ISB - A life beyond words

What's in a name? ... that too in a MBA - ISB?

2010-12-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

Well for once this post is not about how ISB as a brand adds value to your resume yada yada yada (it does).

This post is not about how the name of the school or the institute from where you have done your education and / or MBA matters etc. That debate we can save for a later date.

This post my dear friends is about our name (at least mine) and what kind of impact it has. While on campus and even today when I go to the ISB campus I land up meeting the sexily named Chopras, Mittals, Goenkas, Shahs, Sharmas, Kalras, Kumars, Reddys, etc etc and I suddenly squirmed at the "Yadav" tag in my name.

Now before you start thinking I am not proud of my name etc etc, let me set the record straight. I am too narcissist to not like anything that I am associated with including my name. So I do say with "garv" that I am "Yadav, Amit Yadav" and then follow it up with a "How you doin?" (This is where I failed most of my job interviews).

But me and another of my dear friend from my batch "Nishant Pandey" had this conversation once on the campus during the placement season. We discussed what kind of a mental image will the recruiter conjure up in his / her mind when they read the name "Yadav" or a "Pandey" on the resume. Will they think of a suit clad smart looking professional or a village baboon sitting on a buffalo and talking about strategy. This was a discussion in jest and now thinking back I think this surely would have been when Nishant was trying to console me when I did not make one of the shortlists. We laughed about it and also ideated about whether it makes sense to actually add a picture of ours to the resume (I know it would have been more detrimental in hindsight)

But that discussion did linger on in my mind for quite some time and every time I now get a resume in front of me I consciously try to gauge if there is a bias that is creeping in because of the name. Another thing that we experienced during the "Gender and Leadership" sessions in ISB - You will always have biases and can never be unbiased. The trick is to be aware of your biases when you are making decisions. The prof (I forget her name) also said that if you ever get rid of your biases you will lose your sixth sense.

....... coming back to the point....... I did eventually get a job and so did Nishant and both of us are doing pretty well in our industries and roles. We did not notice any bias against any name during the process but the thought of me being pictured by some recruiter as a "typical" Yadav (don't ask what that means) was pretty funny.

In conclusion, there is nothing in the name : you may be a Yadav, Pandey, Fernandes, Goenka, Mittal, etc, your employer will still make the mistake of hiring you :)

Does your Job have a Future?

2010-12-02T19:45:00.000-08:00

Ever since I read the book "Who Moved My Cheese" I have always been wondering if my Job is actually the next cheese which may be moved? (Hope not)

Being in the outsourcing / offshoring industry (IT and now BPO) I have always thought that the biggest risk to my job and profile is the economic, political and military stability of India. If someday there is an eminent and real threat to any of these, then the whole offshoring industry in India can actually collapse leaving my job in jeopardy. I wonder what my back up plan would be? Where else can I contribute with whatever perceived skills I posses?

One of the key reasons for me to opt for an MBA was to actually minimize that risk a little more and make my skills "transferable" between industries. I had hoped to be part of the core industry post my MBA but for a variety of reasons did not (rather could not). However I wish to test the waters one day and confirm if my skills and my education actually help me traverse into some other industry. For this very same reason I had applied to multiple non offshoring jobs on the campus, got shortlisted and even got interviewed at a few places. This indeed boosted my confidence that what I bring to the table may be valued outside the offshoring and outsourcing world too. However being heavily risk averse at that time decided to land up back in the Offshoring MNC world.

One of the key parameters that I keep tracking these days is that how "real" is the future of the offshoring world?

While I maybe pondering on the future of my job, here are the 10 jobs which may actually be in jeopardy.

Disappearing Jobs: 10 High-Paying Careers with No Future

This one is even more interesting (Damn - one of them is my DREAM Role

Top 5 Highly-Paid But Useless Corporate Jobs

NEGA - Negotiation Analysis -Did it help?

2010-03-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

Scenario::Placement Season
Day 9 -
One of my friends has not yet found a company and a role that he is comfortable working with.

