A 3 month wrap up!

It is now more three months from the last post. I have thought many times to put down some thoughts but there have been reasons that I did not... Module 7 kicks off on Monday. Here is a summary of my feelings during the last few modules ...

Module 3 - Finance sucked the life out of me. There was too much of pre reads and assignments that I can confidently say that I learnt Options and Hedging "on my own" with all the pre reads and the assignments to be turned in before the subject was taught in class. And then... all the mandatory reads for Competition Analysis. Macroeconomics was the odd fun. For every chapter that we read, Burda made us analyse the Macroeconomic factor for a particular country - My group had to do - Belize and make a presentation. I had heard of Belize before and so I had an advantage over the rest of the group but that gap was soon bridged and we were all swimming in the Belizian sand trying tocome up with some sane data. We finally concluded that it may be cheaper to just buy the country out when you consider their GDP!

Module 4 - This was packed with too many short courses - International Business, Knowledge Management, Partnerships and Alliances, Corporate Finance - Courses that got over even before we realized it started!!!! But I loved Corporate Strategy and Corporate Finance - Two courses where I learnt to do some real case analysis and brought back my love for Finance courses.

Module 5 - Field trip to China!! Wow! China will never be the same in my mind. What I saw in China was way beyond what I had even imagined. We visited Beijing and Shanghai and I was blown away by both of them. The Bund in Shanghai and the Pudong Dist - Amazing! - The skyline of Beijing was less visible with the Smog. I wonder why the authorities-that-be need an Olympics to realise that the air is unbreathable!!! It looked and felt pretty obvious ... My blog is not meant to be a travelogue and so I will just stick to my learnings ... I think I am now an expert with chopsticks! I also learnt about building relationships and losing relationships - now I do not care and I feel liberated allready. You meet many acquaintainces along the way and you can make just a few friends!

Module 6 - Intopia - That was a business simulation game and I realized that I have an inner desire to be a winner! - No amount of self renunciation can take away that trait from me without me denying myself ... and to win ... you need to build a winning team!

Then we had the summer break! A well timed short 3 week break ... I hung around in Berlin as Rajani, in her third trimester could not travel. Then a visit to the doctor for a regular checkup and being told that Rajani needs complete bed rest put paid to my trips around Berlin as well. But I loved the break. I got to spend a lot of tme with Rajani and I guess, I love her even more :)

Today is the last Friday before this break ends ... Monday starts the next module and I hope I can be more regular with my blog now ... with my baby expected any time! Wow!

Ceeeee Yah

If you hear “Ceeeee Yah!!!!” more often on our corridors, here is the story. That is a term now added permanently into our classes’ lexicon.

Ron Panese, our Operations Management Professor from Module 2, used it to set us free from our classes at the end of the allotted time. He had Francisco keep time for him and promised to drop whatever he was saying and would stop sharp on time. So, Francisco, the assigned time keeper printed out a “STOP” traffic sign, that he held up at the end and Ron would stop whatever he was saying, stretch his hands out to his sides like an airplane, swirl on his right heel while he yelled “Ceeeeee Yah” and Ron was 70. He looked amazingly young for his age and could give us “youngsters” a run for our money with his energy.

Ron is a visiting faculty – past retirement and if you add up all his stated years of experience, he should be atleast 3425 years old J He had some 63 Ron Panesi’s laws and he livened up the class by dropping them once in a while. It was a sight to see him encourage Vlad with some comments like “Vlad, Baby, You are Hot” ( as in …. You are on track – keep going…) while Vlad seemed to apparently take offense, drawing his eyes in, squaring up the eyebrows and cheeks flushing red. That was the first class and then we got used to this and it was fun, atleast for me. It is difficult to cover the whole subject of Operations Management in just 20 sessions. I loved the final exams – One Case Study that took about 1 hour to read and then to describe an Operations strategy for the company in the case. I do not know what will be my grade, but I loved the final exam, nevertheless.

Of course, he also taught us the great Italian Sign Language – the flick under the chin, for those who know what I mean ;)

Never too early to start learning

Three days into Module 3, I sit up and wonder what happened to Module 2. All the boredom of Module 2 is replaced with hours of pre reads and exercises for Corporate Finance and Industry and Competition Analysis. Yesterday, I had to sit up till 1.30 am to do the pre class exercises for Corporate Finance and the next two days do not look any better - The Crown Case for I&C Analysis, Macroeconomics preread, the Corporate Finance exercises and the Managerial Accounting Individual Exercises. I think this will be my story for the whole module.

In the middle of this, today evening, we had our first Master Class – Ulrich Wilhelm, spokesperson of the German Chancellor. Many were not keen to attend, How is a politician going to add value? But I must say, I came away being very impressed. He was frank, candid and genuine. His matter of fact statement on the Work Life balance being non-existent was so real and immediately, he had opened up enough of him to become, just another You-and-Me doing a top job. The Drinks that followed the meeting was short as I wanted to get back to doing the assignments.

As I packed my stuff to leave, I saw a few die hard football fans cueing in on the Champions League Semis between Barcelona and Manchester United. I joined them as “Tiger” Satya had connected his laptop to the TV and the Stefano, Adrian and Santiago rooted for their favorite team (only of the two, not otherwise…) – Barcelona. Casey joined us soon and we did some Canadian football analysis. We watched this goalless draw over a few beers and headed home.

