8 Valuable Bollywood Flicks for Would-be Managers

Posted on April 30, 2015 by IBS India

M.B.A. sounds like a very serious course with no fun and absolute study to parents and wise adults but entertainment along learning; I believe never fails to excite anyone. Dissecting entertainment into fragments, the film industry, called Bollywood (casually) provides us with drama, action and emotional flicks that not only impress us but also leave a lasting impact in our brains via messages placed subtly through documentaries, biographies etc.

When I talk about movies as a medium of learning, the focus comes to observed learning i.e. learning while watching or noticing. With a view to learn through this article, let us explore this little list of flicks valuable for ‘would be’ managers.

Mary Kom:

Very few people must have read the book called ‘Lean In’ by Sheryl Sandberg which is about empowering women at work and valuing their contributions. Mary Kom is a variation of the book that talks not only about standing up for your passion but also understanding the values and struggles of a leader.

A ‘would-be’ manager must be aware of the behaviors, concerns as well as challenges that their female colleagues face or would face in front of them in offices and meetings. This movie will guide you about how work life balance is disturbed with family expansion and how it can be restored.

Corporate:

Corporate is a movie about how competitive businesses run; how companies play with ethics and values; how products are developed and the effort that goes in product development and launch. This movie is about doing anything for recognition and awards; pleasing the seniors; letting go ethics and planning how to blame one’s own employee to one’s benefit.

Though this movie talks about strategy and profits; one must notice the attitude the company heads showcase during the entire movie. One must see the interaction among the upper level management and how things take shape. Keeping distance between personal relations and professional relations is shown in this movie along with politics in the corporate.

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag:

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is about making the best out of the worst situations which the protagonist does during partition. Further, as the character gets motivated, he understands the value of efforts, dealing with personal life along professional life, taking risks and other ingredients that make life.

This movie is about trusting your coach i.e. real life mentor; dealing with stiff competition and overcoming all emotions that stand in way of your dreams and work fulfillment. You get to learn about motivation, focus and inspiration of an individual who makes it big for his family and motivation. In real life focused action towards goals and objectives brings success faster than anything.

Rocket Singh Salesman of the year:

This movie shows a protagonist progressing with observational learning while working in a company. This movie will tell you the details of how personal selling and sales takes place and the strategies required by a salesman to achieve his target. You will learn what all things to avoid on the job as a salesman and how to make best of your time.

One gets to see entrepreneurship, sales pitch, competition, handling objections during sales, making difficult things work and other marketing lessons which are not present in the books. Remarkable factors this movie shows are that customer satisfaction and servicing has no time and if you transfer delight to your customers, they will reward you with loyalty.

Swades:

Swades is a movie on rural development and this makes you realize the scope for rural marketing in India. India faces immense brain drain every year and people remain unaware about the need for rural marketing and development in the towns and villages of India. Remember, cursing India, cities and towns for backwardness, is easy but taking action to develop the backward areas not only involves career risk but also immense hard work.

It is your nation that demands talented and skillful brains more than nations which are self dependent. It is easy to compete and go for international companies but it takes real guts to move things that are stagnant. More than MNC’s, the roots of the nation require educated and willful managers who can help them progress, develop and upgrade. Remember I am not talking here about a fancy concept called Rural Contribution but a real effort from learned in the form of NGO’s if not government jobs.

Chak De:

Chak De is about making best of your life even after hitting the bottom. The protagonist coach Shahrukh Khan is defamed in the beginning and hence to restore his pride and honor, he toils hard to develop, build and coach an underdog women’s hockey team. This movie is about the strength and power of teamwork and efforts.

This movie clearly shows one how to become a powerful leader, how to help and support each other at workplace as well as placing professional goals over personal goals to not only bring professional but also personal success and happiness. This movie is about strategizing to achieve objectives and never losing heart over failures.

Taare Zameen Par:

For a ‘would-be’ manager, Emotional Intelligence along Soft skills is crucial to understand people at work. Some people are motivated positively by criticism while some take it personally and do not improve. Though the movie talks about children in detail, I suggest this movie to all would-be managers to make it extremely clear as to how one must be abundant in praise and stingy in criticism.

This movie clearly shows how you lose interest and zeal when you are subjected to constant criticism instead of a more humane approach. In the current environment where everyone is toiling and has stress in their lives; it is crucial for you to understand how factors like depression, lack of confidence etc come into picture and affect your and other’s performance.

Band Baaja Baraat:

This colorful movie is about an event management entrepreneurship venture. What you can really learn is valuing subordinates and colleagues at work; imbibe the essence of teamwork; understand how pitfalls and mistakes shape you towards success; how to impress clients by understanding them and researching on their real need.

Further this movie will not only entertain you but also make you understand how to identify teammates’ strengths and merge them with yours; importance coordinating with various departments; how to plan and organize resources and most importantly delighting customers. The crucial lesson here is to maintain a distance between personal and professional relationships for the benefit of organization as well as one’s own career.

Along with all these, you must see Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion starring Priyanka Chopra which shows how people are treated till the excel and perform while how they are rejected and abused when they fail. I don’t know whether you have seen these movies for the messages and learning I have shared with you. Hence, it is better to experience how things function in the corporate along with the behavior of people out there. Movies teach you that life is about finding your actual strengths and capitalizing on them!