Then he finds a company and a role that he loves. He talks to the interview panel and they forward his profile to someone who they think he will work with if given an employment. They both connect have an amazing discussion on the possibilities and their interests. They share a lot in common professionally (Both from IIT, Both MBAs, Both analytically inclined, Both Data oriented). My friend is told that someone will get back to him on the next steps. My friend is very happy and so are we all. However there is no news after that. Complete silence. I finally call up the company HR and ask what the issue is and am informed that they are not making him an offer. On further enquiries I find out that the company feels he is asking for too much (is there something like asking for too much in ISB? :) ). I ask the company to forget the salary negotiations and give me a sense of what they feel about the candidate. They said he was an amazing fit for them, and explained to me the role they were offering him. This role was exaclty what my friend was looking for. So I asked them what they were ready to offer and they quoted figure "X" which was a just a little under what my friend was looking for. The company agreed to take the salary a few notches up and my friend was elated to take the offer.

Later I asked him what went wrong in the salary negotiations and he said that he remembered the Negotiation Analysis class and wanted to anchor high. But I think he slept through the part where Prof Kamdar said that while anchoring ensure that you are not driving away the other party.

My experience because of Negotiation Analysis has been very different and nice.

Negotiation Skills -they surely helped a lot during all the contract negotiations that we have had over the past 2 years. Whenever wehave reached an impasse, some of the skills acquired during the class has helped me a lot. There was this one time when the client was not ready to pay for additional capacity that was required to complete the work and we found it impossible to function without the additional. Capacity. We ended up breaking the discussion up into smaller components and making it a menu based pricing model.

Does an MBA help grow?

2010-03-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

There has always been a debate on how helpful an MBA is.

Many successful CEOs and Business magnates have not been MBAs. This is an oft quoted arguement against linking MBA to becoming a CEO.

However now the authors of the Harvard Business Review article ranking the world’s top 100 CEOs recently wrote in BusinessWeek that their research has led them to conclude that MBAs make better CEOs than non-MBAs.

Some interesting finds from that article (entire article worth a read)

While analyzing the performances of 1,999 top CEOs, Herminia Ibarra, Morten T. Hansen, and Urs Peyer were able to obtain the educational records of 1,109 of them. Of this group, fewer than one-third were MBAs. But the MBA minority had some impressive stats on their side:

CEOs holding an MBA ranked an average of 40 places higher in the list
CEOs with MBAs had average shareholder returns of 93 percent, compared to 81 percent for non-MBAs
100 of the MBAs reached CEO by age 50, compared to only 40 in the non-MBA group
Five out of the top 10 CEOs attended MBA programs (though only four graduated)

Why the MBA advantage?

The researchers offer a bit of speculation as to why the MBA can be a CEO’s “magic” ingredient. Here are a few ideas:

MBAs have better skills, adding “right-brain creativity and warmth to left-brain logic and financial acumen. Or vice versa. It can even help get the hard and soft skills working together,” they write.
MBAs’ networks “pay out” during their entire career
MBAs are more willing to work on themselves and are open to new ideas
MBAs develop broader perspectives

Post ISB Job ---- Money or Role or Location or Post or Brand or Boss?????

2010-03-01T05:46:00.000-08:00

The pertinent and age old question is always "What to look for in a Job? - Money or Role or Location or Post or Brand or Boss?"

I had this question when I was preparing for my MBA and most prominently felt this same question staring at me while preparing for the Placements Season in ISB. There were the normal voices of sanity which spoke of a long term career and the choice of role. There were the "practical" voices of saying that you have to get a decent salary first because you have this large loan waiting to be repaid. Everyone finally spoke of the long term career but somewhere inside were still thinking of what would be the salary on offer.

I am still confused on what the right answer is. Of late when I have been looking for a change myself these questions came back to haunt me. It was nearly 2 years after my Placement anxiety but the feeling was the same. So basically this question I have decided is not meant to be answered at all. It finally just figures out by itself.

But one thought I will leave you all for sure, and that is from the Negotiation Analysis class which I think is critical. The anchoring that you have in a negotiation is very critical and for every job post ISB your current salary is that anchoring figure. Hence what you "get" out of ISB IS important. Money does matter. Other things matter as well but remember that do get a good salary out of ISB. It helps !!!!

