Wk3, Day 4: Leadership under crisis

Week 3, Day 4: At Harvard Business School.

"During crisis, you live through every decisions that you have made in the past"

We had an interesting case study today. A situation that was set around a terrible natural calamity. A travel company, that had sent travelers and visitors to a country, only to be hit by Tsunami. In the face of missing information, uncertain decision points, what were the key decision points faced by the management team and how did they manage to evacuate a good number of people, even while their government was only beginning to think what is to be done. 

If you look at the case, as if you were the team that was on ground that day, you would no doubt, come up with a unique sense of accomplishment, on how you overcame the adverse situation to do things, well beyond your mandate, that helped bring people together. I get that, and totally respect that. Imagine a travel agent company, that pays from its pockets (post insurance, government and other contributions) millions of dollars to get back people, many of them not even their customers - now who would have thought of doing such thing ?? How many of us, have ever had our travel agency stepping up to this level.

However, I am not able to reconcile the fact, that this company had no established business continuity plan in place. This is true perhaps to a majority of the business units. 

One of the key comments, the protagonist in the case study said - "During crisis, you live through every decisions that you have made in the past"

Really scary. Imagine telling this to yourself - "He would be alive, if I had fought more for the budget for fire systems" or something like that.In our comfortable air-conditioned offices, we forget - things can change pretty quickly. 

After this case study, I promised to myself, I will add another dimension to my due diligence of any proposal/project - the human angle.

That's my UnicTim - members of my living group, just before our "Faculty reception dinner"
Once during the course, one faculty member, takes the living group to dinner, for a more informal discussion, chat and conversation. We had a nice time, with one of our professors.
Laurence, Anne, Roco, Wanlop, David, Rafael, Knut and me !!



Key learning today.

1. NEVER apologize, rationalize, argue, defend the feedback you are receiving. Time of receiving feedback is for receiving only. React to the feedback, later.

2. Never give feedback with a power edge. Without always knowing it, we give feedback, from a position that demonstrates power difference between you and the recipient. A boss, trying to justify the rating he has given combining it with a feedback session. That almost, always brings up the defense mechanism, and it sounds as if you are justifying your own action NOT giving him a true feedback.


Disclaimer (finally !! I have one too !! )

I  have wanted to say this for a long time. What you read in my blogs is what I have learned/learning at Harvard Business School. It may be - quite possible - that, this is NOT what HBS is teaching us. It is my interpretation and my view of things I have received. 

So please do keep that in mind :), when you read my blogs.


Alok

Wk 3. Day 3: Reflection

Many of my friends, wanted to 'see' glimpses of life at HBS. There are several policies that govern what you can use and what you cannot use. It's mostly what cannot use, and that pretty much covers up most of the policy. However, this one picture taken in class, is something that I do have special and kind permision of Stephan.

That's our professor during our class on Dabbawala - a direct reflection, that there is sincere hard-work that goes in, in trying the understand the basics of business. To many Indians, it may not jump out, but the cap, the posture goes a long way to lay the baseline for the case-study - to really understand, how the Dabbawala does his business - in such a way, that we at Harvard Business School, need to learn to implement in our operations.





That's Baker Library, an iconic building on the campus.

The building on the right is called Bakers, this is where we live.

I thought, I will leave it with a few pictures.What is it that someone said - a picture is worth a thousand words. :)


Lessons I learnt today

1. Some days, its nice to just sit back and reflect - the where, the who and the why of your self.



Alok

Wk3, Day2: You Win some, you loose some.

Skies thundered with anger. Clouds wept for my labor, winds lashed trees outside, reflecting my frustration. All night long, the two sides engaged and it seemed a never ending battle. Finally, as the first light shone on the horizon - darkness receded and I decided, it was time to declare my victory - since I had got my hands around most of it. 
Way to go !! Woo hoo !! (Mihir style)

HBS has, as per practice had dumped, tons and tons of work on us... and in order to win the battle, last night I had decided to take it on.  By morning hours, I had finished, all pending reading. Finished my strategy presentation - which is a big thing. Finished, all case studies. I even decided to give finance another attempt. So, I sat down, with all the ratios we had, did my maths... for long hours... and then was able to come out with some numbers.... right or wrong did not matter... what mattered is that I understood most of it.Win !!

Felt very good. Slept for about an hour or so... and back to class preparations.