Our feeble effort at managing a work-life balance

A New Dawn

Spring Break - One week at the end of the Module 2. This was supposed to be fun and some of my classmates indeed planned it like that - planned trips to Egypt, Canary Islands, Stockholm, Prague, etc. For me it was supposed to be time for relaxation and some sight seeeing in Berlin with with wife.

But I was wronged on two counts - the weather was bad except for Monday and there was so much to read up for the Module 3. The Book on "Strategic Management" was so stressful while being so irritating that I lost my patience with the course itself. If the three stanford professors could write a book that was filled with so much of crap, I am sure that there is still hope left in this world. But more of that in another post.

For the first time in my life, I felt that it was indeed nice to be rich. Sitting at the SONY center at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin on the only day we could move around Berlin, I felt an inspiration that I should be rich. This may sound so trivial for many but for me that is profound since money has never been a motivation for me - infact I have chosen paths that took me away from money consciously. Not to say that I will do anything for money - my upbringing and morals will not allow me to do that. But to be able to create something big and to have the ability to do something as liberating as the SONY center, I need power that can come from being rich and powerful and not from being a middle Manager. Coming home, I changed my desktop image to a picture that I took of Ritz Carlton at Potsdamer Platz to remind me of my new change - I want to be a guest at the Ritz, not as a perk but as a matter of fact :)

Berlin is beautiful and very inspirational. I Love this city

Berlin Half Marathon

St.Hedwig’s Catholic Kirche in Berlin Mitte is located behind the Opera house and across from Humbolt University. It is also just a few minutes walk from ESMT. The Church is the seat of the Berlin Archbishop. I would have expected such a church to be multilingual. However, they have Eucharistic celebration only in Deutsch. My wife and I are particular to attend a Sunday service where ever we are. So, we continue to attend this church though we do not understand the sermons by the priest. But the beauty of the Catholic church is that the rituals are the same in any part of the world and that makes it easy for us to follow the priest as he says his prayers and we say our response in English as we are used to.


So, last Sunday, we attended the 10 am service and when we stepped out, I remembered that it was also the date for the Berlin Half Marathon. We walked over to the start point of the half marathon at the Berliner Dome, just across the street from ESMT. The race had already started much before the time we reached there and the city staff was clearing out the road blocks, etc. So, we spent some time looking at the Flea Market along the spree – checking out some paintings and some nice small leather pouches shaped like sea shells, etc. The day was a cruel one for running – it was bitterly cold and felt like below Zero. As we walked to the end point – the Rathaus, on the opposite side of the Dome, We could see people lining the street and the excitement building. We could hear clapping and general noise levels rising as the winner of the woman’s marathon - Peninah Arusei crossed the finish line. The Kenyan clocked 68:22, which is the third fastest times this year so far.

Stefano and Martin from ESMT were also running the half Marathon. So, we decided to see if we could find them among the runners reaching the end point. We found a place just opposite the cheering band and the cheer girls doing the routine. The trickle of runners reaching the finish line began to increase in momentum – one followed by another, then soon groups of 5 runners running together, then, 6, then 7, then 10, steadily increasing till all we could see were a torrent of bobbing heads into the distance. A record number of 20,660 runners from 86 nations had entered Germany’s biggest and best quality half marathon. 17,733 runners finished the race.

Looking out for Stefano and Martin in this flow of runners became very difficult. There were a few false alarms. People looking like Stefano came in all shapes and sizes. I must have waved at many of them. They would have thought I was just cheering them on. I was only one of the 150,000 spectators who had lined to see the marathon.

Martin is the class manager of our batch. He is quiet, unassuming and sponsored by the MAN group. He is also the German junior canoeing champion. With this kind of sports background, he had gone onto the marathon without much practice. His past experience with running a marathon was the Berlin Half Marathon about 4 years back. Stefano was better prepared – running atleast twice during the week preparing for this half marathon … He, of course, has other reasons to keep himself fit - to run away from girls (or someone in particular?) who were chasing him J. He is this popular Italian whom the girls cannot seem to have enough of. He had done a marathon about 2 years back.


With passing time, I began to lose hope of being able to identify my friends among the runners. If there is one lesson I learnt from this marathon, it is that, never run alongside a beautiful woman runner. If you do, no one ever notices you. Maybe I did miss them!!! I was also looking out for Santiago, he was to join Martin and Stefano from Potsdamer Platz to run the last 4 Kms to motivate them through the last leg. As the stream of runners continued to flow, I could see women runners and then children. I was sure that they were definitely faster than letting kids overtake them. I later got to know that it took them over 3 minutes to move from their position to the start line after the start of the half marathon – so packed was the race. Soon the crowd of runners became very tired looking men. I must have definitely missed them.


While I was discussing with my wife whether to stop this futile search and return home, like a slow motion scene from a Hollywood movie played to the background of the Final Countdown, In the midst of the white sea of people, I see this black stallion – running proudly with the head held up high. The contrast was stark – drooping tired white shoulders all around and this steady head with a sparkling smile and black mane – the head of the Argentinean, Santiago. Following him closely were Martin and Stefano. Santiago was leading the heroes home. The cheering band drowned out our calling out of names. So, we made our way back to the finish line to meet our proud runners. There we saw Elka and Ritesh who had also come to cheer them. We hung around for a while as Martin and Stefano posed for a few pictures along with their chief motivator – the black stallion, before stopping at the stands for their quota of energy drink – a nice cold beer!!!


