Confused ?????????????

Especially when it comes to career counselling or advicing, I never knew that it would be so difficult to take decisions when it comes to yourself. I’m very comfortable to do a thorough SWOT for others and give them suggessions. Many a times all those people who have come for my advices had thanked when they succeeded taking my suggessions.

I’m now caught between Home and career???.. Following are the points which caused this confusion :

1. Should I do a project in soft sector(IT/ITES/Consulting) handling HR or Hard Sector (Mfg) handling IR?

2. Should I go for a project at Vizag (Home Town) or any other location ?

3. If given a chance, should I accept the project on Strategy in KPMG/Coke ?

4. Forget everything, do an independent study at Vizag ?

The more I think on these, the more it bugs me. Yet not able to take a decision.

Vol # 3 @ Great Lakes – Great Faculty

We have had loads of prof’s from across the globe coming and sharing their knowledge with us in the past few months.

Prof Narendar Rao was here to teach us Corporate Finance. He is from NorthEastern University and is also a visiting faculty for ISB Hyderabad. He has strong hold on knowledge about the subject and also on communicating his thoughts but the best part was the motivation quotes that he used to present right at the beginning of every class. He also showed us some really very nice video clips. Just before leaving he showed a lot of attachement with Great Lakers and had a photo shoot with all of us. A very nice human being and a great Knowledge Creator.

Prof Vaidy Jayaram, was here to teach us Operations Management. He is currently associated(full time) with University of Miami. I must say he is a great entertainer, he runs in the class, he speaks in various tones and he just doesnt allow you to sleep:). Amazing prof, who took all the pains of teaching each and every step in the class and made sure that all of us got it then and there itself. He carries loads of knoweldge with himself, B.S, M.S, MBA and Ph.D and specialises in closed loop supply chain management and distribution and logistics. For more about him pls. check

www2.bus.miami.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=518&Itemid=664

Optimization Research (Techniques) was taught by Prof TAS Vijayraghavan. He is a full time prof from XLRI Jamshedpur and specialises in Information Systems and Operations Management. Though the subject hasnt been completed but he has already impressed all of us with the his ability to transfer the knowledge. He has done fellowship from IIM Bangalore. More on him at http://xlri.ac.in/scripts/faculty_profiles.php

!@##$$%%^&&**()(*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@#$%^&*!

Vol.2. – Great Lakes – Great Faculty

 After having amazing faculties through out the core, the bar was raised and to say that Great Lakes was able to surprass that bar would be an understatement. We are already in the mid of program and there have been a good number of reknowned faces coming and teaching us from across the globe. And i feel lucky to be taught by such an amazing group of faculties.

We started the our 2nd semester with Strategic Management. The subject was taught by Prof Rasheed from University of Texas. Amazing sense of humor and a knack of keeping people awake, made him one of the most liked ones in Great Lakes. He is a firepower of knoweldge from varied fields and his jokes really made a subject like strategic management very very interesting.
For more info on him pls check his homepage

http://management.uta.edu/bulletin/rasheed.htm or http://management.uta.edu/Dr.Rasheed/Home.htm

Next in line Prof Raj from XLRI Jamshedpur. He was here to teach Organisational Behavior and impressed every sould in Great Lakes with his understanding of human behavior. He gave a few inventories and then analysed scores of most students and most of the people here were shocked to find out the truth in his findings. He is still left with a few courses and we are eagerly waiting for his return. for more on him check http://www.xlri.ac.in/scripts/faculty_profiles.php

For Micro Economics we have Prof Radhakrishnan, from Madras Institute of Development Studies. He carries along with him stacks full of achievements, experience and knowledge. Distinctive feature of Prof RadhaKrishnan was his ability to ask puzzles before and after finishing his lectures. And these puzzles really make you think for ex…Metro in Coma — Bombay Dying:) But its not just about asking puzzles thats a complementary thing with his ability to transfer knowledge. For more information on him http://www.mids.ac.in/prk.htm

Project Time…………hectic schedule still continues…

After 5 months in the process of transformation, time to relax or chill out still seems to be a distant future.

Our Project phase starts from October 15th onwards and everyone of us here needs to do an internship in the industry for one month. More than 50% of the students have already got thru the process with various companies and rest are awaiting their dream companies.

