Tales from Indraprastha

If you didn’t already know, Delhi used to be the Capital of the Pandavas ( Indraprastha ).

I love cities which have a history ( story ) about them. I liked Hyderabad for the same reason. ( notwithstanding the biriyani’s of course! )
So when I enter the swanky Delhi Metro station at Connaught Place and stare at the display boards with neon signs announcing “ Indraprastha “ , “ Dwarka “ etc – it gives a different , ‘back-to-the-future’ kind of feeling. Keep the metro as is, but take the clock back 5000 years : What do you get ? Men and women getting off chariots to get into the Metro ! LOL

My take on the Delhi Metro : It Rocks !! Public transport in India is really looking up these days – it is almost as if, you are being rewarded for having had to put up with all the dirty bus-stands and foul smelling train compartments for so many years. ( I am suddenly reminded of a school teacher of mine ( ‘TGS’? ) who hated (train) travel so much – and she taught geography ! )

Since I am in India – the Metro is bound to be crowded…err, VERY crowded. It is a tautology so – we’ll let it pass. But still, we are talking of escalators right up to the road man ! Jai Hind !

I wonder if it was the British who introduced the Metro concept. So, we owe it to them, just as we do the language. Ah, let me talk more about our language : No, not the National language - but something that binds us even closer as Indians - ‘Indian English’ !!

And if you are the observant Metro traveler like me ;), you cannot help but smile when this announcement is made ,

“ Please note that pickpocketers have been identified at various points in the Metro and station area “.

Oh really ! Congratulations for identifying them…so, do you plan to do anything now , let them hang around and have a nice time?!?
The Hindi announcement is flawless though – “ …Jaeb-khatron .. hone ki aashankha hai..’ [ ‘Shankha’ for suspicion…]

And then there is another sign board with the classic misplaced modifier :)
“ Please keep children on lap below 3 feet “

Well, well – most people’s laps are hardly a feet long –imagine someone with a 3 feet long lap ! LOL


While I am on the topic, let me talk about the other day when I walked into Palika Bazaar. As I ambled in the underground market place which has a population density of 10 people per square foot , I heard someone call out in a gruff voice , “ Come, Come , Chudidaar “ !
D-UH ? Like Russel Peters ,I thought … ‘Somebody’s gonna get a hurt real baaad…’
But no, it was some earnest guy trying to woo a foreigner to look at his clothes collection – haha. ‘ Come , Come Chudidaar ‘. The exact words.

The curious thing about marketplaces is that they create a non-existant need in you and force you to make a hole in your pockets. So, out of nowhere - I had this desire to purchase a leather belt. Off goes the seller to me, “ Yes, Bradher , tell me Bradher “..I silence him in Hindi. And begin to look at samples. Goodness! you should see the way they do business , they are so quick and do such a good job at convincing you. We should invite these guys for our business fest – they’ll definitely have a thing or two to teach us.

So, before I could realize what was going on – he had measured my waist, made appropriate holes , put the belt in a cover and thrust it onto my hand. Clearly annoyed by this impudence, I made it known that I had still not decided on the purchase. Guess what - he mistook my indecision to be my strategy for getting the ‘true’ value out of him. So , we went haggling and he began quoting lower and lower prices until he came down to 275 bucks ( from 450 ! ) . I decided to stop – went ahead , bought it…( ‘Special Price for you Brather’ ).

And that’s how I became a ‘proud’ owner of a GUCCI . heh.

3.3 for Consult

[ No Explanations offered if any solicited :) ]

Beaming in the auditorium, sat the two hundred odd rats
Fancying their shiny Blue coats , they sat contended
The race, it was all over : Veni , Vidi , Vici !
Oh, how wrong they were ! For somewhere out of the corner was that whisper -
' 3.3 for Consult 3.3 for Consult '

No , the Real Race was about to START
Off went their shiny Blue coats - it didn't matter for the Real Race
Some rats winced, some rats cried foul ,some rats gave up
"Another race?" "but I have my Blue ?" they innocently asked
"Ha!" scorned a veteran rat - "Don't ask questions - Run !"
And so, reluctantly they ran - louder was the dreaded whisper -
' 3.3 for Consult 3.3 for Consult '

Then they scurried along - and senior rat-in-chief spat the rules
" The Race to the '4'th Mile is 2 years long
Reach close to 4, but collect bullets along the way
Remember each bullet is worth a point
and never forget the eternal truth
'3.3 for Consult, 3.3 for Consult '