You win some, loose some.
The negotiations that we did yesterday - we did a debrief today. We had two roles to play - The chief Marketing Director and Chief Research director - and a decision was to be made on where to spend the limited resource. The decision points were five areas, and both sides, were given the information piece that would pull them in opposite direction.
The sad part of the story was that I was pitched against another successful Indian AND a successful lawyer. There goes all hope of thumping success. With little hope to gain. We negotiated on cents and pennies, for well over an hour or so - but the good news was, that we finally agreed on something. It so happened, that our Andy (our Negotiations professor - chose our negotiation as the topic of conversation of the case study) - so here I was not only embarrassed that I had a formidable opponent, but now me (Marketing Director) and She (Research Director) had to stand in front of the class and explain, what was going on in our minds, when we gave this... or won the other. Long story short - it was a great experience to see have been picked up - while, we learnt that both of us were happy, we also learnt that we had opportunity to make it even better, for both of us. We learnt that, if you come with a position to WIN ALL, you would end up loosing more, and more often than not, you win some and loose some.
And that was thought provoking.

WACC - Got you mate !
The night's battle had filled me with new confidence to take on the finance figures. And for a very long time, through Mihir's (Our Finance professor), I was really able to understand what was happening.
I understood, why we are using what formula with what values, and why those values. And that was nice. When Mihir explains, it seems so bloody simple... Anyways, so far we (read I) understood, of why what was happening on the board. Win !!
Of course, he did threaten  to get into more gory detail, tomorrow in our class... Tonight, I decided, I will not (I cannot) wage that battle of books again, and hence I have surrendered my fate to HIM, and hope things will not be that bad tomorrow. Loose! But that will be tomorrow.

Things I learnt today.
1. You have a greater chance of success, if you intend to win some, loose some.
2. Countries that have higher rates of tax - are the countries where MNC take most of the debts.


Any guesses - why ?? (For those not from finance - answers coming tomorrow !) 

Ciao.

Wk3, Day 1: @ HBS : If I had more time, I would have written smaller blog

Week 3, Day 1

"If I had more time, I would have written shorter letter"
 - shamelessly stolen from Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, Blaise Pascal, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Winston Churchill, Pliny the Younger, Cato, Cicero, Bill Clinton, and Benjamin Franklin - Yes, it seems that history has attributed this quote to all of these heroes.

Irrespective who said it, the value of the quote is in the meaning it carries.

One of the things I have been learning is, the importance of being precise. It is not just good etiquette or good manners to be precise (which they are) but being precise, actually increases the chances of success in getting the message across. One of the big learning comes from watching your tapes. One of our group discussion was taped, and the recording was made available to us, to see again. It was quite an experience, to see yourself or others repeating same thing so many times, or seeing someone deviating from the objective and giving a long narrative. The experience of watching yourself was compelling experience.


Saturday Wrap-up
So, the saturday wrap-ups went very smooth, all groups reporting what they learnt - in a snapshot. And you can see, now that - unlike the first week, when every group had its own set of learnings, they are becoming more common in nature. Has to be, we are finally falling in line to HBS style of teaching :)


Getting grounded on finance
Though, an engineer by profession and at heart, I had always prided myself in having more than average knowledge about finance and accounting.
                        Total BS.

I have no clue about 98% of the things. ROIC, WACC, TIE, RFROI, Beta, - what the hell, where did all these new animals come from.?? On top of this, the questions typically are, What would be your cost of capital, if your WACC is uniformly spread, such that hurdle rates in each of the x business streams are less than your TIE. Now assume, you are a negative beta company, how does that affect on ROE weighted. ???? 
I am sure, if you give me Dr. Google and a few days, I could answer that question to your satisfaction - but, this and 40 other acronyms need to be learnt, understood in less than 90 minutes. If you have not caught on to the thread, you would be spending 3 hours into the night (like I am doing now) poring over the numbers and their meaning. 

On top of it - we have Knut Johannes (pronounced by us as "Yourhighness" - no really thats the real pronunciation) in our team, who will get up to the board (in our living group discussion) and with an utter disgust at us mortals who cannot understand 'basics of numbers' . The only person who can grasp some part of the discussions on finance - is Rafi (yes the double doctorate - laser scientist), who will understand - fill the board up with lots of formulas - and Laurence keeps insisting that he saw E=mc2 somewhere on the charts...

For others like us - its best to sit silently and fantasize of the day, you would be able to learn a fraction of what is being discussed around you.

Ok, so you burnt the night oils, you read up the accounting book - kept in your room, like they keep bible in hotel rooms, in the morning, you brush up again - just make sure, that whatever (however small portion) you have learnt, you remember to answer in time.

Class starts, and Mihir - the wiz professor of finance drops the bombshell.

Finance is more art, less science. While all these numbers are scientific facts, you need an element of "Art" to be able to do the finance. You need intuition, gut feel, and business acumen to plug in the right numbers in the formula. He then goes and describes what he means, and he is right, it is art. But wait a minute... what happened to my half baked learning of the ratios ???



Negotiation
We then had our second round of negotiations role play. Unlike the last round, where the negotiation was single point - money, and with buyer/seller, this was about multi-points and more difficult - because it was internal - two departments - negotiating over allocation of budget. Was nice, the debrief is to happen tomorrow, will be interesting to see, how I fared on it, will keep you folks updated.