As they relaxed after a morning well spent, my wife and I returned home as I had to get back to school for a group meeting for Marketing. My group was writing a paper on the marketing strategy of facebook.


I am proud of Stefano and Martin who ran the Half Marathon and not to forget Santiago for his boundless enthusiasm. Hopefully they will also run the Full Marathon in September.

Pictures: Stefano gesturing to Santiago and Martin to join for the picture .... The runners - Stefano and Martin .... the runners joined by the Stallion :)

Thirty Minutes

What is the difference between a beer and a pee?
Answer: Thirty Minutes

This is the joke from Santiago as a penalty for coming late to a Managerial accounting class by Mario Resse.

Many professors have their own mechanisms to ensure that people are on time for classes. Our class has been fairly very good so far – mostly on time, except for Vlad who goes to bed at 6 am when the classes begin at 9 am. Well, Vlad is an exception; his body is yet to decide when it should go to sleep and when it should awake. He says he slept for 4 hours totally in 4 days during this week and I believe him – he has managed to read up all the material he could on Sovereign Wealth Funds for the Kansleramt Visit and also do his part for the Operations presentation and also write the first draft for the Marketing paper.

During the first module, Konstantin (OB) had a rule – if you were late, you buy a bottle of wine for the Bergfest (our weekly(?) get together) and we collected about 12 bottles. Of course, this includes when you were late even by a minute. So, that is a fairly low number. Eric (Marketing) had us contribute 10 Euros to a charity to be selected by the class and he was kind enough to promise to give a matching contribution to the charity. Now, that is asking for trouble. So, the last day, all of us decided to be late by 2 minutes and we all chipped in 10 Euros each, or 310 Euros for the 31 of us and Poor Eric had to shell out 310 Euros. Eric is definitely a good sport. I am sure that if this message got out, none of the professors would ever offer to match our contribution for coming late.

Francis (Decision Making) was more direct. He said that coming late would affect the class participation scores automatically. I do not know if he went through with his threat but this unknown element was enough to ensure that we were on time. Of course, with Francis, he has this twinkle in his eyes when he says something that we are not sure if he was joking or if he was being a cool assassin with a smiling exterior. Michal (Economics) and Zimmerman (Intro to Accounting) were very nice on this front. – no threats, no penalties… but by now, we were Pavlov dogs and automatically thought there was a loss if we were late.

Second module – there were no threats and there were some signs of the Pavlovian behavior wearing off when Mario Resse decided to put an end to this by saying that anyone who is late had to tell a joke to the class and hence the joke from Santiago. This is counterproductive, as telling jokes took away some of the time of the class. Being an accountancy professor, Mario realized his mistake pretty quickly and has proposed some pretty unique suggestions including having a quiz with the number of questions matching the number of minutes of being late. He may eventually go back to having us buying a bottle of wine but of a brand of his suggestion.

Just a few minutes after the joke, Mario got back at Santiago. When Santiago answered a question from Mario wrong, Mario made the gesture of an imaginary gun and asked what is the difference between the answer from Santiago and pointed the imaginary gun at Santiago and said “pop” – The answer: 2 Seconds!!! The class rolled up in laughter at the quick comeback by Mario. Mario 1, Santiago 0.

April 1, 2008

Making phone calls to spread some rumors or wishing someone happy birthdays are some ways with which we “celebrate” April Fools Day. The uncreative media always writes some article making it appear that something catastrophic has occurred or something long rumored is true. It was funny the first time but its repeated usage, every year is ample evidence to the fact that creativity is almost dead in Media – maybe search for advertisement revenues makes them regurgitate old formulas as if it were Hollywood re-runs.

With an exam on April 1 in Operations, we were not exactly in the mood for being creative. But after the exam was behind us in the morning, we were more relaxed to try a joke on Luc (Advanced Marketing) during the afternoon class. We have long wondered whether professors really knew our names or only called us from the name boards that were in front of us. So, when Stefano came into our rooms and said that we mix up our seating so that we did not sit along with our name boards, we were game! The unfolding drama was unscripted and absolutely hilarious.

I walked into class and sat before Satya’s name board. Other also walked in and picked up their preferred seating. It was completely natural and there was no chaos or unnecessary noise. Luc realized that something was happening but tried to keep a straight face. At 2 pm, he took the floor. He introduced the case study and spoke for about 5 minutes to build the case. Then he opened the floor for discussions. I waited with bated breath to see what would Luc do now. Felix who was now sitting before Shyla’s name board, put up his hand to answer the question. Luc pointed at Felix and said with a straight face, “Okay Shyla, what do you say?”. The class burst out into laughter – Luc knew Felix’s name – well, who did not know Felix? He was the person who spoke the most in class after the professor and if the professor is not careful, could speak even more than the professor!!!. After the answer, Luc turned to the rest of the class and said – “so, who agrees to what she said”. Luc was playing along and more importantly, he was also getting the gender right with the name board, rather than the actual person who was sitting at the seat.