Oh No! Head start for a few ! Oh - precious time lost -
Maximize! Optimize! What skills can help me reach the '4'th Mile ?
There was but one answer - 'You Stick' - Stick to Beaten Tracks -
But Conscience ? - 'Em Shiny Blue Coats, the world expects more from you..
Who cares - I want my safe old beaten track - fast, efficient , thorough , dry.
Rant, Chant, '3.3 for Consult, 3.3 for Consult '

End of The Grand Finale - the Big Daddy came, the Big Daddy announced -
New Coats for every rat beyond the 3.3 Mile - you are one of us brother !!
"Yes- I did it !" the rats were euphoric - I...I frigging did it !
Felt great to wear new Coats, felt great to meet brothers - from the Amber, Crimson races

Off they all went to make merry - Happy Family at Utopia -
Did they hear the dreaded haunt of a whisper again ?
'3.3 to stay a Consult' . '3.3 to stay a Consult '.
Without their knowledge, Another race had just begun.....

Happy Birthday to Me !!!

Another year is past,
I wonder how long these years will last !
So many memories to remember
So many dreams to fulfil
On this day, then , let me take stock
Of all that I need , to make the coming year rock !
Have I started off on a good note ?
Oh yeah - I rolled in slush and my bottom hurts like hell
That's Birthday at IIMB , indeed a story to tell !

Mister Keynes and the Visible Hand : Part I

Imagine if you were asked to introduce a bright 12 year old child to the subject matter of Macroeconomics. I can visualize the following conversation between me and her :-

Me : You know, there are quite a few people in this world who don't have enough to eat, its really sad...

She: Yeah....i know. Is there nothing we can do to solve the problem ?

Me : You see, they need money to buy things and...

She : I wish I were the Prime Minister. I would think of a clever way to give them 'lots and lots of money' to buy things!

Me : Sweet of you . Hey, do you know where they print these notes ? ( showing her a 10-rupee note )

She : I know ! It is called a mint. There is one at Nasik I think - my teacher mentioned that in class.

Me : Oh I see. You mean, we can actually go to this mint tomorrow and ask them to print 'lots and lots of money' ? Hey, we can then bring it back and distribute it to the poor !

She : Wow !! Brilliant ! Lets.....umm....but wait....why hasn't the Government thought about this till now ? Maybe more money means.....hmm...what is the worth of money?....can we really...

Me : Welcome to Macroeconomics !!

So, I study 'Macroeco' this term - and am all excited . Before my MBA - I used to be extremely confused with concepts such as 'GDP', 'interest rates' - what decreases when what increases and so on. It was very ambiguous and I thought these economists con us by arguing one way or the other in a way that you can't distinguish which is what !

But now - after 10 classroom sessions [ and an exam :) ] I plan to bore my readers with 'lots and lots' of blog entries on Macroeconomics !!!

So, here goes....

At the very heart of economics , are observations which describe how individuals ( with wants and needs ) behave in society. That's it . All the complicated mathematics that follow are largely unsuccessful ( !) attempts at quantifying this behaviour.

Now, there are 4 Fundamental ( 'Most Important' ) Ideas of Macroeconomics :

==========================================

1) The idea that interest rate is the price of money.

Like any other good - money is subjected to demand-supply dynamics. The demand for a good increases when its price decreases and vice versa. Similarly, excessive supply of a good brings down its price. This is a fundamental concept in economics as a whole.

2) The idea that our tendency to consume increases with increase in Income.

Call it greed if you want :) , but this concept of wanting more when you already have more - is discussed in the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita!

3) The idea that our demand for money :

a) increases if our income levels are higher and
b) decreases if money becomes too costly to hold in idle form. ( why keep it with you when you can park it in a bank and make it grow ) .

4) The idea that corporates need to borrow money to make Investments in machines and factories ( which produce goods ) . So, they are worried if the price of money ( interest rate ) is too high.

==========================================

Now, if we can't do much if we hang around merely with these behavioural insights. We need more than that - we need hard numbers , to tell us by how much do things 'increase' and 'decrease' in the statements above.

The first step towards quantifying is developing a framework for writing equations.

Basis for the Framework of Equations :

1) The idea that we need a measure of the output of an economy and we can look at output as
the sum-total of :
a) All that is consumed ( by the individual and the government )
b) All that is "invested" : that is , spent by companies for buying machines , building
factories ( to produce the goods we consume in a) ! )
c) All that is exported on a 'net' basis( i.e. remove the imported goods since we didn't produce
them )

2) The idea that , at an aggregate level, 'Income' and 'Output' are two different ways of looking at the same thing.

3) The idea that income at your disposal is the sum total of consumption and savings. This may include income received ( a gift , say ) but not earned and income earned ( tax part of your salary ) but not received. So, we make a distinction between 'income' and 'disposable income'.

