Wk4, Day 4 (n-1) @ Harvard Business School: Compressed zip file....

Snow snow then, snow snow now !!

About four weeks ago, Sandy storm had paralyzed north east America while I was hopping from city to city to finally land into a snow covered white city of Boston. It would seem that in preparation of our imminent departure tomorrow, nature has conspired again to bid interim farewell. How else, would you explain the Winter Storm Warning in Massachusetts, that coincides to the hour - of our GMP program. (Friday 1pm) !! This is amazing precision work. If you would look at the two images - taken four weeks apart, (other than the depth of snow) it would appear, not much changed... 

And we lived a life time in between !! 

Image #1:  on the day of arrival

Image #2: on the penultimate day - snow flakes still coming down.

Counting the hours....

Baker hall is not sleeping tonight... As I write this blog, well past the midnight, doors are opening and closing - lot of discussion in the living rooms - ofcourse.. tonight is the last night in this module - before we break for about 4 weeks.

We had our interim (ya it's interim, because we will be back soon) send-off reception tonight, and as the rounds of liquor progressed, so did the rounds of toasts across the room. Every few minutes, we had someone standing up proposing a toast - to a fellow participant, who would be married by the time he is back, to women's day, to friends around and to HBS world at such, elements of earth, joy of life and the works. Heck, we even had a toast for "Show me the money" :) A class joke, that most participants of GMP14, will identify with.

In the last couple of days, we have been attending several lectures that will potentially help us in 're-entering' our normal lives for the coming four weeks. One of the elements - that is quite natural is for us to prepare, what would be our 30 second elevator speech - when it comes to answering the question "So, what did you learn at HBS".

Here are abridged versions of some of the quotes I got over the cocktail reception tonight.

"It is a great experience to work in a diverse environment"

"It has shown me how to see life in a new perspective"

"I learnt how to lead smart people"

.. and so on and so forth.

The one, that I really resonated with, went something like this.

"It feels like we have been given a zip folder of knowledge, we now need to uncompress it and put it to practice". I couldn't have articulated it better... (This came from Hakan Şahin, a fellow participant from Istanbul, now in Bulgaria). It really feels like, we are taking with ourselves a trove of treasured thoughts, ideas, concepts. It now needs to be applied to real world, to derive the full benefits.

Key learnings

1. Normally operational efficiency is the mantra. But too much focus on operational efficiency can drive out Innovation.

2. Exit clause is one of the key items, to conclude when entering into a JV. I would extend the same to a long term service contract as well. (Uggh.... it almost sounds like a pre-nupital agreement)

3. Whatever be the mean age group, whatever be the average designation - the volume of voices in a large gathering is directly proportional to the rounds of liquor that has already flown through !!

Alok

Wk4, Day3: Being happy....not by chance, but by choices.

I went through the rituals of the class, took lots of notes. I attended the classes and appeared to be attentive, I even stepped out of the class to keep myself not dozing off, while the accounts class was on. Gulped down, some caffeine laced diet coke, and came back looking brighter, but in essence quite blank on what was happening in class around me.

I was merely committing the information into notes, for later consumption. It seemed, that the incessant information shower seemed to have finally caught up with me.It was finally nice to be back in my room, where I did not have to be at the "forever-alert-state-of-mind". Feeling guilty of missing the opportunity to interact with other people and learn more, I decided the next best thing, I could do was to review lectures by notable professors and personalities, available on the network.So I went digging into the HBS ether world.

I came across a lecture "Tragedy and Genius" by Professor Deepak Malhotra, to the MBA graduation class of 2012. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D73mm29XXAw

In this lecture, as you will see, he defines what is genius. He believes that genius is what makes you - you. It is not about going through the motion of the week and then coming back to weekend, to being you (read - class and then coming into my room). It is about, making those choices, that allows you to exhibit the real you. "So that who you are and what you are doing are not two different things." (9th to 11th minute).
Teresa Amabile, another professor at HBS, explains Inner work life - emotions, perceptions, and motivations that we come across in our day to day life. These three tremendously impacting and important components can define or demolish a performer. In her lecture she emphasizes the crucial need for leaders and managers to recognize this as an opportunity to derive the best from the team. She also warns, through some real examples, that the risk of not doing so, inhibits true creativity and potential of the person
I found another lecture on youtube, with pretty much the same message.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_KxrFGhV5E

It is interesting to note, that those corporations that focus on the "Inner work life" actually have higher sustenance than those who do not.


Hmm... I was feeling better already ...Management is not about work, office business only - infact it starts first with managing my emotions, my aspirations and most importantly my small actions that eventually translate into happiness for me.