The Magician 

• An executive coach who has garnered plaudits from numerous corporate leaders 
• Hosted by celebrities such as Larry King, Woody Allen, and David Letterman 
• Entertained more than 12 state heads, including last 6 US presidents.
• Member of MENSA
• 5 times National Piano guild winner
• Business faculty for Fortune 100 companies
• Ph.D. in social psychology, 
• Atleast a dozen graduation degrees
• Policeman
• Distinguished Shooter
• Singer-songwriter who plays five instruments. 
• Acted in 11 Movies - including Pretty Woman
• TV actor and a stuntman. 
• He holds a seventh-degree black belt in karate 
• Board-certified hypnotherapist, 
• Scuba instructor, 
• Special-effects pyrotechnics operator, 
• Licensed building contractor,
• Flight instructor for airplanes and helicopters.
• ... believe me, the list is not done, do your own google, you will see what I mean.

Oh, we are talking of one man only - the most impressive Dr. Jason Randal, who mesmerized us with his magic tricks - during our saturday,  Botolph Club reception, a formal tie event -  but also by the impossible ability of this person to excel beyond belief in so many diverse fields. He is a regular visiting faculty at HBS and you could only marvel in awe, his charisma. He was with us, for less than an hour, but has indeed left an impression that I will carry a long time.

Things I learnt today
1. Finance is more art, less science.
2. Whats valuation ?  Difference between Multiple Analysis and Discounted Cash Flow analysis.
3. The hardest thing to do in your strategy is to define, what you would not do.

Wk2, Day 5: Simplicity

It's official. 

HBS management and the weather gods, have a nexus. When HBS is done with us, through the week, they simply pass us on to bad weather. "Yeah we are done, with them - you can rag them all weekend", seems a common theme for the last three consecutive weekends. No photography Argh !!

In the previous jobs that I had worked for, I have had team members who we had given designations like - Problem Manager, Solution Manager, Subject Matter Expert, Lead Architect, Account managers etc. These have been some real bright people who get their heads together in a room (or over ether space they call, mail, vc etc), and eventually solve the problem, create a new paradigm and all is well again !!

No !! 
All is not well again.  Almost, without fail there is one casualty. 

Every-time, a little bit of Simplicty dies.

I am more than convinced, that when I go back to my workplace, I would create a position, called "Simplicity Manager". It will be his job, to keep our process, our product, our design -  SIMPLE.

Pick up any intense success story, and you would find simplicity playing a big role - Toyota Production System, Apple, Dabbawala... all sing the same tune - be simple.

Most of our Friday noon, was spent in a team exercise called "Subarctic Survival simulation". The background, was that you have just crash landed to a subarctic, Tundra place, with your living group. It is now, upto you - first as an individual to make some choices, and then as a team to make those choices...to survive as a team.

Well, long story short - UnicTim, (my living group) was adjudged the best team for collective improvement, and we came second on the overall exercise. All UnicTim members are proud owners of a Cap (with HBS branding, ofcourse), that we earned on account of being one of the leading groups... how's that for a well oiled team engine.

I must apologize to the readers of my blog, for posting this blog around 12 hrs, late... We had a team dinner - a get together at a fabulous place call Del Fresco. As a bonus, we were first ushered into a Wine tasting event, that was swell... and post that, got to spend our energies on the big Maine Lobsters... aaahh !! 


So, the week wrap up happened, pretty much on the fly. Anne decided to lead the collection of points (the gibberish things that we send her) , and put them on a nice cohesive PPT for Roco to present... and we were done. Thanks Anne, Roco for your selfless drive !!


Learning from yesterday.
1. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.


2. If 5% of people, KNOW, about your product - then your market share can never be more than 5% (or any given percentage)

3. It sounds like a cliche - but,  LISTEN to the voices of the team.


Thoughts, brought back.

"Several hedge fund corporations ordered live satellite images of several spots in US. They claimed, it would be a terrific tool to measure the accuracy of the financial forecasts of the chief executives of a large corporation.  Satellite images, Capital market, Financial forecasts ???? Now this is a long shot - think about this, and lets see, if you can figure out - how they are related and actually do the job - I will keep the answer ready in my blog tomorrow. :)  " - From my previous day's blog.

Well if you are the CEO of a large retail house. And if your projections have said, you are having a bumper season. Then the number of cars, parked in your parking lot, should be a lot more than what it was in the same day last year - right ? I as a hedge fund specialist would like to see the satellite image to confirm that.

Wk2, Day 4: The great Andons !!