Now , we are kind of set - In my next blog entry, I'll write about how to understand those 'confusing' things we read in the papers - about RBI , US Fed decreasing interest rates , Bush planning to give a fiscal stimulus to the sub-prime crisis etc.

Formalisms, Frameworks and Frustration

At the risk of "slandering" ( lol ) my own tribe, I make the claim that there are way too many engineers/scientists in the MBA field. This is not at all a good thing and let me explain why.

Remember way back in school, we learnt about this really cool thing called the "Scientific Method". Basically it is about how you observe something in nature , create an idealistic model and start testing your model out. One fine day, it might just happen that some chap comes up with a scenario where your model bombs , and hey- everyone is all excited to try out a new model now. And on goes this cycle..


Yeah, its fun . But, folks - I think we are suffering from a hangover. We want to make EVERY DISCIPLINE under the sun comply with these sacred steps. Du-uh? Why this one-size-fits-all approach ? The 'scientific way' is the only LEGITIMATE way to study any subject. For the writers who write textbooks , it is the only way they can make their discipline 'attractive' ! This is a really dangerous trend affecting not-entirely-scientific disciplines , MBA being no exception.

Here's an example :-

In my MBA course, I study Organization Behavior ( more specifically, "Managing People and Performance in Organizations" ) which tries to understand people's personalities , their mutual interaction in an organizational setting and how their environment can be made conducive to the organization's benefit . My biggest complaint against this course is its extremely 'formal' treatment. By formal treatment , I mean that the course proceeds so much like a textbook on science - where you make observations , try and standardize whatever you see and draw generic conclusions. As a consequence of 'forcing' the scientifc method, you create this huge machinery of


a) Definitions
b) Frameworks : I am referring to complicated Graphs, Diagrams, Tables, Matrices and what not.
( Its like Newton who ended up inventing Calculus while describing astronomical phenomena )

Just what ARE we trying to do ?? Don't we realize that so much of it is meaningless formalism. Where is the so called 'human element' ? It seems to have hopelessly got lost in all the quibbling.
To illustrate a point, one section in my textbook talks about different styles of leadership and goes on to PLOT them on an X - Y axes with ORDERED PAIRS such as ( 1,1 ) , ( 9,9 ) etc ! And that is not all , it goes further to describe a new ' style ' and tries to project it on 3 dimensions - finally the reader is staring at a sexy figure straight out of a 'Math Challenges' magazine !

Give me a break folks. If the eternal debate of whether Management is a Science or an Art has hit a new level, it is due to such illustrations. I am afraid if my coursework requires me to 'remember' such 'creations' for my examination. I have a good mind to rebel and fill my entire answer paper with equations I learnt in co-ordinate geometry.

So, that's one. Now, the other 'casualty' in my MBA course seems to be 'Marketing Management'. At the outset, let me agree that marketing ( especially market research ) DOES require a lot of quantitative analysis and hence the subject needs to be analytical and 'scientific'.
But , why have elaborate analytical frameworks for something like consumer behaviour or advertising psychology ? In our coursework, we are simply bombarded with words , theories , definitions and more theories.

To me , most frameworks that populate textbooks are of dubious worth - they are hardly applicable in a situation which is not the same as the one which led to the creation of the framework itself ! ( Sort of these perpetual machines we used to imagine! )


Then came something to spruce up our grim life :-)
Today , we had this talk on Marketing by this awesome guy called Santosh Desai. You can probably google him up , but here's one link for those of you who follow the marketing industry.

Man, he was SIMPLY AMAZING. His whole talk , titled 'Life Backwards' was about two simple ideas :
a) Advertising should speak to people when they are busy being people. ( In other words, don't sit in your Ivory tower making marketing plans to these unknown creatures you call as "consumers" )
b) The central quest of human beings is the quest for meaning , and the concept of brand should address that.

He stressed the importance of getting out of straight-jacketed thinking and look for simple insights in everyday life. For example , how do you say that the Indian Society is getting more "modernized " ? No, don't point to the urban westernized youth who visit pubs and discos. Show me the heartland of middle-class India. Women in 'Nighties' ! lol . It was quite an interesting / amusing point he made - what a nightie offers them is really 'Freedom from Shape!' ( Women' Lib? ) and then think about how names such as potty, pinky, sweety in middle class India came about -( an indication of a 'greasy' modernism?) . Or look at little girls from poor families who go to Government Schools - They sport bob cuts! -( a paradigm shift from the traditional plaited hair , a shape of things to come? )

On the whole, a very engaging talk - I should probably reserve a separate blog entry for this some other time.

That brings me to the end of this blog entry and back to my basic point -

If the MBA world wants to encourage innovation in its truest sense , they better start by ruthlessly cutting down excessive formalization and steering away from obsessing on the 'Venerated' Scientific Method. The sooner this is done, the better it is for us all.