Contributed by Chayan Jain (Class of 2011-2013, IBS HYDERABAD)

MBA’s Provide Diagnostic Approach to Business

Posted on April 20, 2015 by IBS India

The best way to cure a person is to diagnose what the patient is suffering from. An ENT Specialist through his specialised knowledge and test results will not only identify the sickness, but also suggest specific medicines to cure. So the key to cure is to properly diagnose what has actually inflicted on to the patient. A small laxity will not only lead to aggravation of the sickness, but may sometimes make the sickness acute.

The same approach is followed in a Business too, which moves from one transition to another. Business too suffers ‘ailments’ in terms of sluggish growth, lower sales, higher cost of operation, regulatory issues, interrupted production, higher attrition, brand dilution, and many more. Such ‘sickness’ could create havoc in the business and can destabilize it and sometimes force it to completely shut down or suspend its operation.

Sometimes we don’t see these things coming and we get to know when the problems have already created a widespread damage. Such contingencies are better tackled if the business had previously hired specialised people. The question is which specialised people?

The most closest person would be a person with a post graduate degree and preferably an MBA. A person who is aware of different aspects of business, its elements and its practical knowledge.

Holistic Approach: MBA’s provide a holistic approach to the ailments to the business. They have the knack to understand the problems in an uncertain environment. In a business, occurrence of problems is mostly uncertain yet some of them are predictable and a possible cause can be beforehand identified.
Diagnostic Approach: They diagnose the problem in a more sophisticated way, understanding the main causes and providing an analytical aspect to it. This first starts with understanding the problem. This is one of the important step because if the specialised person does not understand the problem, then there is no use to provide a solution. This is where an MBA comes into the picture. An MBA is already tested against time and business related knowledge. They have already been pushed into this subject with impeccable knowledge on multiple domains related to business.

Let us see what does diagnose actually mean for a business. Diagnose is simply understanding the root-cause of problems faced by the business which are directly detrimental to its growth prospect. It is like finding needle from a haystack. It is not a simple exercise which can be done over-night, but it takes a plausible amount of experience, knowledge and understanding.

It requires the following steps:

Understanding of the Business & Problem: The first step to diagnose is understanding the business. An MBA who has already been put through multiple knowledge across industries and business is the one most best in understanding the business and its problems. This is one of the primary reasons an MBA is mostly preferred. In simple terms, a plumber would never know what made the car break down, which the car mechanic would definitely know about it. In short, a right knowledge would help make right understanding of the problem. Subjects like Business Organization, Business Management is what comes extremely helpful for an MBA.

Identifying the Problem: There could be multiple problems faced by the business, but the one which is causing the most is perhaps the one which needs to be identified. This is where the practical knowledge of MBA comes handy. Instead of suggesting several problems an MBA would outline few of which that has been detrimental for the business. For example, if one speeding car crashes on a highway, then several other cars too crashes. An MBA identifies that one speeding car which, if stopped would stop crashing of other cars. Subjects like Business Strategy, Macroeconomics and Business Environment provides a ready reckoner.

Interpretation of the Problem: Just identifying a problem is not where the diagnostic approach is left. It is substantiated with valid tests and approaches. This is where the MBA comes into the picture compared to an inexperienced person. He would run a series of models and test and figure out a causality relationship. Just as a doctor in order to convince himself about the reason and type of sickness runs a few tests similarly an MBA too undertakes empirical studies and analysis which points to the problem. There is a whole new level of experience which is required to formulate the problem into a simple interpretation. This is where the Case-study is profoundly comes as a help for the MBA.

Suggesting Remedies: So now I know the problem what’s next? I run my business and i know the problem and I try my own ways of dealing with it without being aware of the consequences. This is where many of the small organizations go wrong. It is like self-prescribing a medicine which goes totally wrong. Instead of doing good it makes the problem more acute. MBA provides a specific solution to the identified problem. He provides a practical and actionable solution from his experiences. This is where an MBA through his personal intuition and years of study comes as a help.

In short, an MBA provides an interface to the business which identifies, interprets and rectifies a problem. Instead of going round and round and running from pillar to post, they provide an empirical solution to the problem. Many a times these problems remain unaddressed and by the time it is identified, it’s pretty too late. This has made many organizations to hire MBA who identifies the problem and suggests remedies. This has not only helped organizations save lots of money but also made it competitive.

This diagnostic approach is popular both for the small organization as well as the larger ones.

Large Organization: They have multiple departments, a large human workforce and higher deliverables. It therefore becomes imperative to have a specilaised individual like an MBA to monitor the challenges faced by the organization at multiple levels for multiple departments. As it grows the complexities of the problem too manifolds and a single individual cannot be a one-man show. Therefore, larger organization needs a trained team for this diagnostic approach. MBA’s therefore are most suitable because of their multiple domain knowledge and their cohesiveness towards the team.

Small Organization: They too have multiple departments but mostly small in size. The requirement for an MBA in small organization has become a pre-requisite for several factors like the need for specialised knowledge, professional approach, to fight competition and etc. Small organization have started headhunting MBA as they (MBA) provide good insight but also the diagnostic approach to their business.

In this 21^st century, the economy is becoming more open up and globalisation is hitting nooks and corners of the country. New companies are joining the mainstream and startups have become the fashion. One cannot deny how hard one may try, MBA has become an integral part of this change and MBA’s continue to be seen as a specialised knowledge who continue to provide a diagnostic approach to business.

Contributed by Mitesh Agarwal ( Class of 2011, IBS HYDERABAD )

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