HBS has been able to match the incredible experience that we have with some very aristocratic architecture and an extremely professional operations - that leaves nothing to chance, and to us - the participants, it seems a well thought out clock-work precision delivery. You cannot have any other feelings, but being over-whelmed with the magnificence of the buildings - opulence of the library and the serene (yet chip-on-the-shoulder) feeling when you go around the campus. Our accommodation, are a single room with attached washroom, in the Baker hall. Each floor has two sections, and we have about 7 floors - hosting about 125 odd participants. Each living group - about 8-9 people - have their own living room, meeting/work room - equipped with soda (and yes Diet Coke too) and snacks throughout the day and night. There is another refrigerator well stocked with "Beer and wine", that seems to be always full...  So as you would expect, everything is pretty much as it should be... well almost.

The rooms, that we live in, seems to have been designed, by Japanese Airline folks. While, the room itself, is quite comfortable, lots of power points (yes - as you know, can never have enough of them), ample soft lighting for the study, one reasonably decent desktop with WinDoze on it [ chuckle, chuckle :) ]. The only problem is - had this room, washroom been any smaller, I would have had to sleep with my hands outside the door.... It is extremely cramped. The bathtubs, are tiny  (even for my height levels; imagine what it would be like for 6feet+ folks), practically no place to put your stuff. It is fully functional and extremely efficient room - but then it does feel - your total room, is the size of a business class cabin - no more.

Anyways, they do claim, that the Tata Hall, will be ready soon - by Jan 2014 and things would be a bit better for our junior batches.... fingers crossed.

Andon (アンドン, あんどん, 行灯) is a manufacturing term referring to a system to notify management, maintenance, and other workers of a quality or process problem. The centrepiece is a signboard incorporating signal lights to indicate which workstation has the problem. The alert can be activated manually by a worker using a pullcord or button, or may be activated automatically by the production equipment itself. The system may include a means to stop production so the issue can be corrected. Some modern alert systems incorporate audio alarms, text, or other displays.
 - Wikipedia


As we learnt today, Andon plays a crucial part in keeping the manufacturing plant's operations honest and empowers the workers, to stop the assembly line, is defects are found. The question, is have you created your 'andon' in your day to day operations (not restricted to manufacturing alone) - Do you have enough 'levers' built into your organisation, your situation, that allows the team members, to raise a flag, bring it to the attention of the management, and the entire organisation gravitates to solving that problem. 

Learning of the day
1. Build your own Andons, without them, it will be too late to fix any problem.
2. Eventually, the only good growth is the 'profitable growth'
3. Learnt to draw the Value curve of my industry, company - as my customer sees it... and it was interesting to review how my competitors ranked on the same. 
Value curve keeps the prioritized attributes of its vendor on the y axis (with the most important attribute on top, and customer's perception of my (company's) value ( say from 1 to 10) on the x axis. All of this from the customer's point of view.



Something to think about...

Several hedge fund corporations ordered live satellite images of several spots in US. They claimed, it would be a terrific tool to measure the accuracy of the financial forecasts of the chief executives of a large corporation. 

Satellite images, Capital market, Financial forecasts ???? Now this is a long shot - think about this, and lets see, if you can figure out - how they are related and actually do the job - I will keep the answer ready in my blog tomorrow. :)




   archi

Wk2, Day 3:Announcing the formulation of "Board - Alok Sinha"

The day was almost as warm as Delhi... a few degrees here and there... but all through the morning, our spirits were high and there was a natural cheer, upbeat mood all around. The reason - a missing 50 minutes class for today. The HBS staff, had mercifully decided to give us a new lease of life and thus decided, we could do with ONE CLASS OFF. This was hotly debated, what if scenarios created, and for most of the pessimists in us - it was viewed as one of the surprises that HBS will come up with to shock us and in their own sadist way, slave us back to classes.

 Well, as it happened, there was indeed no class from 13:10 to 14:00 hrs, a mere 50 minutes of spare time, that seemed so precious, that Kolar gold mines could not buy. You could hear it in the loo, in the corridors, in the cafeteria, about how each of us planned to spend the freshly available 50 minutes. The fantastic ideas ranged from - calling home, doing laundry to taking a nap - yes, the basic things of your life start to feel exotic, when you do this program.

Anyway, much before it was made available, our group had decided that we must utilise this time, to get over the hump and discuss some of the case studies for tomorrow. 

And that exactly what we did... a hurried lunch, and we were back in our living rooms for getting our heads around the case studies for tomorrow. The idea was to skip the evening planned session, so that we can go an enjoy the Wednesday "Rotational Group Dinner" - a time, we spend with folks from other living groups, something that we do every Wednesday.

On the day,  I first entered HBS, I knew living group was a part of our mandate - something, we HAD to do. During the course of the first week, I was extremely courteous to these sets of folks from different parts of the planet. But, sometime during the first week and now, they have turned into my personal BOARD. They are the people, who I would like to have as investors into my life. They should feel invested in my growth, my success, my aspiratations. I hope, they are the folks - who will have the determination, to pick up the phone and tell me, Alok, this is not the right way for you, and this possibly is the right direction for you.

