Harsha Bogle at IIM A

Just watched the video on "Talent vs Attitude" given by Harsha Bogle at IIMA

There are some points which he mentioned which had a deep impact and which we pass through in daily life but dont recognise

Coming to the point:

"When there is an option of redoing some thing and when u have feeling that u can correct ur self even if u do some thing wrong, there is very good probability that u would do some thing wrong

Treat every occassion as unique and give 100% attention and dedication to the task at hand and u would do ur best

Thats what all it takes to be successfull. Giving 100% of the efforts every single time

Team Building exercise-Innovative solution

We had Assessment Centre conducted for our batch today in which 16 people(divided into 4 teams of 4 each) participated . As part of one of the exercise we are supposed to come up with a plan to conduct team building exercises.

Scenario:

A Manufacturing firm contains 20 design engineers who are highly talented but have issues working together as a team. All Traditional HR team building workshops, outdoor team building activities failed . It is of utmost importance to the organization to imbibe team spirit in these individuals and hence the responsibility is given to us. The following is what was the result of our imaginative prowess and more so of one of our team mate(of 4 team members)

As the discussion progressed , this friend of ours , lets call him X(he would kill me , if I write his name ;) ) came out with a wonderful idea of creating a crisis as done in the film Chakde(where all the girls fight together in ice cream parlour and thus forms team bonding) and use the same funda here ..Now we started mulling over how to create a crisis

Now we have one other very very smart banda in our team , whom we will call “MCP”(as he prefers calling, and you would agree a few moments later) gave a wonderful idea of locking all the designers in the warehouse of the factory and creating a fire with cardboards and stuff ..(Yup..his ideas are a bit on the extreme side, and employees of his future organization..BEWARE)…Finally after some more thought process we decided using just smoke bombs and explosions outside the warehouse (locking the designers still remain the same) . One addition we have done is to introduce 2-3 firefighters and also 3 of us ( the only girl of our group opted out to take part in action, Girls are much smarter than guys :P)would be made part of designer group as new joinees and the entire drama in warehouse starts out with our supposed induction program

Well..seems my narration is very confusing even to me L..so before breaking down it into sequence of steps lets go back and justify why one of our team mate is MCP..when it is announced the designers are 20, he started discussion by saying “lets assume all 20 are men (ofcourse on the protest of girl he gave way for diversity by mentioning 10 guys and 10 ladies [the biggest mistake , which u would realize laterJ])

Now the sequence of steps are as follows:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->(1) <!--[endif]-->Get the designers to warehouse on the pretext of induction of 6 people into designing team( they do not have any hint of training program , as they had attended many similar programs earlier with no result)

<!--[if !supportLists]-->(2) <!--[endif]-->Once every one is in ,a crisis would be created with doors getting locked, power off, smoke bombs at areas of warehouse and explosion outside warehouse (don’t blame that Budding HR managers are getting spoiled by movies :P )

<!--[if !supportLists]-->(3) <!--[endif]-->Now our firefighters get into action and creates panic around and at the same time ordering groups of people to perform tasks like breaking ventilators,helping one another to escape through ventilators

Our objective is that “Life changing moments change people” and they would more appreciate the team work and jell well as a team with those who saved their lives

We made a presentation to the external observers and to the participants and every thing going so well, when all of a sudden our “X” gave wings to his creative talents (By the way , he is much better than RGV J )

So the Following presentation is given full credit to “X”:

Now 10 are women and 10 are men , and as women cant climb the ventilators on their won , they take the help of men and in the process we have teams of 2 developed :P :P

We had a lot of fun as we started with forming teams and finally ended up presenting an idea of forming Cupids in the team ;) J

Overall its fun filled session which culminated with group dinner at “AISWARYA” which was 50% sponsored by Satish Shukla :D :D

Would remain as one of the cherishable days of semester 2

Employee Engagement-Perspectives of Silly HR

Disclaimer:

The below viewpoints need to be taken as the viewpoints of Silly HR and no way connected to what I had been through in the last 3 months at TISS (they taught me more than enough HR jargons to pass off as a HR professional ;) ). Not a single penny/paisa would be given to anyone who would like to sue me for my views :P

Well to start with, let’s see how a typical employee engagement program is done in companies

Say if the employee strength in our silly HR’s Company is 1000 and HR strength be 50 among them. Now the HRs as usual as elsewhere in the world introduced a survey to get to know the whether the employees like to go for Mid-day marathon run during summers in Chennai or go for a trek to Tora-Bora caves in Afghanistan. Now 25 people responded in the survey out of which 20 (Incidentally these 20 belong to the HR department) are interested in going for Summer Marathon Run in Chennai( God save them) ..when the results are presented to Business leaders for implementation they typically look like this

Now for the Top management, when they look at the results it appears that 80% of employees are interested in going for a summer Marathon to Chennai ( Are all the employee gone crazy or planning for a mass suicides ????) and even when the company spends considerable amount of time and money on the event , the end results would be counterproductive (with the employees end up wondering whether the top management had gone crazy or what )

So what can be the solution for this ,

First and foremost the HR department should get the trust of the employees , in the sense employees should perceive HR as someone who not only make big talk but also do

And how can this be achieved???

