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Monday, May 30, 2016

Insights on How to Answer Your Heart’s Calling, from the Top PGDM College in Delhi NCR

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)