At  the cost of sounding pretentious, I would think, I have found the magical mix of talent, experience, wisdom in this group. We have a person - Rafi (his short name), he has tons of degrees, (and to rub salt into my poor qualifications) a DOUBLE PHD degree in Physics. He hails from Israel. Thailand's Wanlop, is based out of US, but an extraordinary bright lad. Anne, from Trucking industry has an interesting past out of Montana and Canada. Impressive to see her tweak out the subtle issues of emotions, psychology on the case studies which we simply missed..... who would have thought, Yellow color is manly and gray is not ??? She did. !! Knut, from Norway is also a PHD in economics.... I don't care which - the minute you say you are a PhD, you are from a different planet for me... something, that is on a very high pedestal. You would want to be always on the right side of David, he has been the champion wrestler his life... and when you hear the stories about his college days, you feel so good, he is a part of your team. Rocco, the banker, can always be found giving you complex for not studying. His sincerity to do the assignments and case studies, masks his deep set understanding and nuances for picking up small things - that you would normally easily miss. Laurence, from NZ, but now in States is a thorough gentleman, and a true professional and at the same time, reflects humility and understanding of human values and emotions. No, we are not going to talk about their ages - even though, after about 3-4 rounds of wines, each of us laid down on the table - our specific ages - its not for public information - and if you want the information, go find your own living groups - these are my friends and I am keeping it to myself :)


Well, since we had only two classes today - it focused around negotiation and strategy.

What I learnt today.

1. In negotiation, it is important to shape perceptions to arrive at the ANCHOR point that favors your position. A product, worth 40M, can be psycologically pushed to 50M, if the anchor point is $100M. (Don't worry if you don't understand it straight away, drop me a note and I will explain)


2. Learnt concepts of Contrast, Frame of negotiation, Anchor, Value opportunity when you did negotiation.

3. All, my life, I have negotiated with customer, seller, buyer - with a frame of mind, which says, as long as I am making money, I do not care how much money you are making, or how much more than your willingness to sell, are you getting. Today's class taught me that, it is important for you to make money, but you cannot give away your position of benefit, as relative to the negotiating party.


Wednesday nights are supposed to be rotational dinner, and we got into interesting discussion on Android vs Apple strategy and direction. Oh I tell you, its a lot fun, when you get some one who is passionate about his views and sitting on the other side of the pole. A friend Peter engaged me in intellectual conversation on which is better and why.... :)


Alok

Wk2 - Day 2: Unraveling the historic mysteries...

Wk 2 - Day 2: at the Harvard Business School

More than eight days into the cold, bitterly icy world of Boston, running at close to -10 to -20 degree celcius, makes a tropical Indian wonder - how does the day to day work get managed in such extra-ordinary circumstances. 
The tunnels - around 16kms of them - yes all within the campus have inspired many folk-lores, legends, history papers, fantasies and of-course mystery. It ought to - it is almost 83 yrs old. Some twenty years after the Harvard Business School was established, in 1908 - work completed for the first 6 kilometers that you see today. It carried, heating and food under the buildings. It even crossed the river to the 'other side'. Though, most of it is perfectly big (8feet high) for people to walk by, there are a few areas - not allowed to pedestrian students like us, only for the qualified maintenance staff, where the tunnel is no bigger than 3-4 feet in high. 

Fascinating stories, about Political escapes, tracking the German spy, who escaped using these tunnels, a murder mystery - later converted into movie - abound, romance of the tunnels is really strong at the heart of each student here - under-graduate or old hogs like us.

Imagine my delight, when I noticed that the entrance to this intricate system was no more than 50 mtrs from my elevator. The cold, raining weather outside provided added incentive to remain indoors - within the tunnel.

The tunnels, that have been kept open for students (a large part is closed off - and thus added mystery) - are well lit with lots of security points throughout the same. I also realised, for the first time, that there are several vending machines placed, that can actually help alleviate the hunger pangs that you get over the night. Anyways, even though the tunnels carry loads of steam, gas - they seemed extremely well maintained and clean. There were obviously more closed doors in the tunnels (must be atleast 20 in a short distance of 1 km), than open - and that has perhaps inspired so many folklores. One door, with a sign "Custody Closets" was extremely interesting to me, and I wondered what it was... I looked over my soldier, peered ahead - and satisfied no one was looking, decided it might be a nice idea to determine first hand what the room/hall behind it was. Well, before I could action my plan, a very large shape of human being appeared from behind the doors - in security uniform - and I decided to leave the matter to rest and move on. Computer rooms, Harvard fiber optics, heating returns, temperature sinks, lines of student lockers, seem to line up the tunnels. Satisfied, that I had - had my round of daily walk - around 1km one way, I decided, to head back to more present world of today and tomorrow.


