Who or what is an MBA?

For quite a long time in my life, I had this aspiration of wanting to hold an MBA degree. I really don’t know why I wanted to do an MBA course, but during my College days, I thought it was the best way for me to move out of the “technical” space. Also, I was generally interested in solving arithmetic and logic problems and felt that the MBA entrance exam would be one place where I could excel. As history has pointed out repeatedly, I don’t do well in exams. And despite my near Ghajini-like attempts at joining some MBA course or the other, I haven’t progressed anywhere.

But this post is not going to chronicle the numerous unsuccessful trysts with MBA that I have had over the years (ranging from entrance exams to joining long-distance courses). Rather, it is going to address something more important – why I don’t want one anymore.

The reason for this change can largely be attributed to my experiences in interviewing a bunch of MBA students who would be passing out this academic year. In few earlier posts, I have shared some interesting experiences I’ve had in interviewing fresh graduates and sometimes, even lateral employees. When I went into this MBA campus recruitment last week, I certainly didn’t expect anything interesting. I was a little off-target.

I asked a few candidates, what courses they studied as part of their electives. There were 2-3 who actually couldn’t list the 5 or 6 major topics that they study. At least 2 guys in Marketing said that Sales was a part of Marketing and 2 others felt otherwise.

There was one other girl who felt that she was quite old; the profile listed her at 26 years of age.

To one candidate, whose profile said that he was majoring in Operations Management, I posed a simple question.
Me: “Assume you have opened a petrol bunk. Can you tell me what all would you do to reduce the operating costs?”
MBA: “I will hire cheap labour”
Me (mind voice): “Maybe he is talking about salary costs. Ok, let me see if he says it directly.”
MBA: “You see, I am from Kerala. And in Kerala, if we employ the local Kerala people, they ask for higher salary. So, I will hire people from other states.”
Me (mind voice): “Whoa whoa whoa”
Me: “What else would you do?”
MBA: “I will install CFL bulbs everywhere.”
Me (mind voice): “Have I come across the joke where they ask how many MBAs are needed to change a light bulb?”
Me: “Ok, moving on…”
As a fresh MBA he was only expected to state where the costs are generally high and that he would focus on the high cost items to see what can be reduced. This guy directly went ahead into the solution and even there, came up with the option of hiring people from other states and switching to CFL bulbs!

Then there was a strikingly good-looking girl who came up to our panel. Her major was in Human Resources. I asked her why she joined an MBA course. Her response was: “Sir, my father works in (Govt. Company) and so we live in that colony. If you see, in my colony, everyone does only B.E/B.Tech. I wanted to be different and so, I decided to do B.Com and then took up this MBA course”.

We gave a simple puzzle to almost all the candidates. It was the standard “How would you get exactly 5L if you use a 3L and 4L jar?” I was actually surprised that the first 2 candidates couldn’t even think beyond “I will cut the jar in half” or “I will look and estimate”. But what surprised me even more was the fact that despite this question being “leaked” out, only the 7th/8th candidate could actually come up with a convoluted answer to the query.

While these responses may pale in comparison to some of the gems I have http://jawaman.blogspot.com/search/label/interview experienced earlier, they clearly showed me that an MBA degree is certainly not of any use, unless you apply your mind. Otherwise, it is just a set of alphabets that one adds at the end of their name. My parents have been asked by quite a few prospective in-laws “The groom doesn’t have even an MBA degree?” and I now understand what that “even” stands for!

It is just like last year, only this time it is different!

I have been fairly busy the last 3 weeks or so and it has been even busier from the time December 2008 dawned in my life. This is mainly because of a proposal that I am involved in. I agree that at this stage in my life I should probably be concentrating on the proposals of the personal kind, but this one is important for my professional life as well.

This week especially has been very tight. On Monday, I was able to return home at normal hours, but I had to stay awake late in the night - till 2.45 AM of Tuesday to be precise - to complete some piece of the proposal. And on Tuesday, I still got up at the usual time of 5:45 AM. And I was able to take only the 11 'o clock house drop from work and I effectively went to sleep at 12:30 AM on Wednesday. I got up at around 7 AM and had a very difficult morning. By the time I got out of my house, it was 9 AM and I reached work by 10 AM.