What I learnt today?
1. It is NOT alright to feel happy by chance. You need to consciously make choices that will make you happy.
2. Of course there was nothing notable I learnt otherwise, remember I had CPU shutdown earlier :)

Alok

Wk4, Day 2: Hunt for value....

The biggest dis-service I can potentially do - to aspiring Harvard students, is to super-impose my experience, as THE experience you would have at HBS. At the cost of repetition, (Ya, I have a disclaimer with this exact same thing - somewhere on this blog), these are my learnings and my experiences, each of us goes through a completely different experience and thus your takeaway points will be very peculiarly different.

To illustrate my point, a story. This is about a student (not from our program but HBS) recounting how HBS changed him - when he did a short 7 day program, while he had just recovered from an aneurism. Due to the condition, he did not have time to read the case studies or to participate in the presentation much - due to his impaired vision during that time. It would have seemed, that he would not be able to take away much.
Surprisingly, he described the experience as immensely intense, something that pretty much altered his life. His learning was he sat and observed the class interaction. He learnt, how to ask the right question, in the right manner - that can direct a team towards a common goal. That was his great takeaway, that he believed has changed his life.
Later today, in the same class, we were asked on what we think our takeaway was and it was truly amazing to see so many different point of views. For some learning to contain ambition, and spend more time on ME (them) was important learning. Yet others, emphasized on the need to be ambitious and humble - both at the same time. Others wanted, to bring order in their professional day to day chaos that they go through. Each of us, had a our very own but different 30 second elevator speech, and all of them were right.
So, if you are indeed, reading this blog, to get a sense of what it is like in HBS, before you decide, take it with a underlying understanding that this is my experience, and your own learning may be (most likely will be) entirely different. You will have to hunt for your own values here.

Value chain (ah ! such a cliche... or not.)
The most important thing for a company is to understand the value you are creating for your customers. You need to get this component right. As long as you know exactly what value you are creating for your customer, you will be above water. Ofcourse, you also need to have a competitive differentiator, that forces the customer to choose you over your competition. As an executive, the value you create for the stake holders, as team member, value for manager and peer.
And quite importantly, you need to be sure, that you are creating value for the people and family that care about you, that you care about. In most cases, we take it for granted - but it is important to give it due thought.

Learning for the day
1. Creating value for people who you care for, is an important element of growth. Professional and personal.
2. Whatever, be our learning from HBS (however, diverse it may be), the one common thing that all of us agreed were, this was one life time experience, none of us want to trade for anything else.

Alok

Wk4, Day 1: Face to face with the protagonist

Week 4, Day 1: Face to face with the protagonist.

Man !! Trust, HBS to induce un-learning.... they go the whole nine yards.

For me, Negotiation was always so much associated with "Art" and relatively distant from "Science". 
When I succeeded, in a negotiation, I would inwardly smile, pat myself on the back and say "Dude, well done, you are one shrewd negotiator here", 
and when the negotiation did not go well, "Aw, that's the Art part I don't have. Hope, I will get it better next time"
You get the picture - Take the credit, give the blame. Yes, that one.

Well it turns out, this school of thought is not more my favorite. As I unlearn that negotiation is closer to science than art. There is a specific framework for negotiation, a specific methodology (we learnt about the 3D method), a specific thought process to enlarge the pie and most importantly the very act of negotiation - how well, you make the other party perceive that they have acquired what they had in mind.
And from now on (sigh!!!) it also means there are no more places to hide. In case negos don't go well, it simply means that I did not do my homework well.

The last mile... almost.
You do not have to check the program calendar to know, that this is the last week for this module. The program office has done well ! We have packing material right up to our living groups, in case, you wanted to packup the additional items, and want them to be shipped somewhere. Almost every one is talking about it - this is the last week, of the current module. 

There seems to be renewed, energy in everyone on what they will be doing for the next 4 weeks (that's the break we get, before we come back to the next module).
Wait a sec, did I say break. Scratch that...  no break - we get tonnes of things to do, books to read, make and refine our "Re-entry strategy" - and oh by the way, the crisis of day to day life that you sort of left back of, keeps piling up to solve. But, then none of us expected the outcome any other way.

Face to face with the protagonist
For me, case studies are a great method to learn. But, there is always that expectation, that what you are seeing in the case study, is only those words that are documented in the same. While, each case study has been developed by people - who really know, what they are putting up - there was always an yearn to connect with the real life people behind them. To ask, them iteratively, what if scenarios - what was going on in their mind, when they took this decision or that decision. It was always interesting to validate your own understanding with what actually was going on - for the world at that time. This came true, today, when we had the opportunity to interact with one of the protagonist of our case study himself was the professor of the discussion. 
It was amazing to feel the passion, the challenges, the drivers of the decision point. The issue was not if he was right or wrong; Most of the times, there are no right answers - just the ones that you take, the issue was on understanding how the answer was arrived at. This was an immensely gratifying experience.