Back in the classes, one of the highlights of our day, was the negotiation role play - We were given the role of a buyer or seller, and paired with the other role person to negotiate a deal. While negotiation lies between art and science, it was interesting to see the break down of negotiation act into structured scientific analysis.

Our onslaught with Business Finance continued, and we learnt (or rather unlearnt a lot of common sense). e.g. if your TIE is less than 1, you are about to go bankrupt... !! - ah !! I sound so knowledgeable, fluently spamming out words likeTIE shie and all :)

Strategy class took us to depths and intricacies of the art of saying "no" .

So what did I learn today. (apart from fantastic form of Harvard tunnel system)

1. Strategy: It is important to say "NO" to some business and to learn to live with the consequence. A strategy that aspires to be good on all fronts is more likely to fail than the one with specifically documented 'out-of-scope' business.

2. Big bang strategies work, but a strategy that has many smaller things tied up into one big story has a higher chance to succeed, less chance of being mimiced, as it brings in a larger competitive differentiation.

3. BATNA, ZOPA, Reservation price are important to be established - BEFORE you enter your negotiation.

4. Your rate of growth of business CANNOT be more than your ROE - if it is, then you would be running out of cash very soon and trip over interest costs. Conversely, if your ROE is far higher than your rate of business growth, then you would be sitting on large piles of cash (case with most large corporations - Apple ($140bn), Microsoft ($100+ Bn), IBM, GE almost all the successful large corporations.

Week2, Day 1: Leadership appraisal must be on Performance and Fitment

Week 2 Day I (Monday)  Harvard University

Every day, brings new learning.... so what if the School was closed on Sunday, I did still learn something.... I learnt
- how to operate a washing machine,
- a dryer 
- and the next lesson which I conveniently post-poned, is to learn to Iron. 

Will keep you posted on the key learnings on this one.

That's what HBS teaches you to do - over the weekends.
 
The weather outside was bitter cold, about -9 degrees Celcius, but it felt like -20 degrees. So most of us stayed indoors and caught up on the housekeeping stuff.

 
Well, starting this week the tone of the classes have changed from being tactical to more strategic, more complex. It was interesting to seek examples from our lives and see them applied to real situations.

We underwent Hays poll, to determine where our strengths lie. The process was to identify your leadership style and score them on
- Need for Achievement,
- Need for Power and
- Need for affiliations.

For tomorrow, we have an interesting role play charted out, each of us have been given a confidential role and data points. We will be playing against each other, with these data points and enter into negotiations and try to close the deals. It promises to be interesting one, will keep you folks updated, with the details tomorrow.

Key learnings for the day.

1. The benefits and imperatives of Activity based costing (ABC).

2. Learnt a lot of financial ratios, their meaning and their significance in our day to day life - TIE, ROE, ROS, WC, Leverage, DE ratios etc. Learnt that, there are various definition of profits, sustainability, and to use any one in absolute terms would not be the most appropriate method.

3. Employees may be appraised on Performance, however, leadership positions requires evaluation on Performance AND Fitment. The senior you go, more critical is the value of fitment. 

Day 6: The beautiful world of mind-maps

*** Day VI: at Harvard business school ***
The day started early. The idea was to run about 5 hours of classes and finish up by late lunch. In the evening, we had reception by Harvard faculty. The Harvard Faculty club, is a renowned historical piece of club, prestigious and very elegant.

All week long, we have been pushed by HBS to "learn" more and more. Weather outside, was also grdually improving - snow melting, bright sunshine comoing up.
Most of us, were looking forward to weekend. Two of our group members have plans for members of family to come in (they live close by.). But, all of us (students) suspect, there is a pact HBS and weather Gods. Since early saturday morning, it has started to snow again. Infact, on sunday morning winds picked up - you could see the snow flakes going from right to left and not falling straight down.

I was introduced to mind-maps last year, but did not think, much of it. Early this week, mind-map was again put on table as one of effective tools. Too old to try new things, I was so shying away from getting to use the same. But, then finally I decided to get into it.

There are very fancy notes I have taken with this tool - including the one on wrap up of the week, what other groups thought/learnt about the week. I am so proud of myself !!

Key learnings
1.Three steps to Demystifying strategy. Keep customer in front of you and ask.

• Differentiate, How ?
• Value proposition, how much?
• Target Market - Who ?

2. Demystifying execution (six points) - Your product

• R&D Build
• Generate Demand
• Make it available
• Establish WTP (willingness to pay)
• Deliver
• Manage lifecycle

Just met the lovely family of one of our group members. Was very impressed with them; pleasant eloquent and i thought, extremely warm folks.

Another 5 hrs to go and the weekend ends..... back to the table at 1930hrs....

