Thursday, March 31, 2016

From Volga to Ganga: Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR on Solo Travel

Many of the top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR have designed their academic curriculum to offer a window beyond classroom learning. Some of the top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR have gone an extra mile by incorporating lifestyle management modules as non-credit courses and organizing cams, workshops and events for aspiring managers to soak up knowledge form unconventional sources. While the discipline based teaching methodology continues to be the norm and hence classroom teaching based on lecture sessions is the finest way to learn technical and analytical skills, it has been observed that classroom teaching leaves a gap between knowledge and attitude building. In most cases, as practicing managers realize the market is a cruel place. It rewards the efficient and punishes the inefficient. Under such circumstances even the most knowledgeable students may fail to do justice to their merit owing to lack of attitude and character.

Finding the Missing Link between Skills and Attitude
At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the first and the best MBA College in Greater Noida, we have designed an academic curriculum that gives ample breathing space to students to build attitude, character and hone their temperament to sustain at the highest level in the corporate sector.  In recent years we have also worked closely with students of the faculty of business administration to find out ways to close the gap between skills and attitude, potential and performance and groom them for boiler room situations that they are to face in their careers for the rest of their lives. One of the most enjoyable ways of learning lifestyle management and building character in aspiring managers is to push them to hit the road solo!

Adventures of a Solo Traveler & Aspiring Manager
There are tons of similarities between the aspirations of a solo traveler and a fresh management graduate. The mindset and the temperament that is required to face a situation that is characterized by unknown people, places and physical evidences bridges the gap between solo travelling and business. As such most solo travelers travel for fun while expatriate managers are men on mission and hardly have any time for recreation. At Ishan Institute, we assert that the best way to learn handling a mission is to think of it as adventure. Adventure enables aspiring managers to be driven by a need for achievement and the rush of the adrenaline. Adventure automatically reinforces the concept of market based meritocracy that rewards the efficient and penalized the inefficient. When business academicians at Ishan Institute talk to students on motivation, many students in the first year assert that their level of motivation depends on how much they love the end result that they shall gain from completing a task. We rectify this anomaly telling them it is not the result that matters. Result goals create negative work pressure and fear in the mind. We urge them to focus on the performance goal not the result goal. This applies to both solo travel based adventure and business. Performance goal setting sets the tone for the rush of adrenaline. More over love for a result that we wish to gain is looked at from a soft corner and aspiring managers may be dubiously compelled to believe that in order to win all that they need to do is just hit the road or as sportsmen say appear on the field. This mindset is a recipe for disaster. Students need to realize that loving a goal means how much they are willing to sweat and bleed for it. How much are they willing to sacrifice for it? When you hit the road alone and know that a reckless move undertaken in gay abandon may backfire and it usually does, they learn the virtues of being alert, optimizing their resources like food, clothes, money and time. When there is something at stake for a traveler he not only paddles his bicycle fast but after a fall or two, learns to paddle smart.

Marketing is the Biggest Solo Adventure
Imagine a boy from the interior of the North East making headway for a place like Ladakh. Ladakh in itself is not going to be the sole teacher. The journey from the North East of India through the eastern plains, the Gangetic north and up the Himalayas shall teach him a lot more. Each journey is a mission for every traveler. Issues like the unknown geographical terrain, unknown language, unknown food, unknown people and the mist on the screen are challenges that force him to make the best possible use of every resource at his disposal. Fraudulent travel agents, thugs at tourist spots, mischievous retailers on the pavements, a hostile crowd of local people soaked in cultural orthodoxy; delays in bus, air and rail services, the unusually long waits at the travelers’ lounge and many such annoying experiences are bound to happen. Each such bitter experience enables learning and makes the traveler more alert and keeps him on his toes. By the time the traveler reaches home after completing the journey he has a laptop filled with pictures, a smart phone filled with messages of family and friends, taste buds that have experienced something new, eyes that are ready for surprise and shock value, a mind that is all the more alert and a skin that is much thicker and lots of stories to tell.


The top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR base their teaching methodology on real life experiences that men carry in their minds for the rest of their lives, long after the memories of B-school books have faded away. Ishan Institute of Management & Technology is the first MBA College in Greater Noida.