Its now my turn to pick up something. But I would be interested in hardcore HR function and I’m getting projects in the field of recruitments. Mindtree seems to be one option open for me. While I’ve had an opportunity to do an internship at Delhi with couple of companies where I’ve worked in the past, my interest seems to be in the area of Industrial Relations. This one month seems to be extremely critical for me to understand the situation at ShopFloor and this would give me an exposure to a realtime situation in the hardcore manufacturing sector.

Its still not very clear whats there in store for me? Let me wait and watch, what the future holds for me?

…………..:-))

Impact of Karma Yoga on OB Factors – Leadership, Influence & Power

Sai Yogetha Reddy
Lakshana Surendran

Praveen Pantula

Purpose

We being the students of organizational behavior, it is essential to identify the activities that motivate or influence the employees of an organization. It is a constant endeavor for a student of OB to constantly study and identify these factors in various situations. To start with we wanted to understand the impact of doing an activity narrated in Indian mythology ie Karma Yoga.

Objective

To understand the degree of influence on factors of Organizational Behavior on students of “Foundations of Eastern Philosophy,” who have taken up Social Service (Karma Yoga) as a part of their field study.

The following are the factors of study for assessing the effect on Organizational Behavior:

1. Influence
2. Power
3. Leadership

Approach

Data for this study was collected from the group of 162 students of Great Lakes Institute of Management, who had taken up Foundations of Eastern Philosophy as a course in their curriculum and had done a project “Karma Yoga” serving the needy. These 162 students were organized into groups of 5 each and we have collected data from 1 member of each group. A questionnaire consisting of 9 objective questions and 3 subjective questions was administered on 30 groups.

Assumptions

While there are several factors to study in OB, we thought it would be appropriate to limit our study to the above three mentioned factors and then expand the scope of study slowly. We would like to identify whether there is any value addition to the above factors on the students who have taken up “Karma Yoga” to serve the needy. By doing so it would be interesting to learn the impact on any of the above factors after the project. We strongly felt that deeper understanding of influence, leadership and power can come from understanding of those without them.

Definitions

Leadership: The ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success

Influence: It means to possess the ability to embrace a person/group of people to one’s own will

Power: The ability to impose one’s will on others, even if those others resist in some way.

Relatively Powerless People: Peoples weakness psychologically or socially and some cases economically when compared to people who are strong in all the above factors.

Karma Yoga : As the name of this yogic system implies, the discipline involves action. The aim of Karma Yoga is to attain union with the Supreme by means of right action, which means, quite simply, action undertaken for its own sake and not for the sake of reward. This is the way for those who are moved by compassionate sympathy for those who suffer, and who are therefore eager to work for the alleviation of pain and sorrow. The emphasis in this system is on pure motive, without any taint of self-interest. Through altruistic acts, the follower of Karma Yoga will inevitably come to a deeper understanding of life and an ever closer union with the Divine Life in all beings.

Theory & Hypothesis

For the sake of keeping my report short, I’m just explaining the results of the empirical research as it is.

Effect of Karma Yoga on Leadership

In the survey conducted the following results were observed and analysed:

Factors Identified Under Leadership:

1. Guidance

2. Behaviour

3. Motivation

During the short tenure of Karma Yoga, it was found that

• 69% of the people were able to provide proper guidance to the relatively powerless people.
• 65% of the people were able to set an example by way of their behaviour or conduct during their interactions with the relatively powerless people.
• 57% of the people were able to motivate the relatively powerless people to work with them in order to make the change happen

Karma Yoga has proved to have a dual effect of providing positive effects to both the benefactor and its receiver.

The Relatively Powerless People were short of resources which hampered their path to success; once provided with those resources and a direction to start off with, the sky seemed to be the limit for their dreams and aspirations to be achieved. For the benefactor on the other hand the two months had proved to be a learning experience. The satisfaction felt after having helped someone had brought immense happiness to their hearts. Extracting the best out of each team member and putting their act together with the common goal of uplifting the relatively powerless has helped them realize the innate leadership qualities in each of them. Helping the relatively powerless to see a silver lining in every dark cloud that they had faced in their lives, motivating them to overcome these hurdles and see every block faced in their lives as an opportunity to improve themselves and emerge out stronger and helping them nurture each other’s talents and positive aspects to face the real world. Having hands on experience in helping out a third person seemed to have had a very good impact on the human side of a person more so on his leadership abilities. In today’s business world a human touch seems to be lacking as the days go by, Karma Yoga brings in just that, it helps a person to understand the scenarios and responsibilities of others in a more humane sense.