By this time, the class had warmed up. So, when Luc called Maria – Adrian who was sitting at Maria’s place, started to speak as if he were Maria – making the “swinging” gesture that Maria normally makes. Casey who was sitting at Dorothea’s seat, tried to speak like a girl. Aditya tried to speak like Stefano and Shyla, sitting at Yury’s place was trying to attract Luc’s attention using Yury’s trademark left hand under raised right elbow sign. But the person who took the cake and broke the semblance of order that people were desperately trying to keep up, without bursting into laughter, was Dorothea who was sitting at Sachin’s seat. So, when Luc called Sachin. Dorothea started off in classic Sachin style saying “In my previous company…..” and that was too much for the class to take and burst out into laughter and clapping. Dorothea kept a stern face through all this and continued ….”… we did moleculargastronomical study … blah..blah…blah…” Oh! That was hilarious … I was bursting my sides… We could not take this no more …. Luc was laughing – people tried hard not to fall off their chairs. After a few minutes, All of us composed ourselves and went back into our role mode for the whole session of an hour and quarter. This was the best one hour unscripted role play by 32 people (31 students and 1 prof) I have ever seen.

I later heard a comment - perhaps the only person who could have managed all the chaos was luc who had 10 kids – No wonder, he was able to keep a straight face through all this!!!

Now, that is something new for April 1.

Asshole Management

The last night into my Easter break, I realize that I had a book – “The No Asshole Rule” by Robert Sutton due for return to the library. Not wanting to return yet another book unread to the library, I put in two hours of effort to read this delightfully easy to read book.

Bob Sutton deserves all credit in propping up a word confined to the dark unspoken business world, in fine professorial scientific finery. This book and Bob’s earlier article in HBR with the same title is path breaking in bringing into the common business lexicon – ASSHOLE. After being driven to the state of numbness by the repeated usage of the word, I, despite my catholic upbringing, see the power of the word that the author brings out of the closet.

Bob lists a “dirty dozen” list of common actions that Assholes use, including personal insults, sarcastic jokes, dirty looks and treating people as invisible. It is important to realize that all of us can be temporary assholes so the key is to identify the certified Assholes. They more often than not, stand out in their ability to consistently make their “targets” feeling belittled, put down, humiliated, disrespected, oppressed, de-energized and generally worse about themselves. The cost of such individuals to an organization is evaluated through the calculation of the Total Cost of Asshole (TCA). TCA includes the attrition costs, legal lawsuits, counseling time, loss of productivity, stress levels, etc. Many assholes succeed in remaining in an organization as they also sometimes are high achievers. In one instance, the TCA was computed and discussed with one such individual and a percentage of these costs was threatened to be taken from the bonus of the individual.

Hiring and Firing policies of companies has an impact on the prevalence of Assholes in organizations. Harvard professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter calls the process of hiring similar personalities as “homosocial reproduction”. So left to themselves, Assholes hire assholes. The opposite of this is not to hire spineless wimps. Instead, as Cisco practices, Constructive confrontation teaches people how to fight and when to fight. Robert Cialdini’s research on paper pilfering advances a “One Asshole rule”. Under this rule, it is necessary to have one asshole for the rest to know how not to behave. Such an individual tends to have a more positive impact on the rest of the group. It is important under this rule that the Asshole is not seen to receive any benefits by being an asshole. Of course, this will be a nightmare for HR to be able to find the right Asshole for a team. Instead Bob suggests that it is not necessary to look for an asshole – looking for perfect individuals will anyways result in one or two assholes slipping in through the cracks – and they should be just fine. Before we go trigger happy and start branding people as Assholes, pipe down and be slow in branding people as assholes.

So, how does one avoid being the Asshole? Apply the same test for an asshole upon yourself (target feeling belittled… etc). The crux of this test is not what you think about yourself but what others think. As successful assholes tend to have strong influence, you need to avoid “Asshole poisoning”. If you know that you are entering into the presence of assholes, it is more prudent to avoid. As Leonardo Da Vinci said, “it is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end”
Of course there are virtues in being an asshole. More often than not, Type A people are characterized as Assholes. They tend to gain personal power and stature, intimidate and vanquish rivals, motivate fear driven performance and perfectionism, bring unfair, clueless and lazy people to their senses.

So will there be a new definition for “A” in MBAs?

TIme to stop to check

This is the first real break we have had since we started the MBA program - 4 days for the Easter, including the Monday. THis will provide the time for a reflection on the days past.

The MBA program started on 14th Jan. On the 16 and 17th, we went on a two day outdoor trip for team building at the Schloss Kröchlendorff ( http://www.schlosskroechlendorff.de/ ) - 29 of us. There was still a suspense whether Elka and Aysenur would join our class and they did, a week later after sorting out their Visa issues. This was sheer fun - 29 individuals assembled together to be moulded into a team. Circumspection gave way to trust as we crossed the "river" with 7 logs, hiked our way across fields using maps made by someone else and then climbed rope obstacles.

Some did it the hard way and the others found fun ways to do the tasks. These two pictures reminded me of how software is developed in different parts of the world. The picture on the left is the one, where I would imagine is done in, say, IBM US - following processes and doing it the right way, the one on the right is the Indian way of doing this - fewer resources but more man power - one on top of the other - eventually the tasks gets done and these guys also have the most fun - See the smiles :)

Felix, Adrian and Stefano are seen looking at the map - a perfectly done map - but incorrectly read and I wonder what they are doing on the watch tower looking out with head lamps into the darkness, maybe they should have used the walkie talkie and called the rest of the group who were already in the pub having beer. Trust a man to never stop and say that he is lost- and when you get a few men together - guess what!!!!