"When faced with consistent gloomy picture, you will seize the opportunity, however small the window."
err.... do not be confused, if that his not appearing to be profound. That brilliant, extra-ordinary quote was penned by me - just now. It kinda, goes with the format of this blog. :)

In plain English, it basically says that yesterday (Sunday), we had about 3-4 hours of day time, when there was no rain, very mild snow, and I took the opportunity to swing my camera bag on my shoulders and visit downtown for some shots... nothing earth shattering came out of it yet - but then it did give me a sense of being me. That, felt so refreshing.


Learning for the day.
1. Negotiation is closer to Science, than Art.
2. Most of the time, there is NO correlation, between happiness and outcome of the negotiation. On the contrary, there is almost a direct link to happiness and how you were treated during negotiation. (ah... hmm.... interesting).
3. Company finance is best left to people who know about it. (I know I learnt it earlier, but what can I do, I learnt it again today !!) 
4. There are a tonnes of things happening around you, many of it important, mostly chatter. You cannot participate or immense in all. Divide your time (and the intensity of the time) on things close to you. As a person, focus on things that is important to you, focus on people that are important for you.

Alok

Wk3, Day 5: Innovation is not a function of time.

Demand respect, give respect

It's funny, how nations and students think alike - each has an early warning system.
For a nation, its to do with a lot of money, energy and effort - but primarily intelligence. 

The student community too has its level of intelligence, out of sheer sympathy for 'fellow-student'.  Most of our senior batches, had sent us the early warnings - "Never be late in his class". Someone said, it is always important to be impeccably dressed in his class, others warned of dire consequences, if you were not prepared enough for his class. More intelligence flowed in, when he had already taken a lecture in the adjacent group.  
OMG !! All the reports were true. He demanded respect. 
The class dynamics changed instantly. Thanks to our "early warning system", we were all in class before time, hydraulic chairs were lowered (in feeble attempts to hide behind the front guy), last minute readings were brushed up (revised several times - just in case you were to be cold called). And if you were picked for the cold call....the class gave long lasting looks, that almost said.... "sigh... it was nice knowing you buddy... we shall not forget you... " 
In reality, nothing happened - we all survived the class, some of us - who were better prepared (yes - some of us still read our case studies), came out feeling enriched about what was taught in the class. Those who did not get cold called, promised to themselves in their silent moments - "I will read my case for the next class".

My key learning out of this class/professor was crisp and clear "Demand respect and give respect" That is the healthy way of pulling each other up in their living ways.

Conglomerates
Conglomerates are good things right - they do great stuff. They are huge, they inspire entrepreneurs to spin off 'group of companies' and they generally turn out to be huge empires. Its such a nice feeling to be seen as objects of inspiration.

Well this is what wikipedia has to say about conglomerates 
 "A conglomerate (pron.: /kəŋˈɡlɒmərɨt/) is a rock consisting of individual clasts within a finer-grained matrix that have become cemented together. Conglomerates are sedimentary rocks consisting of rounded fragments" - Wikipedia
 
And this is what the image of a conglomerate actually looks like.

Shocking isn't it !!??, but not far from truth. :p
By definition conglomerate is a collection of related/unrelated business units, put together with a glue called Corporate office. So by mere definition, this is what you turn out to be, unless you bring in (no, not synrgies. Synergies are now a bad word - it connotes conflict of interest - but that is what I mean :) ) a mechanism that adds value from one business to another. In simple maths, if 1+1 is merely going to be 2, then keep them separate - however, if you derive any value that is greater than 2, it is a win-win situation.



Innovation is not a function of time.
During our innovation class, we got into this debate, if innovation is a function of time. While, most of the class was clear, that you cannot put a gun on someone'e head to innovate (and I kinda agree on that), yet for me - innovation is definitely not a function of time - you can get innovation done, even in the shortest period.

Here is a lovely video, of how innovation works...within given time frames. This is open source material picked up from Youtube, (we had a lot more to discuss in our case study  though) - but this pretty much sums up my position.
http://youtu.be/M66ZU2PCIcM

Weather.
I have stopped complaining about the weather. All through the week, it remains, bright and sunny and we spend, lovely time in heated, temperature controlled class rooms. Just when weekend is about to start - like after classes on saturday - incomes the rains and snow. 

Take a look for yourselves.

 
Come on !!! 
Really - fourth weekend in a row !!!

Key learning
1. Do not just start new business unit, if it is going to be, 1 + 1 = 2.
2. Demand respect from your colleagues, and give respect to them.
3. All ye, who hope for a break over weekends, shalt die in despair.