Influence

Factors identified under this are

1. Awareness

2. Persuasion

3. Change

• 81% of the respondents felt that this project helped improved their awareness levels.
• 61% of respondents felt that they were able to persuade the needy people with the solution that works towards solving their problems.
• Only 46% of the respondents felt that they were able to see some change coming in the groups with whom they have worked. When probed about the reasons for this, we have understood that it is because short duration of the project period. They have felt that it should be done for atleast 6 months to one to see exact results desired from them.

In all 62% of the respondents were able to influence the groups during various situations and occasions.

Power :

Factors analyzed under the Power Factors

1. Belief in Self

2. Excessive usage

3. Special characteristics like.

1. Knowledge & Wisdom
2. Holiness
3. Goodness
4. Love & Compassion
5. Truth & Justice

The following conclusions can be derived from the above statistics:

• 73% of the people who took part in the survey felt that they have the power to make a difference to others lives. This made evident their belief in themselves to be able to bring about a change.
• 53% of the people felt that they had propensity towards excessive use of power in hand.
• 65% of people felt that Love and compassion were the factors that were put to maximum use during the course of the project.

The survey revealed that the power of self awareness, awareness that one can achieve something if one can put the required effort was dominant. Love and compassion were the qualities that equipped them to come up with ideas and execute them almost flawlessly. This only goes to prove that kind and appropriate words and actions are the biggest motivators for the benefactors and beneficiaries. Connecting it to the corporate world, a team can actually meet their goals very effectively not just by applying pressures of rewards and promotion but also through positive interactions, by being considerate of other team members and being supportive of them. Excessive use of power is a cause for concern but again where there is power, its misuse coexists. Nevertheless, the relatively low percentage of misuse of power points towards the positive direction.

Often in the hectic jungle of competition and rewards, people forget to halt and watch their colleagues and friends. It is important that if future leaders are to be produced, the existing grass root level executors be given support and motivation by taking them along in the organization. This mini survey may not be the best indicator of the use of Karma Yoga in organizations but it definitely points towards the benefits of exploring the humane side of humans organizations.

Conclusion

From the empirical study that we have conducted, we have found a high degree of positive correlation between the factors of OB and Karma Yoga. The more the amount of time a person spends on Karma Yoga or in public service, the higher his power, influencing and leadership skills improve. Following are our observations:

1. Interactions with relatively powerless people, increase a person’s awareness persuasion skills. The change which is observed by the person involved in action, acts as a feedback mechanism. It also helps student involved in Karma Yoga to think and design or draft a solution that fits the needy.
2. This also improves guiding and motivating skills of the person engaged in serving. In this situation the person acting as a leader needs to set an example and worthy emulation. This gives an opportunity for the person to constantly learn from his experiences and in the process improve his own gaps.
3. A person engaged in the service gets to realize his potential and starts believing that there’s some power in him which can bring in some change to the life of a needy.
4. We have not found any traces of people misusing the power or opportunity given to them. Though they might have to command yet times, but that’s in the best interest of the relatively powerless people.
5. 65% of our respondents believed that they have done the service with Love & Compassion, which is really an amazing thing for a young generation in the average age group of 25 years.

As we all are aware, organizations are suffering with lack of leaders in this extremely hyper competitive market. Having seen the positive impact of Karma Yoga on Organizational Behavior factors, organizations can think of sending their employees on such field studies under the guidance of a transformational leader who is aware of Karma Yoga. This can definitely make them realize the inherent power and increase their influencing and leadership skills.

Limitations and suggestions for future research :

As far as our knowledge goes, this is the first of its kind of a study trying to interlink factors of Organizational Behavior and Karma Yoga, the yoga of action. Limitations exist due to the size of the sample because this has been administered only in one B-School, where students have studied Foundations of Eastern Philosophy as a course in their curriculum. Before we make any generalizations on this, the survey has to be administered on people across the geographical locations and varied age groups. Further course of study can also include by extending scope of study by adding more number of variables from Organizational Behavior.

References

Complete works of Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama

The Yoga of Action – Karma Yoga, Swami Vivekanda

Transformational Leadership, James MacGregor Burns (1978)

Organizational Behaviour, Fred Lufthens

Organizational Behaviour, Stephen Robins

Foundations of Eastern Philosophy, Dr Venkat R Krishan

Karma Yoga Project reports of students

Jeevan Blood Bank
Kakum Karangal
Sex Workers
Oldage Home
Juvenile Home
World Vision
Orphanage

Online Resources
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/
http://www.ramakrishna.org/
http://www.sivananda.org/
www.bhagavad-gita.org

www.geocities.com/neovedanta

Kotler @ Great Lakes Campus

Everytime, I delay posting the updates I’ve a reason. This time it is the Guru, MahaGuru of Marketing, Messaiah of Marketing Dr Philip Kotler.