The classes started in right earnest - all the group work taught us more than what we learnt in class. Decision Analysis was a revelation - Francis was in his elements and taught us a trick or two and we are smarter for that. Konstantin was his usual business self - aced through the class and opened a new way to look at Organizational Behavior. The course I found the most satisfying was Economics - I proved to myself that I had it in me to understand Economics and I am grateful to Michal for that. Eric can never be faulted for not trying hard in Marketing. I do not know if I will ever be a marketing guy but the whole Marketing Case was a revelation of Team work. Accounting with Zimmermann laid the foundation for hopefully a future for me with numbers. By the time the module was over, we were tired, yet happy.

Module 2 relatively seems to be a walk in the park. We are done with HR by Jean-Marie Hiltrop and Intro to Finance with Jeorg Rochell will be done with early next week. We will still have Marketing with Luc Wathieu and two new new courses starting next week - Operations and Advanced Accounting. The tide may shift and we may have to spend more hours in the study rooms but let me enjoy when I am able to...

Rich man's game

Yesterday, the gloomy dark weather in Berlin cleared up and we got to go outside and do something for a change. 12 Degree is not a great deal to an Indian but it is, if we had snow fall just a few days back.

Anke and her partner put together a nice golf schedule and a few of us from our class managed to go and get our baptism in Golf. Life was a made a little complicated by the U- Bahn strike and we had a little legging to do to go to Alexanderplatz to take a S-Bahn to Blankenburg. Myself and Aditya went together and Anke was there at the station to pick us up and drive us to the golf links. Arti and Yury also managed to get there on time regardless of their skills at being able to read signs at a station (they get the drift :)) and was joined by Adrian in his "original" mini

Golf Resort Berlin Pankow (http://www.golf-resort-berlin-pankow.de/) is a nice place, with a cute club house and being not so crowded. The deal was not expensive, managable on student's budget - of course you cannot do this every weekend.

Anke had arranged for a 1 hour training session and the basics of the irons and the swings were taught. After this, we knocked the balls around and I think I had got a hang of "this thing". Of course, having come from a background of playing cricket, it will take some time before I learn how not to "put the weight behind the drive" or "move the foot to the pitch of the ball" or the "follow through". For those who are not familiar with cricket, you can imagine the player as if he were walking through while playing a putt. Of course, this is not an easy imagination but who said Cricket was easy (Was that Ambar who tried to explain cricket to Casey?) For those familiar with cricket, it is like Dhoni pulling the ball from outside the off stump and hitting it over long on without moving his feet.

If the above made no sense to you, let me summarize - I have some way to go before I can think of challenging Tiger Woods.

After about 3 hours and various muscles aching, we decided to return back and relax for the evening. Adrian had more spirit and continued. We got to Hachescher Markt and stopped to have a very late Lunch at the "Sixties" - Wonderful Enchilidas!!!

I was poofed by the time I reached home and hit the bed immediately.

I am ready for the next week.

Note: The pictures: Aditya taking a swing... Myself, Arti and Yury with the course in the background

"Convince Me"

“Convince Me” – the stentorian voice rang out through the class. Everyone, by now knows the originator of the voice.

James Rdderstrale and Kjell Nordstrom in their wonderful book, “Funky Business” writes

“To be successful in a world of improvisational theater, you have to ask yourself questions. You have to know yourself and your objectives. It is Management By Objectives for individuals. Defining yourself is the only means of creating a good life. This gives Leaders, anywhere in organizations, a new job. They must produce uncertainty. Real leaders challenge people. They do not control them. True leaders set people free”

When Casey says “Convince Me”, some respond by rolling eyes, some by smirking, some laugh off the challenge and a few indeed make an effort to convince. The ones who make an effort to convince come away knowing that they were right or they learn something better.

A river flows down the path of least resistance. It makes a decisive turn only when it is challenged. It is the same with people. Left to ourselves, we tend to seek our comfort zone. We find refuge in mediocrity and continue to wallow in what we are most comfortable in. We do not stretch the envelope.

In today’s world, if we do not stretch the limits and discover new skills and knowledge, we will be challenged by the future – the upstarts. We did this to the people before us. We had no time for them. We are now either ready for the new upstarts or be willing to fall by the way side. Our success will be decided by how we will respond to the challenge.

While we learn how to respond to a challenge, we also need know what the likely challenges are. It will be too late to wait for the challenge to be posed to you. It rather needs to originate from within- from within the person. Is what I am saying logical? Is it right? Can it be better? What are the downsides? At the core of these questions is the need to be coherent. A person expecting to lead an organization tomorrow needs to develop these skills to question onself.

Casey is a Canadian born in New Zealand. He has decided to take the middle path and has settled in Germany. He says that he has some Russian roots, but I do not want to go there. He is yet another member of Group Florence. He is just a few months older than I am, has more white hair than my father at 65 and talks more measured than my grandfather at 85. Having worked in Japan for over 10 years, I think it is understandable that he has aged. I got most of my white hair during the 2 years when I was managing Nissan Japan account sitting in India. This “85 year old” man, is a loving father of two kids, with the second being born just a few weeks back. He has a gift of drawing a story board for any presentation – knows what sells and what does not and most importantly, he will question you if you bullshit.

He transformed his “no smile, all work” persona by playing along with the “election” for the class manager. His “Casey on Fabian” video that brought his family into our class, was simply superb.