Wednesday night was no different and I was able to leave work only by 10 PM. Even then, after I returned home and had a very late dinner, I had to continue working till around 2.30 AM of Thursday! And once again, it was time to get up at 7 AM and with even more difficulty than on Wednesday, I somehow willed myself into leaving the house and going to work. And since I was taking the day off on Friday to attend my friend Karthik's wedding, I had to stay late till 10 PM that night as well.

So all in all, for the first 4 days of this week, I got to sleep for around 12 hours! This has really sapped my energy and I didn't go to office today (Saturday) even though my office was working today.

The last time that I had so much work to do over so many days was around August-September of 2007. The 2 months of my life that I can never ever forget and will never be allowed to forget. As a refresher, you can lead these articles from that circa:
One
One other
One more
Once more

The KEY difference between those days and now is simple. The people I am currently interacting with have been very encouraging. There were times when I was admonished quite strongly, but after I stayed up late in the night on Monday to finish up things, the very people who admonished me sent me appreciation notes with encouraging words for burning the midnight oil. You see, that's a very simple people management skill that was totally lacking from my seniors during the previously indicated tough times. At that time, I spent equally, if not more, long hours every day. And yet, people used to look only at the faults. That was definitely demotivating.

Whereas the group here has been very encouraging. Like I mentioned before, there have been instances where people have been pulled up, but the very same people thank you and appreciate the work you put in to correct the situation. That was why, even after spending so many hours on Monday and Tuesday, I was able to work thru Wednesday and Thursday. In fact, were it not for the physical stress, I would have gone to work today.

Anyways, I am rounding off the week and am planning to study for yet another exam that I need to clear. I will hopefully be spending quite a lot of the remaining weekends in preparing for these exams. If I don't clear them, my promotion is completely ruled out and worse, I could get no pay hike! If only I can read the exam material with the same zeal with which I read newspaper and magazines.....

A quick visit to Bangalore

I went to Bangalore on a one-day official visit, yesterday. Actually, it was for a lunch meeting with our unit head as part of the package for "winning" the MVP award in Q3 for the Recruitment initiative.

Even though it was only a lunch meeting, we (3 of us from Chennai) still had to report there in the BLR office on time. We took a Jet Airways flight at 6 AM and returned by a Jet Lite flight that reached Chennai at 10 PM. A quick note on Jet Lite - I have experienced quite a few bad landings, but this one beats the shit out of everything else.

As I anticipated, the lunch meeting turned out to be quite pointless - an exercise in futility. If there were junior folks, they would have probably enjoyed being in the presence of Unit heads et al. As someone who has had direct interactions with him on a couple of occasions, I lost that attraction. I am also not impressed by one of the persons in the next rung, so my expectations out of the meeting was quite low already.

And what transpired during the meeting was a classic case of people talking in the air, with the sole purpose of exhibiting their talking skills. Unfortunately, the food that was served was quite bad and all in all, I would rate this luncheon meeting as one of my low points for the year.

The only good thing was that while in Bangalore, I got to meet a couple of people with whom I've been speaking over the phone for a year-year-and-a-half. Otherwise, I would have been happier if I had been given gift vouchers for even half the amount it cost them to fly us to Bangalore for that lunch!

Small story

You are a member of a touring aquatic circus group. You have experience in swimming in normal waters like in the swimming pool or at best in the beach. But one day, while you are performing on a Caribbean vacation cruise, you trip somewhere and fall overboard.

The sea is very rough. You have swallowed some water in the fall. The height from which you fell has also hurt your bones. And you find yourself in a difficult situation. You are unable to swim. You are barely able to keep yourself afloat.

But somehow, by some divine blessing, you are able to hear voices of people on the ship.

"He shouldn't have come on to the ship"
"Does he have any idea of what swimming is all about?"
"We should ask him where he learnt to swim"
"This is not the way we swim on this ship"
"In all my years of swimming, I've never seen anyone jump in without a life vest"
"He has been swimming for some time. Why is he unable to swim now?"
"If he is unable to swim, shouldn't he have told us that he can't swim?"
"Let us ask 2 or 3 of our expert swimmers to jump in and observe how he is swimming"
"While they are there, they can ask him about how he managed to get into this mess?"
"And they can submit a report to us about why he is unable to swim"
"And you know what, they can ask him about how he plans to avoid drowning now."
"Is he really drowning? I cant hear him shout for help!"
"Shouldn't he be treating this as a great opportunity to showcase his swimming talent by not drowning"
"If he drowns, then some of our passengers would not come by this ship anymore. We cant let that happen."
"Lets call the chief of his troupe and find out why he is drowning"
"Once we learn why he is drowning, we can then explain to each of our passengers as to why this happened."
"Since each passenger understands things in a different way, let us present them some data points which lead to the incident and what we can do to avoid this in future."
"Lets ask him to tell us about his plans to avoid drowning in future"


