After enjoying the great dinner in the ISB Alumni meet, at Maurya Sheraton in Saket, I sensed a striking similarity between ISB and Maurya Sheraton.  Both institutions are the oases in a sea of poverty, exclusively open to an elite group of our society. We can enter their plush campuses and make us believe that this is our India.

I switched on the TV after returning home at 11:30 PM only to witness sad images from Bihar. Our attention hungry TV channels added a grim background music and animated titles to the flood news, as if the grief of the people due to this terrible tragedy was not enough to draw our attention. In a news item, a young  5 year old girl queuing up with adults to get watery Dal being served at a relief camp drew my attention. When her turn comes and she raises her bowl among the adults to get a spoon of hot Dal. In the commotion, boiling hot Dal spills on her hands. She bursts into tears but immediately hunger makes her forget the pain.

I am feeling a bit guilty about the dinner at the Maurya Sheraton and about my helplessness about helping the helpless victims of this tragedy. As a gentleman said during the election speech that he did everything for a selfish motive. Perhaps, he was speaking on the behalf of all of us. We visit many countries. We have dinner invitations every weekend. We wear expensive watches. We want to start on our own to earn even more money and name for ourselves.

Even after exchanging my Indian nationality for Dutch, I never managed to avoid the questions from foreigners why we are so poor in taking care of our community. That’s a real puzzle to outsiders why we are unable to take care of ourselves. Few months back the driver of a cab in which I was travelling in Sydney passed a bad joke about our roads which was hard to deny because it was based upon the facts.

Monday 1^st September 2008

Hindustan Times has news about inflation, Amarnath issue, Singur and even about ‘Singh is Kinng’ running full house in Pakistan on the front page, however the terrible tragedy of 40 lakhs people in Bihar has found no prime space in this leading daily. Ironically it even has a Patna edition. At the same time BBC World chooses to keep Bihar in its headlines showing the tragedy with no background music and animation.

ISB has India in its name. Bihar is India. Maurya Sheraton draws its names from the prestigious empire based in Bihar. We take pride in both but show no compassion for the tragedy in Bihar.

If I appeal for the action for the same cause in Europe, the people over there will see this as an act of charity and come forward with help. Any help that we do will not be a charity. It will be a pay off for a debt or a royalty  payment that we have to do for taking pride in the names such as Maurya Sheraton and Indian School of Business.

Let ISB Alumni association start with a non-selfish cause of helping the flood victims and use our management brains to help people who cannot afford to pay our fat salaries.

I would like to pledge Rs. 25000 from my company and Rs. 5000 from my personal funds for this worthy cause.

I bought three books namely Business Strategy by Jeremy Kourdi, Guide to Analysing Companies by Bob Vause and Kotler on Marketing by Philips Kotler.

My Reading Notes on Business Strategy: A Guide to Effective Decision Making

I have just done my first pass reading of the book Business Strategy. This book is from ‘The Economist’ series. The book is in a digest format where many ideas such as Strategies for Growth, Rational and Intuitive Decision Making etc. are covered. It covers several case studies and quotes various popular literature on Strategy. I found it good because of its compact and dense format which can be quickly put in the Power Point bullets for sharing with others. However, the book lacks detailed explanation of the ideas such as Scenario Thinking, Vertical and Lateral Thinking etc. Probably each of these topics call for a separate book altogether.

We were in a large group of 56 participants in ISB, Hyderabad for AMP. On the second last day, we had a class photo taken. Our last teacher of AMP Prof. Roger Lehman is sitting 8th from the left in the front row. The author of this blog is 2nd from the left in the front row.

Next case in my presentation was HCL Technologies which demonstrates how an IT service company becomes successful by shifting its focus to its employees.

Hi Xebians,

Good Morning!

I was away last two weeks to participate in the Accelerated Management Programme at Indian School of Business at Hyderabad. In this program I learned about Finance, Strategy, Operations, Sales and Leadership. The program duration was short to cover such a diverse range of topics but still I got useful insights. It was also a good networking opportunity since I had a chance to interact with a cross section of people from the Indian corporate world or new India as some people call it. The participants included managers from companies such as Jindal Steels, Thermax, Marico at one end to companies such as Vertex, Genpact at the other end. The faculty came mostly from the American universities except a professor from INSEAD.

In the lovely campus of ISB, I also had opportunity to benchmark Xebia culture against various other companies in our region. I found that many practices at Xebia come as a shock to most managers while the professor said that the most modern organizations should head toward people first approach. We had a very interesting case study on HCL Technologies focusing upon the turn around of HCL under leadership of its CEO, Vineet Nayar. HCL follows written ‘Employee First, Customer Second’ policy. I doubt if it is possible to be true to this policy in a big organization like HCL.

While following training for 12 days in a university setting was tough but tougher still is to put the learning in to practice. In the coming days, I will share my learning with you and plan several activities. This will make Xebia India organization well known, well respected and authority in our market.

Unlike many other fellow participants I was rarely called by Xebians during my training period. I am glad to see that we have a mature team that can function without too much supervision. Agile also aims to achieve that. It gives me extra space to find ways to add value to the Xebia India at a higher level.

I have created a blog on my ISB experiences, which will be improved and updated. You can read it on http://axvia.wordpress.com/.

Regards,

Anurag Shrivastava

We will have case presentations today and then we can fly off to our homes. At 2:00 pm this program is over.

Yesterday’s program also focused upon another corporate personality on our times Carlos Ghosn of Nissan and Renault. We discussed how he revived the Nissan Motor, which was had a debt of US$ 19 billion and 7 years of loss making history when he joined. Turnaround of Nissan took place in just three years under his leadership.

When 70 days were left, our team started to do better. We found that certain things that helped us starting six sigma project at Change Pro:

1. Face to face meetings initially
2. Hiring experts to coach people
3. Mass communication using internet, news letters and brochures
4. Focus upon easy wins
5. It is not a good strategy to ignore those who are against change

People who are fascinated by an idea but might be too busy to help you further.

Gatekeepers are those who must be involved before you can go up in organization. Secretary of the CEO is an example in this case.

1. Feiner 50 points on leadership
2. Blue Ocean Strategy
3. Elephants can dance
4. First Hundred Days
5. Tipping Point
6. Snakes in suites
7. Toxic Leaders