It was a wonderful 1.5 months being in the same team as Casey. He has set himself personal goals and has achieved some of that in our group but he still has 29 more to work on. Tomorrow, we split and move into different groups – I move from Group Florence to Group Eindhoven. Group Florence was excellent – Flavius, I had written about him earlier, Stefanie and Ambar besides Casey. We had some real fun, especially the last minute ILE presentation and the Marketing Plan (“Trust Me, I have it covered!!!”). These are fabulous MBA experiences.

Being Flavius Marcus

Someone asked a Fisherman from Romania to go to ESMT for an MBA and he did and he became Flavius Marcus to us. It is not easy to get your company to nominate you for an MBA but E.ON, one of ESMT’s founders, nominated Flavius ahead of his more favored colleagues and I guess they saw in this finance whiz a large potential.

I had the fortune to be in the same group with him – Group Florence – You will read about this later – for the first module. Full of energy and jokes, this man would not keep his energy or laugher down. He cracked us – Ambar, Stefanie, Casey and me – up with his many jokes and we understood a lot about the relationship between Hungarians and Romanians. Hey! His mentor is a Hungarian – now that would be interesting. He is a virtual superhero with the computer and could churn out web pages, photo shop images with absolute ease and be on top of all the courses. He would volunteer for all the assignments and I guess must be the only one who worked on all the assignments that we have ever done in Module 1. He cracked JP Molasses ( Decision Making – Assign 2) within a couple of hours while others spent days on that and drew the whole tree for Gillette. He was always bursting with ideas. You cannot ignore him when he is in the room. He is Flavius “The King” Marcus.

Cut the scene to the classroom and you meet Flavius “The Invisible Man” Marcus. He attributes this to being cold called during day 1 session 1 by Francis Bidault. He says that it upset his balance and he was never the same again. He usually had the case study handouts in Marketing and OB highlighted in all shades of color indicating he had actually read them (can you believe that?) and would infact explain the case studies to the rest of the group before the start of the class. But in class, he had no answer to say when a question was posed to him – This mental whiz and human dynamo switched itself off in class. The best was when he was asked a question by Michal (MicroEconomics) who later explained that it was the first time that he had ever cold called anyone. Sitting directly opposite to Flavius in class, I observed him take a deep breath, rock back in his chair, eyes rolled to look at the ceiling, lowered the gaze back to meet Michael, lean forward and reply “It depends…” While the class waited, he made a long pause. Michal followed “…and…??”. Flavius replied “….and ….” and explained something that made no sense. He later explained that he had switched off for 2 minutes while listening to Yury, and Michal thought he had to cold call for the first time in his life, picked the one guy who went into a trance for just that minute. As Flavius later remarked to me, people may forget the grades they ever got in the MBA but one thing they will definitely remember – the “It depends” of Flavius and I am doing my bit to record this for posterity.

I have one more week with this bubbling genius. Then we part company to move into our new groups for Module 2. This is a program where you make friends and I know I have one in Flavius. Hopefully he will figure out a way to untie his tongue in class and watch out guys, when he does that – the class will not be the same again.

Love Lifted me

Yesterday when we came for our refill of coffee during the short break of the afternoon session of accounting, two large boxes of apple pies were on the snacks table alongside the usual cornucopia of fresh fruits. Thanking the benevolent soul who deposited these for us, I dug into the delicious pies. I have a special weakness for pies. I remember all the varieties of pies that I had during Thanksgivings with the Harrissons in Haw River (NC, USA). Hmmm… Lovely… That was when someone read the writing on the cover of the boxes “Thought you should not have just a break … Tobias” (That is the best that I remember now of the actual writing but it contains the gist). Tobias??? Someone identified Tobias as our classmate Dorothea’s boyfriend. Hey, How thoughtful of Dorothea and Tobias to think about the whole class!!! So we turned to thank Dorothea for the pie we had devoured but she had no clue what we were talking about. This was a surprise to her also. Wow! A romantic gesture from Tobias to Dorothea and he spread this love to embrace the entire class of ESMT MBA 2008

Just a few hours before that, I had my usual tussle with T-com. They could not provide me with DSL but still wanted me to pay 45 Euros (for just the phone) as I had a 2 year contract with them. It required a lot of negotiation and persuasion from Fabian who was speaking for me to T-com, to get me out of this bind. There was no way that I could succeed in getting my way with my (lack of) German language skills. As I sat and watched him talk in German, not understanding a word, my eyes drifted to my watch as I saw the passing time and thought of the volumes of reading that I had to do. Fabian had his stuff to do as well and he was spending his time for me. Fabian was diligent to his task and kept moving from one operator to the next to sell my story for a contract cancellation. Here was someone who was taking up his precious time so that I could get my personal stuff done. Fabian had every right to feel grieved and had enough opportunities to hang up but he fought till the end and succeeded in cancelling the contract and he replied with a genuine smile when I thanked him, “Sure, Anytime”. Thanks Fabian, That was a love and friendship that is altruistic and the smile rested my concern if he was unhappy about his wasted time.

I returned home late at night and saw my wife, fighting a battle with her morning sickness that continued throughout the whole day. As she wearily smiled at me, weakened by the emptied stomach, I knew that she was bearing through all this in anticipation of our baby, our first baby. The pain that a mother is willing to suffer so that a baby could see the light of day, a love for a creature who has become precious even before it has stepped into this world – a mother’s love

As she smiled, wondering how my day was, I knew that I loved her and loved her a lot – a woman who would be by my side through thick and thin and I knew that she loved me and loved me a lot – a deep love that exists only between a husband and a wife. This is not a love that can be explained.