More on how I made my decisions later (Fooled by Randomness)

How the MBA Helped - Peer Group Working

2009-12-25T19:34:00.000-08:00

One thing which I have constantly noticed working with different people across the spectrum (within my organization or with that of the clients), that many of them know how to work with their superiors, most of them think they know how to work with the people who report into them, but very few people have the knack and the maturity of working with peers. And more often than not I have found people who have this ability are those who have had that experience in the past and have worked under pressure situations with people having differing skills.

This is where I also noticed that individuals who had done their MBA from top B Schools, had this opportunity during the course of their MBA. I also found that my experience at ISB helped me immensely in this aspect personally. Experience in ISB has been the most humbling experience for me ever. I went to the school thinking I was God's gift to humanity and surprisingly found out that there were more than 400 better gifts in the school. To top that I was paired with 4 individuals from differing backgrounds and an average experience of less 2 years in comparison to 8 years of mine. But when we all worked in a team for all of our assignments for 6 months (and then later in different groups as well), it was one of the most difficult times for each one of us. We all thought that our POV was the most logical and accurate. We all thought that there is just one correct answer. We took more pains to explain our POV and how that was accurate than listening to what the other person was saying. Our first case study on Splash Marketing took us more than 30 hours and 3 big fights to reach any conclusion. (By the time we were in our last days, a case study never took more than 30 minutes). The journey from that case study where we all were trying to prove ourselves to the time where we all understood that in business there is no one correct answer and that those differing voices of others not only ought to be heard but also ought to be accepted.

The experience of working in many diverse peer groups in ISB has surely helped me a lot and thus makes it easier for me to work in that kind of environment / projects / meetings where there is no hierarchy, where you cannot escalate to someone and look for a solution, where you cannot just muscle your way or throw the weight of your position around. ISB has been unique in that sense because of the diversity that the school ensures and the spread of experience that the class has.

One more thing that I learnt while doing my MBA with ISB...... seems abstract but is very tangible in experience.

2008-12-27T12:46:00.000-08:00

Pricing - One of the things I learnt at ISB

2008-12-26T12:39:00.001-08:00

Albeit a brief aberration in my student life, I was pretty sure that I have come to ISB to venture back into the Services Outsourcing industry or venture into the Retail industry, basically to leverage my past experience. Hence I was very clear in some of the topics that I wanted to learn.

Amongst them, learning some basics of Marketing was on top of the list. I always wanted to equip myself with the basic tools of Marketing and the MBA did help me in that. As I said in my previous post I will try to list down how an MBA has helped me in my job. Here is one example (not completely representative but pretty close)

As part of my current role our clients were looking to optimize their outsourcing contract with us and wanted our views on how we can assist them in deriving maximum value from us. This is where the idea of moving from a FTE (Full time Employee) based pricing to a TXP - Transaction Based Pricing was toyed with. We ended up proposing a very nice working model of the this approach which helped our clients pay only as and when they use our services and not pay for the extra bandwidth. This will give them a chance to save the dollars they were spending on the unutilized bandwidth. We on the other hand will get a good forecast of the revenue ahead and will help us drive our productivity better

My learnings at ISB really helped me during all of this amazing exercise. The Constrained Optimization principles helped in determining the Transaction Price. The Principles of Value based pricing (versus Cost Plus Pricing) helped us tie the actual benefits to the client. This also gave our client a clear price to charge back to its business users and gain more transparency. This was one assignment where I really put to use the various principles that I learnt in ISB proving once again that the time invested in ISB was worth it.

Anand's Answers to my Questions

2008-12-26T12:36:00.000-08:00

While I have been posting the quintessential question of how an MBA helps, there have already been a few who have shared their perspective on the same.... So here is the take from my fellow CA + MBA friend. Enjoy

Back from Dormancy - ISB Solstice effect?

2008-12-25T23:02:00.001-08:00

I decided to act on my New Year Resolution ...... so my first post (or Question) on Life After ISB

....the story shall move on

2008-03-07T19:13:00.000-08:00

If Looney Spam can spam .... I mean "blog" or "Brag" why should I be far behind?
So welcome to Looney Spam and I hope to revive my writing skills once again :)

ISB - Stats with Bob Stine

2007-05-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

Our Statistics professor for the first half of the First Term was Robert Stine - one of the wittiest person I have ever met.