Day 5: Account books are not as straightforward, as I always thought them to be

*** Day V ***
Friday, 10pm - And you would think, that the week is finally over...nope... nada. We just finished the week's wrap-up for our group, created a working document, then converted to a PPT - of what we learnt/did not learn. And - we have a classes, starting 8 AM tomoro. Faculty reception/dinner in the evening, and back to studying the case studies, from Sunday evening 1930 hrs... ok this was not exactly fun - but then, to be honest, this is what I expected it to be - and would not have wanted it to be any other way.

What did I learn today.

1. We were introduced to the concept of mind maps and their benefits in understanding. Today, made the extra effort to learn making one, as notes of the HR lecture. Must say, I liked it - specially when using a software for the same.

2. COMPLEMENTS: (opposite of substitutes) are things, whose availability increases the demand for your product lines (itunes is a complement to ipads - Michelin printing restaurant reviews, an example of complements)

3. Bill Gates: "I always look for only "Network products" to sell". Network products, are those, where availability to a set of users induces use in other set (direct) or availability to suppliers, induces other users to buy more of my product (indirect network). Facebook is a networked product - all my friends are on facebook, and that induces me to be on it (Direct), Facebook also has indirect effect on application developers to develop applications (farmville, birthday), that further induces users to be on facebook. Similarly - Microsoft products have created a network effect by compatibility of their OS and applications on the OS.

4. Challenge, every number on the accounts books - and leverage each of the entities that can potentially hide behind number sheets - Depreciation (Example, of how a $2bn empire can be built, by just exploiting Sub-chapter S, which to normal people will appear a loss making proposition), Tax liability, Discount rates - all add vagueness to the accounts statement, but extremely important.

Later in the evening we had a Weekend Dinner by HBS. Must say, they have kept us pretty well fed - throughout the tenure so far. There is a lot of bonhomie in our living group - and I suspect, we deserve a bit of the same. Weekend is approaching (a good 29 hours of weekend - yes, we now measure weekend by hours... not days :( ), so time to get hold of Washing machine soap, stock up for the coming week - and most importantly catchup on reading - every day, they keep sending more and more assignments, books to read.

Day 4: The Unic-Tim - a.k.a. Unique Team

*** Day IV ***
 
 "UNIC - TIM" - aka Unique Team, that's the name we have given ourselves to our group, which so far was known by a clinical name Living Group 6. This is not the norm, but we sort of decided, we wanted to lay foundation that will outlast the course of the program well into future. Ofcourse we had several other views as well - "six pistols" "Six homies" being some of the favorite, before we settled into a more subtle - but truly representative name.

One of the early things we started today was to establish explicitly, what we wanted to personally achieve out of the living group. And it was quite evident to all of us - that we wanted it to exist in ways, not necessarily limited to the course, but also beyond. When asked, what was my expectation - I saw, it fit to seek this opportunity to form my "Board". A set of people, who are invested in my happiness, career and progression. A group of people, who would advise, guide, mentor and coach me on the ways forward, and the delta correction I need to bring in me. Others, had equally fantastic expectations... and for a moment, it almost felt scary that you are being made responsible for such illustrious people's aspiration - and YOU need to deliver to these expectations. This was quite a unique experience for me - I had felt responsible for team members, for company, for business - but very rarely was I put in a position of responsibility of career progression of my peers.

Anyways, it was called Assisted Acceleration day for the Living group. - This is what we spent our full day on. In English, it means, there was a facilitator that helped us align our thoughts, our ideas on what we want to get out of the living group. It helped us setup roles, responsibilities, and norms we want to follow in our group. We tested our theories with dry run of one case with the facilitator and two on our own.

By the time, it was evening (this class was a long one - from 08:30 am in the morning to 17:30 in the evening, with a break for working lunch) - we were quite exhausted, and I think, several of us took to relaxing in different ways - Gym, take the car out to drive, photo-shoot the campus, just laze around in the hot tub.... only to be back in the camp by 18:30 hrs for dinner, followed by a 2 and half hour long session Living group discussion on cases for tomorrow. Thus, at 10pm, your truly gets time to connect back on FB and or my Blog

Lessons learnt today.

1. Feedback - Ask for it, only if you MEAN it. And when you do get it - DO SOMETHING ABOUT it - discard, acknowledge, integrate... something has to be done.

2. Expecting people to give you feedback on your areas of improvement - on their own - will not work, they have better things to do. "You HAVE TO MAKE CONSCIOUS efforts to get those feedback." Go ask your friend, very specific question on a very specific topic of improvement areas.

3. TIME is the most valuable asset that you have - that CANNOT be replenished, and is equally distributed for all. If successful leaders, can learn to make time for the things that are important to them - so can you !!