I have truly been blessed to be able to see these dimensions of love in a single day. These are experiences that make each day special. In the tempest of what a one year MBA program is, these experiences work to build a well rounded personality.

Kenny Rogers croons in his famous song
“Love lifted me,
love lifted me
When nothing else would do
You know, love lifted me”

How True, I need all the love to support me as I move through this year.

Friedman, I want your job

One week gone into my MBA and I have some tired eyes and a strained ankle to show for the week. Not much in terms of achievement but the knock into an MBA has been pretty smooth. The one week of orientation before the actual start of classes ( I did not blog about that...) really got us into the groove for the actual classes

The key lessons learnt
a) Mondays are better than Fridays at B-Schools - What a jerk statement but that is true, all the sleep deprivation during the week, makes each passing day of the week worse. AT work, I could slow down and look forward to teh weekend but at B-Schools, you know that you cannot let down your guard and also with all the strained effort at keeping your weary eyes open, you really need to make up for the previous week during the weekend, than to relax for the next week and doing a One year MBA with all the cramped schedule does not help.

b) Class Participation is balloney - atleast till I figure out how that is measured. What difference does it make, if you are the first in class to blurt out the answer to a factual question whcih is anyways recorded in the Case hand out. Maybe it is just serves as a means to help you keep your eye lids open. I feel the class participation is more appropriate to measure when an inference from the Case Study is made or maybe a live example is cited, not when it is a straight lift off from the Case Study. As I had said in my previous posts, I need to figure this out yet and I hope I do not figure this out the hard way :(

c) The essential aspect of a student life in Germany - shopping at IKEA can be injurious to health in more ways than one. After spending nearly the whole Saturday walking the aisles of IKEA with my wife, I was left with an inflammation of the Achilles Heel - I have my left foot bandaged , making me looking pretty banged up, with all the sleep deprivation. And to top it all, this weekend was screwed till I finally could not take it any more and went to the Charitie Hospital and got a pretty doctor to give me a few painkillers. Anyways, I am way behind my study schedule ... I am here for the experience, not the grades :)

d) Time is a premium and if you want to write a blog, you just do it....

I am proud that I could get this blog post in the state that I am in. I want Thomas Friedman's job

Day 2 and there are butterflies

Today was just one of those days, you just have to live with. I had two classes - Microeconomics and Marketing ... the two courses being typically a study in contrast - one being a little heavy and the other full of energy. So, it is surprising that I went through the two courses with almost the same emotions - heavy.

Microeconomics - The prof decided to go slow today as this was just the beginning and it did seem like the course needs to speed up but then, if it did, I am not sure if I will have the stomach for that. I am excited about Microeconomics - that is my kind of course - cold and rational. But I go back to the days in IIT when I did the Economics course, the only course ( maybe the only other course besides Maths IV) that I regreted. The course was all screwed up, I had three faculty in a one semester course - we had facultys leave our batch like dead flies. At the end, we were combined with another batch and there was a hotch potch and I do not remember even hearing a word in the class and the only that I remember is sitting in one of the back benches with about 60 people, all doing our own things. In this class, only the first two rows had people looking at the teacher and there were about 5 empty rows between the second row and the rest of the class, and the teacher did not seem to bother. All that matterred to us was to get the attendance. So for the course, All that I did was to read Samuelson the day before the exam and I thought I was pretty brilliant as an economist but I did not score enough in my grades as I would have liked and I have not figured out why. Of course if I had studied, it would have helped, but I am still not sure when my answers were wrong and I think that is the problem with Economics - though it is supposed to be cold and rational, interpretation for outcome is determined by the faculty. If there are absolute answers, why is the world not a better place - how can anything be absolute. I have a bad feeling that this would happen again unless I hit the books real hard and I should, as this course is only for a few weeks and I will not have time to make up later.

I have always had problems with Marketing. The problem with Marketing is that there are NO absolute answers but what is important is that you need to be cock sure that what you are saying is RIGHT. I have a problem with that. I do not like to use absolute terms when I know that there are other probabilities. I think this is one subject where how you influence the answer is more important than the answer itself. I had a feeling for that in todays class but Iam a fighter and I guess I have learnt it today and I will be more ready and work on a little more on my communication style.

Hmmm... This is getting interesting

One day and wiser for it.

'Human Life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which are bad is that in any given situation we can only make one decision, we are not granted a second, third or fourth life in which to compare various decisions' - Milan Kundera

This was an interesting quotation put up by our Decision Analysis prof, Francis. How do I know if I have made the right decision in coming to esmt. The answer is that I will never know, just as every choice that I make along my life. What if, I had chosen to give my job application to Citibank or to Infosys or to KPMG instead of Satyam, would I have been sitting here. Am I happier here, rather than at, say, Mckinsey? I do not know since that case would never again come. The issue is not the decision that is taken but the future that is in front of the decision. A decision is made on what the future holds but after that there should be no second thoughts. As Jack Welsh would say, you make great leaps to bring about Paradigm shifts. If you lose, you cut your losses and you move forward, not agonising over how things could have been if the decision had been different.

