Posts

Measure What Matters!!

Having goals gives everyday tasks more meaning and clarifies the reasoning behind company decisions. Goals are an important part of running a successful business. They can give businesses a clear focus, motivate employees and set targets for the business to work towards. Setting goals ensures employees are working toward a shared vision and can help keep everyone accountable. They can also provide businesses a set of criteria to see if the business is succeeding. Without a true north, the pieces of a business may work at odds with each other. Business leaders will not know how to prioritize their resources, and individual employees may struggle to use their time effectively. To achieve success with organization’s most ambitious goals, we need each of our departments and the teams within them all pulling in the same direction.  Traditional Goal Setting In traditional goal setting, goals set by top managers flow down through the organization and become sub goals for each organization

Why is personal debt bad

Debt allows individuals to make purchase today by pledging some of their tomorrow’s earnings. Is there anything wrong with having a little - or a lot - of debt? That depends on what the debt does for you - and it should always be more than what you do for the debt. Will this debt pay me back more than what I put in? After you factor in principal repayment, interest payments and the alternative uses of that money, does the debt still make sense? Are you getting all your money back and then some? Could you have done something better with the time and money you are investing? Debt can be "good" if it has the potential to increase your net worth. Bad debt is money borrowed to purchase depreciating assets or assets for consumption. Any time you take out a loan or charge something on your credit card, you are borrowing from the money you hope to earn in the future. You never know what changes may happen in your income, so it is better not to mortgage your futur

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics !!

Circa Jan 2011, after I had accepted the offer for admission in PGPEX, in the quest to know more about the program I tried reaching out few alums. Thanks to LinkedIn , I could get in touch with a handful of them. I'll post what they had to say about the program and will add my first-hand experience.  Learning - Very Good. The cases are selected very meticulously. The books are of international standard. Believe me the kind of effort you need to put over here probably will exceed that of all four years of engineering. But sure enough you'll enjoy the learning and experience. There would many aha moments. Faculty - Good. Not all but some of the faculty is exceptional. Many are highly dedicated. Some of them mix up very well with PGPEX. They respect our experience. They remain under pressure as PGPEX is usually very demanding. Many faculty admits that they enjoy teaching us more than our PGP folks. Networking - Good. Depends upon you how you try to make out of this

Today was a long day !!

Half awake and sleepily, I look at my mobile, oh boy couple of missed calls and message from my wife. How long did I sleep? What's the time? 8:45 in the night. So I slept only for 45 mins. Time now for quick chat with wifey and then quick dinner. At 10 pm back at room with couple of articles, one text book chapter to be read before I could try my hands on the case to be read for tomorrow's strategy management class. Flashback to 7:30 am the same day. Grudgingly I am getting out of my bed. Its time to get ready fast, have a quick bite at the mess and run for the class. Professor is already in the class and next hour and a half is about how to manage a world class operations. After assimilating concepts of operations research in the previous term we are learning operations management this term. Though explained in manufacturing terms, fundas are on managing supply chain.  Next two class, for full three hours, are on corporate finance management. Again we have had our fin

It Depends !!

It has been exactly a couple of months since I came to Joka Management,  as IIM C , situated at Joka in Kolkata, is known among the taxi walas. And it has been nothing less than a roller coaster ride beginning day zero. Sometimes these two months seems like two years and at other not more than two weeks.  There is no single way of doing things, no right solution. The very first lesson we had on day zero when we were introduced to the nuances of case methodologies. With each passing days there were some aha moments and also challenges to our structured, rational and straight jacketed thought process, mainly shaped by our background in science, technology and engineering. But unlike technology life is not predicable and so does the business, and people who are at either side of the business. As they say at times one has to unlearn to learn. Now I can vouch for it. When at the end of case analysis you find all 44 people have come up with different solution for the business issues pres

Que Sera, Sera !!

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truth. It is a great truth because once we know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. -- M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled.  There are only so much one can influence when it comes to things that affects one's life and its future course of action. Some one rightly said that there is future of desire and then there is future of fate. To some extent life is sum of the choices one makes, but even then not every thing can be planned and turned out to be as much as planned. But one thing among all this, that is very important is ability and strength to accept the current situation. Sure plan ahead and take steps to make planning a reality but then be aware that things may not turn out the way you have planned. Have strength to accept the outcome. Be happy if it turns out to the

So Why Raavan Was Flop!!

" Amit? " called out professor one, P1. " That's me " I replied. " Lets go ". And I followed P1 to the interview room, where another professor, P2, was going through my profile file. After exchanging pleasantries P1 asked about my job profile and responsibilities. I told them that I take care of all aspect of project management. P1 - "How would you explain project management to a lay man?" I started to explain taking example of going to a movie and building a building. While doing so I must have used couple of project management jargon. P2 interrupted and asked if I am a PMP? I answered in affirmative. He went on to ask couple of questions from project management , like that of Gantt chart, PERT etc.. He then asked me to draw a network diagram. I managed to answer them satisfactorily. P2 then said he was done and asked if P1 had any question. P1 - "In your essays you have mentioned that you read books. Which book have you read rec