Condensation.

Jul 22

I was feeling like a mother who sometimes feels at her wits' end when trying to feed her offspring. It is indeed difficult for her to conjure new dishes each day and in the process gain approval of her progeny. How does she keep her children's attention everyday ? She whips up new dishes every day from the available resources and manages to keep her children healthy and happy. I thought that I might have to work hard at keeping the blog interesting - A change -much like going to a restaurant once in a while to break the monotony of home cooking was required . Help came from the most unexpected and the most qualified direction. During the tea break I happened to mention to Prof Bagchi and Prof Mahadik the need for their intervention. To my surprise Prof Mahadik  readily agreed to my request to pen a few thoughts for the blog.In spite of his young age he is highly qualified , having done PGDM from Ahmedabad and M Tech from IIT Mumbai and worked in a gaggle of Fortune 500 companies. We are indeed fortunate that he decided to undertake this task . And the subject of his discussion was - Anyhow why spoil it for you ? please read on..

Condensation.

The crux of management education is brevity. As each subject in a 2-year MBA is a distilled form of a full graduation degree, be it economics, accounts, statistics or organization behavior. For armed forces, its a mini-MBA within 6 months !! How does one condense a 2 year course in to a 6 month program? That was the first question that had come to my mind when I was approached in June to join the coordination team of Prof Chandrasekhar and Prof Bagchi. Thanks to 4 years training at ASCI, I've learned a thing or two about elasticity as also of brittleness. Making or breaking anyone's interest solely depends on the ability of the instructor in sustaining momentum both in the teaching and the thought process of the students. My premise was based on the fact that any topic can be stretched to a PhD specialization and people can spend their lifetime on working out the modalities ,OR it can be compressed to either a 2 week program at ASCI OR for that matter a 1 week workshop , one or a 3 day crash course or a day long symposium. A 90 minute session would also suffice for the  participants  going back with exact same happiness and precisely same amount of confusion. No wonder management is more of an art than a science!

With program structure and design broadly ready when I walked in, it was a cake walk for me. My colleagues help and co-operation was also of great help.

The challenge thereafter of course was to face a class that had walked the face of Earth  for a decade longer on an average. How does one match  their experience, in some cases more than my age? To fulfill a long cherished dream, I decided to treat it as a war, albeit a metaphorical one. I built some trenches using financial jargon and formulae and managed to hide behind. Whenever there was an attack from behind enemy lines, I used the ammo of numbers. Numbers that drive businesses !!