Back to the decision on ESMT, after being exposed to my colleages and to the professors here, I have no reasons to look back on the decision. I am glad that I made te choice based on all the information that I have and I know I will not regret this. Now, this will mark a closure to thedoubts if any that I may have, as evidenced in my first couple of blog postings. So, this is my life and I move forward.

Not a bad learning for first day in school.

My first day back in School - OB

Not bad, I am back and still in one piece. I am impressed with myself for having done well, after so many years of professional life. The key will be to sustain it over the whole year. But I know, I am here for the learning and Learning I will.

We discussed the Jack Welsh case study in the Organizational Behavior (OB) class. A very interesing question popped up, would Jack Welsh have been as successful in Europe as he was in the US.? The answers were predictable, it talked about the Workers Council and Union issues in Europe, making it difficult for Jack Welsh to work miracles in Europe. I think the question should be different, Would Jack Welsh be successful in Europe as he was in the US? and my answer is 'YES'. If Jack Welsh is a good leader, he will know what works andwhat does not and that is the hallmark of a good leader. A quotation from today when he was asked what he would differently, his answer was that he did not move fast enough initially. One way of interpreting this would be to think of him taking time to explore what he could get away with and when he realised that, he could get real fast.

Where am I taking this response? If Jack Welsh were to manage a company in Europe, he would have modified his approach enough to see what fits Europe and then he would go the whole way as it takes for him to transform the company to be a world beater. It will not be the same as what GE is today, but it would still be a world beater. An example inpoint is Carlos Ghosn when he went to work in Japan on Nissan. What he eventuallydid in terms of breaking up the Supplier cartel, aggressively advocating Layoffs, etc are not practiced in a close fisted Japanese business culture. But he became a legand, a comic super hero and post Ghosn, even the flagship Japanese company, SONY had a non Japanese boss. People respect what is achieved and if Jack Welsh were to achieve in Europe, I am sure that he would have been given the mandate to go the distance (or maybe a little less than in the US). Imagine what that would have done to the face of European Business.

Closer to the turf - What Thatcher did in UK was unthinkable before or for that matter what Sarkovsky (when he gets time off from his girl friend) is trying to achieve in France. These require leaders who can cause paradigm shifts. People may not accept the neutron Jack but then he may not be a neutron Jack in Europe, he may be someone else who still created a World Beater Business.

The difference is that leaders are leaders regardless of the culture they are in. The true leaders can make the rules work for them.

The D- Day 21 Jan 2008

Today is the start of my classes at ESMT. I await with a excitement and fear as to what the future holds. Right now, I am not thinking of life in 2009, post ESMT but the life in 2008, life in EMST. I had a small inkling yesterday - a Sunday, the day before the classes

I finally got an apartment near my school on Friday, after a week of living like a nomad in Berlin. I read the course materials and did not see any pre reads for the Monday classes. So, I spent Saurday at IKEA to find stuff to furnish my apartment. I did not buy much, there is no way that I can do that when my wife is not there. It is her RIGHT to decide the furniure and i think that is right too - she has better taste than I do and possibly that will be a good practice for the time when we do buy our own house and need to furnish it. So, most of Saurday went into furniture watching. I slept in late on Sunday, went to mass and walked around a bit to see the places. I finally decided that I should go into school and catch up on emails and a few personal stuff. Boy, am I glad!!!

The studyrooms were filled, there were people sitting and reading stuff. I thought they were out to go one up on their classmates and I was okay with that. It is better that they are better prepared so that I can learn more from them. That is when Stefano, who was sitting in my study room, started talking about something in Decision Analysis and some survey to be done. I was scared, I rushed through the course work and I realised that for the DEcision Analysis, here were a few things to be read. I quickly glanced through what I need to read and Phew! It was not much. SO, I read through Cricinfo and savored India beating Australia at WACA and read about the BCCI decision to drop Ganguly and Dravid for the ODIs against Aus and SI. That was crap! Anyways, I had my bases covered and I also did read some stuff regarding using the Excel - no, I have used Excel through all my Professional life and actually that was all thatz I used, besides Word of course during the last 4 years, but there is still lots to learn. As I was slowly finishing up and thinking about where to go for Dinner, someone walks into the room and talks about a CAse Study about Jack Welsh. Crap! what was that. It is a pre read for Organizational Behavior (OB). SHoot! I decided there is no way I was going to read this sitting here and I picked p the Case STudy and decided to go home and read.

AT Home, drifting between sleep and wakenness, I read the Harvard case study which looked like a copy paste from one of his books. There were a few questions that I needed to answer, I readt hose questions and just above them was another Pre Read, Chapter 1 from 'Essentials of Organizational Behavior' by Stephen P. Rbbins and Timothy A. Judge (Robbins). SHoot! I had left the book at school. SO, Now, I was fully awake! I quickly analysed the Jack Welsch Case Study and set the alarm for 6 am . I did not need the alarm to wake up and rushed through my morning chores and was in School by 7:15 am. Picked up the book, fearing the unknown - maybe 40 pages to read. Thankfully hat was the introducory chapter and did no take much time to read and you can see, gave me enough time to type in this blog.

So, I start my classes in 30 minutes. Ihave 5 course in the first module
MicroEconomics - Michal Grajek
Organizational Behavior - Konstantin Korotov
Decision Making - Francis de Vericourt
Introduction to marketing - Erik Schlie
Accounting - Jochen Zimmermann

Wish me luck!