Starting with something small : Instead of going for a full-fledged employee engagement activities involving huge amounts and time in terms of banners, planning etc.. Start with something small which would not take much time from employees and which can get a maximum participation and fun at the same time like impromptu JAM sessions at coffee machine meetings, giving a wacky title to the manager etc. We should first understand clearly what is the objective behind conducting the employee engagement activities? Is it make the employees more connected to the organization or is it just as a stress buster. So the activities which ever are conducted should be clear of the reason behind them..

For now I am feeling hungry and cannot think of more except for the food in our Dining Hall (why don’t they try to surprise and prepare good food for a change L ), so guys (also Girls ) feel free to give wings to your thoughts and write your suggestions in the comments

learnings at TISS-Part1

Life is all about chasing dreams .
when  i am preparing for MBA entrance exams i use to wonder that once i get into a dream college life is all good and colourfull.
Yes , indeed it is ..But i have learned some lessons over my 4 months stint in TISS.
Mediocrity got no place at the highest levels. when u aspire to be at highest level and when u are at a platform from where u can reach places , its time shed the old habits and embrace CHANGE.

Change for betterment as a person , as a professional

Irony of Indian politics

I some times wonder looking at the so called politicians
they give a image as if they had dedicated their entire for the service of people
i would never say that one should give away his riches or hardwork for the sake of common man..but the best one can do is not to take from them

never we get to see the people who work at the grass root level nor at remote level..

well the below incident is just one example of how politics happen in India...

there is a parlimentary constituency called "ANAKAPALLI"(near to visakhapatnam, AP)

now 3 political parties contested for this seat (Ruling congress,main opponent --TDP, newly formed party of chiranjeevi...praja rajyam)

now in the elections the congress won the seat.....so far good

After the demise of CM. YSR, his son (who wants to become CM on hierarchy couldn't manage to do so) launced a new party (YSR Congress) and the sitting MP (from congress ) shifted to YSR congress

after the election debacle, praja rajyam party folded its party and merged into congress ..so effectively the guy contested from praja rajyam is now a congress man

so which party won the seat now????

prep and more

well its been a long time i wrote a blog entry
this one would be more like a diary entry with details of what i had done over last 20 days
i had started my prep in the first week of may,but if i introspect how much i had done over a period of 40 days ,i had hardly completed any(theory of geometry and 75 problems from total gadha)theory of numbersystems and some 10 previous aimcats for DI
i have done good considering the fact that when ever we start any thing moment of inertia would be there...but then it is highly competetive world out there
and then i went on vacation for 1 week and before that 1 week i had not worked...some times they happen so i should plan for all those breaks in advance....
the thing is if i complete the office work in advance,it would not be bugging me and i can concentrate well on y prep

one good thing happened to me this time is having study partner as pavan
he is very comited person and i realise how imp a study partner can be for MBA entrance preparation
last year my prep use to be hapazard but this year it is more organised with regular study of 9 to 12 every night
if i continue this ,i am definetely going to make it
the first hurdle and a good confidence booster would be the AIMCATs and the first one i am going to write in 10 days ...
points to remember:
(1)complete the office work in advance ,so that mind would be at peace for prep related work
(2)give time for unexpected breaks ine the study
(3)complete all the previous papers well in advance ,instead of procrastinating till the last moment

preparations for 2010

may has been good so far
after a long hiatus ,finally i had started doing what i am expected to do.
yes,started my preparation ;)
its been good so far,in the sense ,i did not miss preparation any day in the last 10 days
but if i introspect ..the quantity and quality,there are definetely some areas of concern
i had done 3 previous DI papers from AIMCATs.
even though i could not do all the problems ,but seeing and analysing the sets is giving immense confidence
this (DI) is one area ,which i had not concentrated in the last year and the results shows :(

well coming to the quant preparation,this is the area of concern,not that i am bad in quants but my scores in AIMCATS and XAT says otherwise ;)

i started earnestly with geometry from TG e-book but hardly done 30 questions(its better to say ,have seen the answers of 30 questions )
still it takes time to be comfortable with quants but definetely i would not leave it until i am very comfortable in it

and last,but coming to most important section Verbal..my preparation in this section is more or less confined to reading hindu editorial and business line
have plans to start with barrons word lists(i have studied them N number of times in the past few years)
but for now concentration is more on quant and DI and have to see how things work out
but have this intuition that this year i will make into XLRI :)
hope dreams come true ...

PS:writing this in office,waiting for my manager to come from his home,so that my appraisal can be taken(today is the last day for appraisals ;),....like team like manager)