Random Ramblings

I decided to try my hand at some random ( "arbit" as we call it ) writing , so here goes ......

Interestingly , all institutes such as the one I study at , have a highly developed nomenclature for the various kinds of species that haunt their accomodations . ( The inventors of these names can be traced to the early inhabitants of the IIT's ) . I have taken the liberty to 'glamourise' the names by altering them :D. Let me present the reader with the first of these species - "Fighterus Maximus"( English : The Fighter ) . Fighters are organisms who push themselves to run that 'extra' mile. More importantly, they are the ones who want to be the best at everything they do and rarely compromise. Simply put, they work, and they work hard.

Now, there are a few organisms which are quite different from the fighters. These species have a natural aptitude at quantitative subjects and always manage to ace them. Since the fighters take a longer while to master such subjects , they are super-amazed as to how this other group has so much time to spare. Hence, they begin to refer to them as "Studdus Ultimatus" ( English : The Stud , for Spare Time Under Disposal! ).

There is a third kind of species which form the most interesting of studies for the behavioural scientist - they are the "Fuddus Hypocritus" ( English : The Fud , for Fighter Under Distress ) .
These are a curious bunch of organisms who are basically fighters , but , due to some strange reason hate to be known as fighters in other fellow organisms. They are unhappy that they do not have the natural aptitude of the studs , it really seems to hurt their pride.

So, they love to behave as if they have a lot of Spare Time Under Disposal in front of everyone. They make elaborate preparations to pretend they aced a quiz without having studied for it ! ( by secretly putting in as many work hours as the fighters when nobody seems to be noticing!) . Being know as a "stud" seems to give them a lot of legitimacy in their circles - its quite interesting. No one seems to know where their hypocrisy comes from. I wonder if my enlightened readers like to comment...

This probably brings me to the inevitable question : Where do I fit in ?
Well, definitely not Fuddus Hypocritus, so I will put myself under Fighterus Maximus :D

M.B.A : Master of Business Analysis

Let me acknowledge that 3 weeks into the program is too early to size up what an M.B.A is all about . However, I refuse to let go of this opportunity , so here goes ! [ Disclaimer : I plan to revisit this blog entry after the course to validate my lemmas ]

So, I was initiated into thinking this up in my class on Managing Oraganizations ( "OB" as it is popularly known ). A question we posed in the course was this : " Should organizations follow a model where much of their product is developed in-house or should they follow a model where most of the development ( including core competencies ) are outsourced ? "
[ Some examples of the latter are Toyota, Bharthi Telecom . ]

Here's the problem :-
How do we answer the above query ?

Wait , let me make it glamorous :- Say you are the company executive who needs to take this decision tomorrow . Will the learnings from your b-school give you the answer ?

My Answer : Not really.
And that is exactly what I am trying to drive at in this post on the three letters M, B, A.

To me, an MBA is a course on Business Analysis ( not Administration ) . By analysis, I mean that the course teaches you exactly two things :-

1) Tells you how to analyse a given problem.

2) Hammers into you that you need to consider ALL possible options and evaluate them before making a decision . ( In this specific case, our Prof told us interesting things on how you need to account for a zillion costs - Costs of Production , Transaction Costs etc etc let me not get into those details... )

Anyway, my point is , What an MBA *does not* tell you how to do is - the vital 3rd step :

3) Making the decision !

Why ? Simply because this last step is entirely situation dependent. Had it been formulaic, somebody might have come up with a cool idea to replace Managers with slick computers already. Fortunately for the manager-types, of the several variables which go into decision making , many can never be 'quantize'd and crunched into numbers.

So decision making is much much more than that.

Enter the X factor . Call it " Experience " , " Intuition " , " Gut Feeling " or whatever you want. You might have all your grand theories in place about the Auto industry , but if you have never worked in the auto industry - you can rest assured the decisions you make will almost always go for a toss!

Let me quote Henry Mintzberg who drives the point home about MBA programs , " It is plain silly to take people who have never been managers - many of whom have not even worked full-time for more than a few years - and pretend to be turning them into managers in a classroom.......stop dumping management theories and cases on people who have no basis to judge the relevance. "

Can somebody take a comment from B-schools that advertise themselves to be creating the "leaders of tomorrow " in their classrooms ?


In the end, what does this all mean ? Are MBA programs nothing more than a burden on the exchequer ?
Not at all. There is no need to be pessimistic about the whole thing.

All we need to keep in mind is the river-horse analogy :
If we are the horses , an MBA is that which can , at the most, take us to the river.

Nope, it CAN'T make you drink water. Period.