One day when he was teaching in the class and someone's cell phone rang. He just blurted "Say Hi to Mom" in the middle of whatever he was saying and carried on as if nothing happened.

Here are some of the funniest one liners that he used in his class - courtesy Deepak

What is this life at ISB?

2007-05-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

Today when I came home in the afternoon and saw my daughter watch the squirrels play in the jungle behind my accomodation at ISB, I felt sad.

Till that time, I had never noticed the squirrels who are my immediate neighbours. It reminded me of the W.H. Davies poem - Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

So goes the life at ISB - and still you do not get the greatest grades :-(

Why MBA ? Why ISB ?

2007-05-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Of late I am receiving a lot of queries on whether people with 8+ years of experience (or 7+) do MBA? Whether ISB is the best place for it? Is not IIM A better?

Doing MBA or not is a very personal decision and the reasons why one would take up business education in his / her career will differ. Hence I (or for that matter anyone) cannot give a concrete answer on whether MBA will help in any career or not.

I would rather pen down the reasons and the logic why I chose to do MBA at this stage and why ISB:

My take on this was very simple.

In IT (from where I came) nowadays position (leadership) is more a function of time than anything else. However that is the same reason why we see so many not so deserving candidates getting positions of power and authority more because there is no alternative (I call it the TINA factor).

Business Management requires to have a holistic picture and the decision making has to be in line with that holistic view. For example, I as an Engagement Manager may feel that continuing work in my current account is the best option, without realizing that I may not be adding value to the organization. I may also as a manager hold on to resources and under utilize them rather than release them for more productive and profitable use. I have worked under some of the best managers and have also seen some not so good apples in the industry.

I have seen so many PLs, PM, and Relationship managers who have no clue if their project is doing good or not (in financial terms, customer satisfaction etc). Many times I had to explain to people in leadership position that we are here to make money PERIOD. Many managers do not understand the importance of margins, up sell, cross sell etc. I being a CA always viewed everything from a financial angle (which is a myopic view as well). I realized that I am missing the holistic picture.

There were two ways to mitigate that gap. Read up or Go back to School. For me Go Back to School was a better option because I wanted to learn in the right fashion and understand the concepts and perspectives. The next question was - Full time or Part time - and the answer for me was Full Time - If this (managing) is what I intend to do going forward I cannot take half measures. The next question was One Year or Two Years - I decided for one year because I think the 8 years of exp has given me the basics on which I can build up. The final decision to choose ISB was simple. It is the best school in its category across the world. The visiting faculty profiles are great !!

Hence I thought that I do not want to become an incomplete manager. If I want to lead or manage I need to have all the right tools.

ISB was my first choice and here I am.

You all too need to do some more thinking on why you want to MBA and then make the choice. I was also helped immensely by others in this decision making. The decision took 2 years to materialize. So it was not something that suddenly popped up in my head and I jumped into it.

MBA can make sense at any level as long as it makes sense to you.

Dunking Anthem @ ISB

2007-05-28T08:16:00.001-07:00

Not me Not Me I cired aloud.
The folks are unforgiving.
They Pulled me out

They threw me , they dunked me
when I tried to flee
for once I was basking
in the wet Glee !

OK OK - why this sudden rush of poetic justice you ask.....

That is because Prakriti has penned down an amazing Dunking Anthem over here (and it is far far better than the one written above)

It all comes together at ISB

2007-05-28T04:04:00.000-07:00

When I had a look at some of the subjects in the first term, I was amazed and a bit confused as to why we have to learn half of this.

But the way things are taught and the way the curriculum is planned it all comes together at the end.

