At
Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top PGDM college in Delhi NCR
we have walked the distance for 21 years. It has been a journey hallmarked by milestones
and achievements of the management, students and the academicians. After
walking the distance for 21 years now when we reflect upon the experience of
producing 3000 alumni at the business school, we are tempted to go back to the
famous lines of the American country side rock legend Bob Dylan and ask: “How
many miles must a man walk before he is called a man?” The academicians of the
top PGDM college in Greater Noida believe that the same question applies
foremost to the individuals that we are. While it is always obvious for alumni
of a business school to measure the success of one’s life in terms of revenue
growth, profit growth and shareholder value growth, the plain truth is that no
one was ever born to do a job and go to office. As paradoxical as this may
sound, it offers a clear window for us to think about the purpose of our lives
and how best to summarize the success and failure one has had in life.
What They Do not Teach and Ask to
Be Taught at Business Schools?
We
are sure that you must have come across self help books with this title in the
best book shops in Delhi NCR. The truth is that there are certain things that
are not taught at business schools. The reasons are twofold. First academicians
themselves never think of these things with a peaceful mind and are very often
engaged in completing the academic curriculum, delivering lectures, doing board
work for mathematical modelling, solving case studies and teaching students how
to fix deals. It is a statement of the obvious that students at most business
schools are happy to lap up the science of fixing deals and measuring their
lives’ worth in revenues. Secondly students are most interested in asking
questions that are meaningful and have a sense of purpose. It is astounding
that most business schools during the two years that they spend with each batch
of freshmen during the course of an MBA or a PGDM program do not ever deal with
any of the following questions:
How
can I ensure happiness in my career?
How
can I ensure happiness in my relationship with my family?
How
can I ensure that I get a good night’s sleep?
While
it is only prudent on the part of academicians and students at business schools
to go through the routine of lecture-assignment- exam and then go grab the
degree on graduation day, the truth is that life starts on graduation day, it
never ends on graduation day. Those who do not ask these three questions during
two years of their stay at a business school for a PGDM or MBA program are most
likely to ask and frantically search for answers to these questions after
graduating.
How Can I Ensure Happiness in My
Career?
Most
of the students who belong to the generation of the “Millennial” search for
success in ticking things of the bucket list of price tags, smart phones, cars,
pent houses and all sorts of things which at the end of one’s life would
probably end up straight in the gutter. The point is we do not search for
happiness as long as we are not unhappy. We tend to get accustomed to learning
things the hard way and then try to reminisce about the costs that we have had
to pay for achieving the precious little that we have. Why do some managers even after spending more than twenty
years of their careers in an industry vertical and after building an empire for
themselves like an apartment with all amenities in the heart of Delhi,
Bangalore, Mumbai or Kolkata, loath the Monday morning blues of getting ready
in the C-suite and jet setting for office? Why do we fear losing all that we
have accumulated through hikes, promotions and lateral transfers after being in
the job for a decade? This is the result of trying to summarize life in terms
of deals closed, clients obliged, revenues earned and hikes achieved. This is
the result of trying to live in the future while discounting the past. The
marginal cost rule of achieving goals entails that we think of the additional
gain and the additional costs of chasing a goal, while ignoring what we have.
The truth is that safeguarding all that we have achieved in the past is more
important than the additional gains and costs.
How Do I Ensure Happiness in My
Relationship With My Family?
The
physical evidence led approach to decision making works wonderfully well as
long as it is being implemented in the right place-the work place. Even at the work
place there are certain delicate invisible assets that we take for granted as
long as the erosion of those assets does not get visible to the naked eyes? The
marginal cost rule of economics is to be blamed once again. How much do I gain
from spending dinner time with my wife and kids? How much do I gain from
sitting by the side of my old parents and entertaining their childish requests?
How much I do gain by asking my children about the proceedings at school? In God
we trust, everybody else must bring data to the table. This is fine when we are
taking decisions for investments that may be plagued by mist on the screen and
hence affect our vision. But this rule does not work for relations with family.
And yes, the definition of the family must include old parents first. Trying to
cut the family photograph to size by cropping the faces of the helpless old
faces of our parents’ repeats itself if practiced. This is what our children
learn to do when they grow up to be matured and sensible working professionals.
Downsizing the family never fetches returns. It never does.
How Do I get a Good Night’s Sleep?
This
is the least asked question. This is the least answered question. Infosys
founder and business legend N.R.Narayana Murthy put it across beautifully in
the compilation of his lectures “Better India Better World”. How many business
leaders and business school graduates even understand the worth of this
questions unless they loss it? Staying away from the iron hands of the
judiciary, keeping on the fair face of business and holding one’s head high do
not matter as long as one can escape trouble. Here again it is observed that
being happy is easier when one intends to go by the book 100% of the time
rather than going by the book 99% of the time and trying to sneak through the
regulator’s lenses for 1% of the time. Do we ever get our mathematics right by
taking that once chance at winning against honesty? 995% honesty in career and
life is not honest at all.
Answers Given at Ishan Institute of
Management & Technology
As
a top PGDM college in Delhi NCR, Ishan Institute of Management & Technology
enables students to ask these questions and sit on the same during two years of
their study of PGDM. We do not give answers to these questions straight away as
it stifles individuality that is so much required in the corporate sector. We
do not want our business graduates to be lame ducks that travel all the time in
the same direction, flock together, eat together and even look all the same.
That is not our job. Our job is to tell students narratives of different kinds
so that they get to think and frame an answer that best suits them. Prof.
Tushar Arya, the Chief Finance and Planning at Ishan Institute of Management
& Technology calls this “listen to
the calling of your heart.” As he says “Don’t marginalize life going by
marginal revenues and marginal costs. Life’ success lies in the totality of
happiness. Listen to your heart’s calling.”
(The above piece is based on the academic research of Prof.Tushar Arya, Chief Finance and Planning, Ishan Educational Institutions and alumnus of Manchester Business School, United Kingdom)