a civil surgeon. So I decided to go to Govt. Hospital the next day.

What happened! When can we expect the light back? It is raining cats and dogs. DHOOOM... my window pane broke oh! This looks like a serious storm. I locked the windows and retired to bed.
“200 Rs.”, the auto driver demanded. Common it will cost you not more than 100 to go to the Govt. Hospital. No sir it is in the old city. So what! I moved ahead and got an auto which agreed to drop me as per the meter fare.

Oh! Yesterday there was a huge storm. Most of the roads are blocked by fallen trees. There is space enough for an auto to go. The climate is pleasant. The cool breeze, the dim light wow! I am feeling like going to Ooty. It is a nice ride. I offered 10 Rs. more than the meter fare.
I stepped down the auto. I found a sudden drift in the environment. Lot of noise, ambulances, diseased people, and people met with accidents, message on AIDS control all around on the walls, mentally sick mysterious person sitting in the corner, and patients coughing, vomiting etc., Looking at such surroundings, my heart started to bleed as usual. The defence mechanism, may be a mental valve, that I developed lately shut that bleeding down. Seeing lot of pain around me, poverty, ill health so on.. I used to get too emotional and even cry. My papa consoled me and trained me to develop some kind of mental valve which opens / closes. Opens, if I can do something about it and Closes, if I cannot do anything about it. Most of the times it closes i.e., simply shut that bleeding down and ignore the things around. I hope I get a chance when it opens.

The hospital is a very large premises. It is a palace of one of the Nizams of Hyderabad. Unfortunately, very badly maintained, spits on the walls, lots of used cotton lying everywhere on the floor , stray dogs moving around and so on. My task is to find a civil surgeon. I caught hold of a nurse, she suggested me to look at Medical Wards. I started from medical ward 1 and received cold hand in the first two ones. In the third one the doc was kind enough to help me BUT ... he has this issue. He is a professor of Medical College attached to the hospital. He treats every one as his student. His every sentence ends with a stupid or useless fellow. To the best of my memory I remember that he spoke at least 30 sentences. Now you know with how many ‘stupids’ I was blessed with. He asked me to take the X-ray and come back to him.

Who is the architect of this palace? I think people might have spent one-third or even half of their life finding how to go from one place to the other! On the way to lab I came across some medical wards which are really horrible. Unclaimed bodies , about to be moved to mortuary and their associated smell. Oh God! Why did you make us just to kill after a beautiful life ? In some other wards I found young docs swiftly moving with their mentor, examining patients, giving them solace. Hats off! You are living a life worth living for. Of course, they have their own priorities and dreams. I hope they don’t overlook the service motive of their job when they reach the pinnacle and inscribe every word of the Hippocrates oath on their heart.

Am I in a laboratory or a cinema theatre to catch the latest release of MegaStar’s movie. The X-ray theatre is teeming with patients. Forget about privacy, Will they take the X-ray properly? Since it is chest X-ray they made me strip my shirt, stand erect, embrace a rod. Looked like I am about to do pole dance and all the audiences are eagerly waiting for me to start the stellar performance. He asked me to collect the report later.

I found part of a queue running for a length of 1 Km. at the entrance of report collection centre. My optimism convinced me that this is not my queue. So I went inside in anticipation of joining some other smaller queue. With in no time, I found out that it is my queue. People in the queue literally threw me out for violating the queue rules. I said to myself “Mera Bharat Mahaan!” and stood at the end of the queue. Looks like I will reach the entrance of the centre after 50 min and the counter after another 50 min. The queue is moving very slowly. Suddenly it started to oscillate. I tried to find out why is it oscillating?

Since it is a long journey to the counter some old people are squatting on the floor. When they got bored sitting on the floor they stand again. So when they stand the queue contracts and when they squat the queue expands. Hurray! I am almost there, only three people in front of me. Oh my God! What is that counter guy doing? There is no computer. That is Ok. They gave some serial no. to identify the X-ray but I think somewhere in this long process the serial numbers were lost. So when a person gives his receipt he reads the part X-rayed and tries to do image match with his eyes. What a sophisticated search! Google ! Where are you? Take this man. Suppose the receipt says right hand he takes out all the hand X-rays, try to filter them on right hands, and now comes the interesting part. He asks the man about the details of his X-ray. Wow! what a feedback mechanism statistically awesome balancing precision and recall. That poor man mumbles something. Now he uses probability. When there are multiple matches he randomly picks up one and hand it over to the man. It’s my turn. I helped him in searching fast. I shouted(out of excitement) “Chest PA view” .After all this fight he says Man! There is not even one chest X-ray. Oh! He got zero sample space problem. I was pissed off. I started quarrelling with him. People behind me are yelling for delaying their turn. As I told I am an optimist. I thanked God for rescuing me from becoming a victim of probability. I decided to visit some reputed diagnostic centre to get MY and MY OWN chest’s X-ray.

The surgeon blessed me with some more stupids and completed the formalities. Finally I relaxed munching a kitkat chocolate, watching why John Doe did all that he did?