The Statistical concepts of Std Error, Confidence Intervals, Simple and Multiple Regressions have been useful

in Marketing assignments to understand the market responses
in Accounting in understanding forecasting to an extent
in Economics to understand the way Game theory works

The Economics concepts of Demand, Supply, Perfect competition, Monopoly, Oligopoly, Pricing in different Market Structures, Marginal Analysis have been useful

in Marketing to understand Branding, Positioning, Pricing, segmentation etc
in Accounting to understand how financial statements are read

The Marketing concepts of Branding, Pricing, Market Segments, Positioning have been useful

in Economics to understand Bundling, Pricing and Game Theory
in Accounting to understand the concept of amortization

The Accounting concepts have been helpful to understand the overall financial implications of all of the above.

When these professors are for example talking about Bundling (in Eco, Stats and Marketing) it feels like they had a chat the evening before and decided to ride on each others concepts. Sometimes the jokes also feel as if they are related.

So it all comes together in the end and I think the key over here is to step back and realize the beauty of all this, rather than keep running to stay ahead in the race (read grades). Grades must follow (easier said than done)

If we have come here to learn the nuances of business, the idea is that we should be able to relate whatever we were doing in those terms. I have promised myself that I will relate everything that I have learnt or experienced in the corporate world to the concepts that I am learning here. Hopefully that will be a post someday.

Game Theory @ ISB

2007-05-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

Prof Bruce Allen who shows us around the amusement park known as Economics in his fun filled but fast paced ride, taught us the Game Theory last week.

The Cournot
The Nash Equilibrium (I understood the Bar scene in The Beautiful Mind - in that lecture)
The Prisoner's dillema
etc etc

Now I am trying to relate this to the 'games' that we were playing in our Marketing Class. In our Marketing Class the Class participation (speaking and adding value in the class) is graded and thus there is a payoff for speaking in the class (as long as you make sense).

As per the Game Theory we all in the class were competitors who had a decision to make:

Should I speak or not? Do I have a valid point or not?

If I speak and do not have a valid point then others will counter me and I may lose out on the Class Participation (or so I thought at that time).

So many times, I think I held up my thoughts more because of shyness (now being in Business school you can call it Game Theory :))

.... now why am I writing all this at 2 am?
....... I need sleep
..........I need a life
..............I need a vodka maybe :)

ISB Info Sessions

2007-05-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

Today, I was called upon to help out in the ISB Student Info Sessions and take the ISB Aspirants around the campus for a tour.

It was a nostalgic experience in many ways when I saw all the aspiring ISBians asking the same questions that I had over the past year and a half. Some questions cannot be answered by anyone else and some can be.

Hopefully I was able to do justice to the questions that students asked and gave them a realistic view of the process and what to expect.

Again there was a spate of questions which I cannot answer. I cannot tell a person if his profile is good enough for an interview call and I may have disappointed a few when I said that. But finally if I say that the profile is good, they may still not get in or the vice versa.

I hope each one of them puts the best foot forward and that the best get in !!!!

Mid Terms as ISB

2007-05-26T17:31:00.000-07:00

Well Well Well

The Mid Terms for the first term at ISB are now over and everyone is thankful for it. So much that it took me one week to post it as well :)

The grades are out as well and there are a few surprises. I scored below average in Economics and I think that is because I was heavily underprepared. But I think I have all the concepts right and thus am not fretting my life over it.

Before I could even finish this post the email reminds me that the next exam, the Term End is next week. So Good bye and have a nice week you non ISBians.

ISB - Some Pertinent Questions

2007-05-26T17:13:00.000-07:00

There are some pertinent questions that all aspirants to ISB (or maybe any B-School) have:

Is my Profile Good enough to get shortlisted in ISB?
Will I get through to ISB?
What can I do to improve my profile to get into ISB?
What GMAT Score is good enough for my Profile or what is the minimum for ISB?

and I think once a person is near selection or is selected

What is the payoff for this ISB - MBA?
What salary can I expect in the placements at ISB?
Is it worth it?

The funny and the frustrating part of this exercise is that you can easily guess the answers to these questions yourselves.

"IT DEPENDS"

This, I am sure, is true of any Business School and any profile. There obviously are some of the general concepts that you should know about.

