Prof. Singhal ko Gussa kyun Aaata hai….

Some of you might have found the classes of our OB Prof. Manish Singhal a bit baffling. He comes across as an angry young man but then there is no doubt that he is absolutely passionate about his subject and teaching. I guess it has more to do with his stint with the Sanyasis. They are known to have little tolerance for lethargy and indiscipline. It would be interesting when we meet him face to face. He made all of us read the book which without his strong-arm tactics i'm not quite sure we would have done. I just wish he had downplayed the assessment a little bit and given more time to the lecture because whenever he paused to gather himself and start a lecture it did have the impact. Pity that we lost knowledge opportunity because of evaluation.
He termed marriage as the ultimate spiritual experience because you have to sacrifice your ego, interesting observation, but i wonder whether it’s (egolessness) something voluntary or just a no-choice situation especially in the context of our society. Great character and i’m looking forward to meet him.

Corporate Finance

The first few classes were just over the top, but as we reached the 6th session, topics from the 1st session were becoming comprehensible. I think quite a few of us who come from non-financial/mathematical background are facing problems. My suggestion is that give maximum time to the chapter “Time value of Money” as the other chapters are based on the basic concepts covered here. Prof. Ray looks like a jolly good fellow and we should all appreciate his gesture of removing negative marking since most of us are in troubled waters. At least some (Ray) of hope.
In bond and security valuation the key thing is to understand that we are taking into account the expected rate of return for calculation.

POM & MANAC End Terms

The POM (Marketing) exam was bit of a downer, couldn’t write what I wanted to; even before I could set the framework the supervisor said that it’s time and so had to reluctantly give an incomplete looking paper. I feel that there should have been a MCQ for at least 30 marks just to break the monotony because the project and exam were on similar lines. It’s a bit frustrating because we had managed to do a decent job with the group assignment.

The expression in MANAC (Mgmt Accounting) exam from all of us was….”oh great we can do this…” because all the questions were from the problems mentioned at the end of each chapter, but slowly as the results started popping up we found that our performance has been average. Most of us were in the 50-55% range, and that looks like to be the trend across all the centers. We should have done better, but overall we are happy because it has been a great learning experience.

On Leadership

The last session in OB was on leadership and we learned about transactional and transformational leadership. What needs to be understood here is the context and level at which this is being exercised, a person purely associated with deliveries would naturally be a transactional leader and as we move up the hierarchy leadership style is expected to change from transactional to transformational. This does not though rule out the application of transformational leadership at the floor level, because transformations at the top are meant to be percolated to the floor but again it’s a fact that there are constraints of job responsibilities and power sharing. The same applies to the discussion of Leadership vs Management- we can’t put one ahead of the other but proper amalgamation of the two is required. For somebody who is in-charge of transactional activities, leadership can come in the form of motivating somebody who has been termed as a lost cause or it can way of spotting opportunities for increased engagement.

Can leaders be developed?
Of course they can be but it becomes all the more easier if they are born with it. As in other things we have seen that leading activities is done at different levels and hence we do have the opportunity of developing leaders who can manage things in a set framework. Mind my word, ‘manage’, but if you are purely looking as a leader-leader kind of personality then training might not be sufficient or rather would not give the desired results. The reason for this is right there, the prototypical traits mentioned are sensitivity/compassion, dedications and dynamism/energy and all these traits are the ones which are more hardwired in the mind and soul and actually have very little do with intelligence.
And so if we are to develop leaders it’s difficult to get it done through classroom training, it requires a far more holistic approach to which modern society has to wake up to.

Leaders are not necessarily better than followers
When we say this basically what is implied is that they may not necessarily be better than us as human beings (read: in conforming established social norms) and they may not as technically adept at things as their reportees but they are definitely better than others in what they are supposed to do and that is leading. We’ve already discussed this in the transactional and transformational theory, management is more about handling contingencies and transactions while leadership is all about vision.

Preparing for MANAC End-term

Here’s my plan, I’ll read the book once (prescribed chapters), go through all the slides and running notes. Next I plan to attempt the questions at the end of the chapters (MCQs), the key to the questions is available at the site http://www.mhhe.com/fam .
For the ratios, the best way is to try them out in a spreadsheet, write down a few on your own so that you can internalize them. The pattern I guess would be more or less on the same lines as the OR paper. Questions will be grouped along financial statements. That’s all I could think of, what’s your plan.

I’m taking a day off from office on Friday for preparations.

Entry into the Virtual Portals of the haloed XLRI

It feels so good to be able to talk about something I’ve always pursued but which kind of eluded me for years together, yes I’m talking about management education and this isn’t my first attempt at it, in fact with each passing year I’ve kind of progressed from procuring application form, to writing entrance test, to paying the first installment but somehow none of these efforts culminated into certification.
Having previously dropped from management education in various stages, at this point I’m not too sure about blaming circumstances, my lack of commitment or a combination of both. For all you know it also could be the stars (at least my horoscope says so- “Ucch Siksha mein badha” -obstacles in higher education).

But surprisingly I’ve been relentless, with each failed steps my hunger for education has only grown not diminished and because of that here I am, all set to appear for the first set of end-term examinations after religiously attending classes for close to three months every weekend.

I write, so this blog ideally should have been up and running from the very beginning but then I was not too sure about the experience and hence now that it has been firmly established that taking up the PGCBM course for XLRI was the best thing that could have happened to my career in terms of learning, I’ve thought of putting up a chronicle of the experiences in the virtual portals of one of the top most management education institute in India.

So what’s my intention behind this blog; loosely put without any order of importance-
a) I’m a blogger, I need to write and I need contexts.
b) I found that the student’s community is really vibrant and a forum where we can discuss and share a few perspectives would be helpful.
c) Given that there is a time constraint and lack of face-to-face interaction, it was important to find a way out for putting forth our ideas and ruminating over them as a group to promote learning.

I’ll write about the most recent stuff and seek your opinion and at the same time I’ll go back and write about the earlier sessions too till we reach a point where the entire portion is covered. I’ve shared my story- what’s yours?