Being the member of the Team Kotler (Student body of 10 members to handle the entire tour of Dr Kotler), I had an additional responsibility along with some fun, joy and time with the Guru. We had an exclusive student’s interaction session at TCS Auditorium, Chennai. Next day evening Great Lakes organised an Open House for corporates followed by cocktail dinner at Le Royal Meridean.

During his 3 day visit at Chennai, the following was his itenary and I was there with through out the event.

Day 1 – 16th Morning 5 .00AM : received him at the airport along with 25 more students and Uncle
Day 1- 16th Afternoon : Dr Kotler a meeting with Uncle Bala and followed by a visit to IIT, Madras
Day 1 – 16th Evening : Exclusive students Interaction session at TCS Auditorium
Day 1 – 16th Evening : A Private dinner organised by Mr Shankar-Chairman, Sanmar Group

Day 2 – 17th Morning : Inhouse Programme at Cognizant
Day 2- 17th Afternoon :Cognizant Press Meet
Day 2- 17th Afternoon (3.40-4.20):Me & Amit Bhalla had a 1:1 with Dr Kotler in his Car
Day 2- 17th Evening : Open House and Dinner

Day 3 18th Morning : Inhouse programme for 3 corporates at Taj Coromandel

Entire Team Kotler travelled to Bangalore to facilitate the events there.

Day 3 18th Evening : Open House Programme at Le Meridean
Day 3 19th Morning : Programme for 3 Corporates at Taj West End

Later the Dr Kotler, Uncle Bala and Ms Suj had left to meet with Azim Premji and Nandan Nilekani.

Back again……

Ref : My 2nd posting..Hayagreeva Rao

Here is a photograph taken at IIT Auditorium during Prof Hayagreeva Rao’s visit to Great Lakes on January 09, 2006. Followed by this GL, there was a Corporate Lunch in the honor of this great teacher.

I’m really honored being a part of both of these events. This an exclusive of mine from Delhi to Chennai to see him and attend his guest lecture.

Give me a break…

Its been a longtime, time to chillout. Will comeback and write about Prof Surysekhar of Florida International University and Prof Abdul A Rasheed of University of Texas, Arlington.

Friends and wellwishers keep writing to me about the contents in this space. Intent is to update you about my experiences at Great Lakes. Will try to improve this space based on your feedback

Regards, Praveen

Legendary Marketing Guru-”Philip Kotler Visits Great Lakes”

Its all set to receive Dr Philip Kotler at Great Lakes, Chennai. He is expected to visit our institute and address our students on July 16.

He needs no introduction and whatever I say will be less for him. Anyone interested to know about him can do so by visiting the link below

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/bio/Kotler.htm

Keep watching leading newspapers and television channels regularly, to know what he did at Great Lakes.

Prof P.K.Vishwanathan

Hey…I know…realized that I’m poor at management of time. Offlate, I’m not able to update my blog with experiences….Let me start with the introduction of Prof P.K.Vishwanathan

About PKV…

P.K. Vishwanathan is a freelance Management Consultant focusing on Corporate Training and Consulting in TQM, Customer satisfaction, Marketing Research, SQC and Management Science. In these areas, he has been conducting programs for the Corporate.

Mr. Vishwanathan has a brilliant academic record-First Rank in MSc Statistics from the University of Madras, Rank holder MBA (FMS, Delhi), and MS degree from the University of Manitoba, Canada on a Fellowship.

My Views

I’ve been hearing from many people that one should enjoy what he is doing, but never seen really enjoying what they are doing. He is an amazing professor who enjoys each and every word that comes out of him while he teaches. He starts concepts from basics and goes very deep into the subject and is always there for students to help them with the concepts that they fail to understand.

We had very good sessions with him for over a month now and finally ended his course with closing comments “ABC’s of Happiness.”

This is the test first of its kind which I ever attended. He had permitted us to use Calculators, Laptop and any book of our choice. Unfortunately nothing came to our rescue, except to apply the concepts he taught you in the class.

Hats off to you sir…you have created a space in our heart…..Probability of accomodating one person in our heart is always ONE (p(HEART) =1).