ISB values its diversity a lot. What it cannot make up in the international diversity it makes up in its profile diversity. We have more than 10 doctors (experienced Surgeons etc), 60+ CAs who have diverse experience themselves, IIT Engineers with wonderful backgrounds, Journalists, Economists, Entrepreneurs, Consultants etc etc. Thus if you can add to this diversity then you are always welcome. However this does not mean that if you have a background that very few on this planet may have you have an automatic entry (the other criteria of Leadership ability, Need to do a MBA, recommendations etc are required)

This also does not mean that male IT Engineers are shooed away as is the common misconception. Nearly 50% of the batch is from a IT Background. But you still need to distinguish yourself from others and remember that the competition is tough.

I hope one day I get the time to write about what I think one should do to stand out in this competition. (My views obviously)

Grow up guys @ ISB

2007-05-13T03:29:00.000-07:00

ISB is an amazing place and I have met amazing people here. So much so that I feel like a drop in the ocean.

But then all carts have their bad apples or all good apples too have bad days. Similarly, in ISB, we are seeing some really childish behaviour over some petty matters. People are sending long emails and washing their linen in Public.

I feel like asking all of them to help me with my Statistics problems, because all of them seem to be well ahead in their studies (else they wont have the time to spend on writing emails)

Anyways, got to go back to studies.

Life at ISB - Hectic to the Core

2007-05-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

Life so far ....... hectic to the core

One week gone - 51 more to go.

It has been a roller coaster so far, but I am enjoying it.......... at least philosophically.

On the Grades front, it has been a mixed bag

I got 6 out of 8 for Class Participation (which is basically shooting your mouth off in the class --- on a serious note it means how effectively are you contributing to the learning exp in the class ) - this is above average score I got 5 out of 5 in the first Eco Quiz and 2.5 out of 5 in the second eco quiz - these two are so far above average scores
Our group got 57 out of 63 in our first eco assignment (again above average)

The group assignments are funny, because the egos and the so called "leadership qualities" of people are showing up.

We are a group of 5 ( for the first 6 months we are more or less a team)
1 - an IIT engineer with 3 years of Infy exp - brilliant chap - absolutely
2 - a BITS Pilani engineer with 4 years of Kanbay exp
3 - an economics graduate with 2 years of exp in Ernst and Young Consulting
4 - a CA with 3 years of exp in Banking (Lending to SMEs) - fun loving

They are wonderful team . Most of them (including me) have worked in teams with a hierarchy and with at least one boss. Here it is completely a flat structure. So it gets funny sometimes and someone ends up moderating . I think things will settle down in a couple of weeks once we know each other well.

Most of the assignments are Group assignments and thus it will be fun working with these brilliant minds.

Happy weekend at ISB

2007-05-12T20:25:00.000-07:00

Happy weekend at ISB - The Indian School of Business

I know that there is still one more day to go in the week.

But that is how it is over here. We have lectures only from Mon - Thu. Cool isn't it?

Now that is where the fun ends, because the last 3 days of the week are more jam packed than the first four. There are tonnes of assignments which take your day and night. (just as a relief I thought of writing to you at 4:52 am). The amount of pre read that we have is so much that if I could maintain this reading speed for 2 months I can read all books in TCS library.

Anyways, core Term 1 has begun and life is hectic beyond doubt. The class hours are ok but that is all. Nothing else is close to OK. But I am not complaining because the professors are amazing. The guy who teaches us Statistics is a world renowned author and his books are used around the world as a textbook.

I have Marketing, Accounts (Basic), Managerial Economics and Statistics for this term (5 weeks). I have been given 'exemption' from Basic Accounting only if I submit a research (independent study) paper by end of the term. I am going for that option. I have decided the topic of Valuation of Brands. Let's see how it goes. I thought that rather than attending the classes and showing off in front of non CAs why not take something different. Anyways, I have taken the year off for studying so want to utilize this to learn something. It would have been far easier to sit in the class and top the same (Grade A) but where is the fun in that. So I will be graded based on the Paper that I submit. There are other CAs too who have taken this option.

I am finding it difficult to cope up with Statistics, but hope to catch on.

Amruta (my wife) and Sai (my kiddo) are doing fine. I think they stay somewhere close by because I do bump into them every now and then :-)

Thats all for now -

@mit