Day 3: Vaguely right or precisely wrong

*** Day III: ***
So did we guess, why are "neck ties" a huge competition to Black and Decker Drill machines. ??? and that is because, B&D tools are consumer power tools. Its sales spike during the holiday seasons, as a large part of sales, is on account of 'gift' to your father, or husband/brother. Now, Neckties, compete with these power tools as a potential gift items, and hence - if you are not careful about who your substitutes are - you are going to be hit with things that you did not imagine existed. And that is why the sales team of B&D needs

What did I learn today?
 1. In management accounting, "It is better to be vaguely right - than to be precisely wrong"
Stop a moment and think about this - You bought a house 2 yrs ago for Rs. 2 Cr. What would you expect to see its value on your books - Rs 2 Cr (which you know is precisely wrong) or Rs. 2.5 Cr (which is vague, but more closer to truth)

2. "Good strategy, with good execution is any day better than GREAT strategy and average execution"

3. "Your strategy must fulfill, customer's emotional needs AND his rational needs", and if you have to prioritize, the emotional needs would be higher on the option list.

Thought for the day
- "As a leader on top of a pyramid - how do you make space for other leaders ?"

The classes are now turning... what started on day one as a repetition of mundane case studies are taking shape - there is a lot more to learn in these lectures, and you are expected to have read the case studies, discussed and debated with your living group... and be ready with your elevator speech, when called upon by the professor... it's funny to see, each one of us fumbling, revising, getting ready for these classes - knowing fully well, that each of these 'students' are ceo, vp, president of some large corporation and most of the time, lead their team with almost arrogant confidence, working so hard to get the understanding and viewpoint right.

We had our rotational living group dinner tonight, where we got to interact with members of other living group. We had a heated, passionate discussion on strengths and handicaps of women in enterprise world !! Do women need support or is it being unfair to others to give the extra handicap to women employees. Nice discussion - and was interesting to see the views and the support each of us brought in for his or her views from real life examples.

Day 2: Who is your neck tie?

Day 2 @ Harvard business school

Ok, the day was much brighter today, and the sun came back... that was good, since it almost mirrored the inner emotions that we, the GMP participants were going through. We seemed to make sense of what was happening around us, more settled - even though, we were still behind the curve.

Unlike the first day classes, today seemed more rewarding - intellectually - as we progressively learnt newer aspects and angles of accounting, Innovation and strategy.

The idea of living group is starting to appear more and more valuable to me. A living group is a group of 8-9 people, who are accommodated close to each other and are allocated a living group conference room and a meeting room. The idea is to deliberately reach out to one another. We are told, and it appears plausible, that these relationships last a lifetime. I am surely hoping it would. We have members from Israel, USA, Canada, India (me !!), Thailand, New zealand.... and the profession vary from Trucking, IT, Double Dr Physicist, Farmer, Steel, Banking. The functions - HR, General Management, Sales, Finance, Operations - wow !!

It also seems, that there is significant amount of investment by HBS on increasing the efficacy of the Living group notion - they are devoting one full day - Feb 14th - to accelerate the Living group experience. We will spend more than 10 hrs in trying to fine tune our Living group working and learning.

Things I learnt today:
1. Complexity is easy, simplicity is difficult - (reference Apple product packaging vs MS product packaging)

2. When you look at competition, it is important to look at rivals. But it is far more important to look at "substitutes" (substitutes, are products whose availability reduces the demand for your products - for coke, it could be tap water). More often than not, they could be more dangerous, than direct competition.

3. It's not enough to remain within legal rules, to run the company - you need to be sure, that you are not doing anything that will negatively impact the future investor confidence.

4. Sales managers of Black & decker need to worry about "Neck ties" to protect and increase their sales. - Yes, shocking but true - and I would leave you one day to figure out, why ? Answer in tomorrow's update.

Feb 11th, 2013

Day 1: And the unlearning begins

Day 1: Completed the first full day of session at HBS.
 
 An incredible experience, to be amongst set of leaders from so many different walks of life. The intent of the program seems to replicate the real life scenario as close as possible, to put you in such situations, that make you cry out - it's not fair - but then neither is life. Anyways, post the case studies and the intense discussion before going to the lecture, it was an eye opener to view a problem from so many different point of views. The classes focused on strategy, finding solutions to seemingly impossible situations.

Towards the evening hours, we were given the tour of the campus - SHAD. Humbling to visit the largest management library of the world - the Baker library. And yes, there is a very lavish Gym - complete with internal race track, squash, zumba, yoga, body works... I believe, there is one hour dedicated to each of the activities. Zumba - me ???

One of the assignments, that we have is to identify for ourselves, the key learnings for the day... So from my point of view, the key learnings that I took away from the classes are

1. What's strategy - its an "integrated set of choices", that positions it "in an industry" to generate "superior financial returns" in the long run. Interesting to think through this, and get diverse views from other participants.

2. Smart people/star performers, have more trouble - learning to lead. Contradiction, but am now convinced that its true.

3. "Someone", always pays for my learnings/mistakes.