Since not even one of these voices really bothered to help you from drowning, I think you would know by now that it was the Ship's Managers who were talking. Oh look at me, am assuming that while you are struggling to stay alive, you would have a lot of reasoning power and even a necessity to deduce the above point.

Perhaps I am not that bad a manager after all.

Whats wrong?

My project is right now going in real deep trouble. My client is completely pissed off. So much so that, he specifically asked for everyone in the project team to attend a call with him on his Saturday morning (Saturday evening IST).

Needless to say, this warranted our presence in the office from the morning itself, just so that we could prepare for the pounding we were going to get in the evening. I had volunteered to conduct interviews for my unit and with obvious priority issues, I had to back out.

The only good thing was that I didn't have to take my daily 52 Km voyage to office. Yesterday, we decided to go to the other office which is barely 17 Km from home.

Interestingly, while we were getting ready for the whooping, I wasn't really afraid of the same. I've never been afraid of being shouted at by the clients or superiors. Its just that nobody likes it and I don't too.

But what I actually dread, is the insane time we now have to spend on setting things right. Countless hours would be now be spent on educating upper management about what went wrong. Where it went wrong. And what can be done to avoid it.

At the cost of repeating myself from this article and this one too, most of these issues would be resolved if people are allowed to do their work.

I was drafting a reply to one of my bosses (believe me, I have a lot) where I was listing out how my time was being spent, but then realised that it wouldn't matter to him/her. For academic purposes, this is how I am spending time.

Wake up: 5.45 AM
Out of home: 7 AM (I'm not a morning person)
Reach office: 8.15 - 8.30 AM
In office: close to 2 hours (total) for b'fast, lunch, tea break etc.
Out of office: 10 PM
Reach home: 11.30 PM (since i have to travel mostly on the arterial GST road, there is adequate traffic at any point in time).
Go to sleep: 12.15 AM (best case)

The above is not a worst-case condition that I've depicted. Its probably my average schedule. The worst case is actually me leaving office after midnight. The best case is me leaving at 6 PM, but having to attend phone calls and continue working from home till midnight. The key difference in the best case is that I don't have to travel that late at night.

If I really starting looking at other companies, something tells me that it could be no different. Everyone everywhere is complaining about being stretched or being overworked. There are so many instances of software professionals suffering from so many new ailments - hell I have been affected by RSI. The only other company I worked for, had equally tough and challenging projects.

But the key difference here, is the fact that I spend nearly 3-4 hours on the road commuting between home and office.

So, have I started "feeling" the distance because of project pressures? Or is a case of me finally waking up to reality?

What did I start this post for and what has it finally become? Shows clearly that:
a. I am not thinking coherently
b. Thankfully, I am still sane enough to understand the above point
c. Unfortunately, I don't give a damn about it!

Project Management Funda

Many of you would have experienced this.

There are things that you need to do routinely. For some reason, there is an issue that needs to addressed. You address it, then move on with your regular tasks.

But if you want to be a successful project manager, you should now spend quite a lot of time in analysing why the problem occurred, who can it be blamed on and how well you have sorted it out.

The trick is that, you wont prepare this material yourself. You will have it done by someone else, take the credit and then start admonishing the guy who prepared the material for slipping behind on his regular tasks.

Since he is slipping behind on his tasks there would be:
a. escalations for not adhering to schedule
or
b. escalations for slipping on quality, coz u had stick to schedule.

The cycle repeats...

As the learned ones said:

punarapi jananam punarapi masraïam
punarabi jananè-jaûhare ùayanam,
iha samsáre bahu-dustáre
køpaya' páre páhi muráre.(21)

Repeated birth, repeated death, and repeated lying in mother's womb - this transmigratory process is extensive and difficult to cross; save me, O Destroyer of Mura (O Køúïa), through your grace!

courtesy: This site