The art of mentorship is yet to be fully tapped into and explored by the present system of management education in India. Post-Graduate programs are the penultimate stepping stones for students entering the ever evolving corporate world. The importance of mentoring at this crucial stage has been downplayed, if not ignored, by the system at large.

After 15+ years of formal education, students are thrown into the workspace to explore and fight their way towards a successful career. At this juncture it becomes imperative to have some sort of guidance from experienced seniors.

Management programs today focus on most aspects of holistic development for students, but proactive mentor ship seems to be missing.

What is proactive mentor ship?

I consider proactive mentor ship as the style of mentoring, wherein the mentor constantly tries to engage the men-tees into communicating their goals and desires, to subsequently provide meaningful advice aimed at helping the men-tee.

The keywords being: Constantly, Engage and Communication.

As someone who has not yet completed 1 full year of working, I believe I’m still a student at heart. With this knowledge I understand that students as a group are quite a tricky bunch of people. The general method of imparting knowledge (Read: Lecture based classroom learning culminating in a 3 hour exam) has sensitized students and each and every student develops a unique coping mechanism. Some may use cellphones during the class, some might doodle out their elaborate fantasies and some just wait to enjoy their class-nap. The point I’m trying to make is that students can’t be force-fed information. It’s futile to assume that when students reach the level of post graduation they will suddenly change their behavior.

Keeping this in mind, it is of utmost importance for the mentor to constantly try and guide the students. Most mentors have an understanding that students will approach them during crisis’ (Placements, choosing specialization, Internship, etc) and they will help them then. However, this approach is not fail-proof. Some students might not approach anyone just because they have not been doing it since the start.

To avoid this conundrum, a proactive mentor will constantly speak and guide the students from the start. It should be communicated to the students that the mentor is always available and can be reached through email, facebook, sms etc at any time. In an era where boundaries are irrelevant due to the social media boom, mentors must exploit this opportunity to be present for their mentees whenever required.

Another important quality of a proactive mentor is his/her ability to engage with the students. Since their schooling days, students in India are expected to respect their teachers/elders and maintain discipline in their presence. When working in a company, this behavior is translated to include the manager/boss. So, a level of apprehension will always be present with students while interacting with mentors. A proactive mentor has to understand this and constantly engage his students. He can do so with funny stories, incredible insights, personal experience and almost anything which will put the students at ease and make the mentor more approachable.

Finally, a proactive mentor has to learn to effectively communicate with his students. Unless he/she can do this, students will not be able to express their goals/desires clearly enough to enable guiding them. Effective communication is more difficult than it may sound. As most students and mentors have completely different fields of experiences’, the onus is on the mentor to understand what exactly the student is trying to communicate.

Having listed out the prerequisites of proactive mentor ship; let me now dwell on some of the benefits:

• Students will develop a fair idea of mapping their interests/skills to industry/profile they could start their career with.
• Students will be better prepared to deal with the corporate lifestyle and the level of commitment and accountability required.
• Proactive mentor ship will create an environment of knowledge sharing in the campus.
• Attrition rate of companies would come down as students are bound to take better informed decisions.

Contributed By: Abishek A Ganesh, Batch 2012, IBS Hyderabad)

IBS Business School has been at the forefront of providing quality management education for over 2 decades in the country. It is committed to nurture quality business professionals, outstanding leaders and successful entrepreneurs to contribute towards collective excellence of its alma mater, institute, business organizations and society as a whole.

IBS takes pride in its 37000+ alumni spread across the length and breadth of the globe contributing effectively towards self and organization success. Yet, another feather is added by alumni Abhinav Midha and Chinmay Bhatt, class of 2006 IBS Gurgaon who have cofounded ‘Shopholix.’

Shopholix (​​www.shopholix.com) is committed to enhance your shopping experience by helping shoppers locate and explore stores according to their needs. The current version of mobile app brings you to the city of Mumbai – where you can discover malls, markets, stores, products, exhibitions, boutiques and much more. The next release would be focused on user personalization and third party integration aiming at consolidating all shopping experience related services under one umbrella like transport, retail payments, loyalty points aggregation, product exchange etc.

Chinmay and Abhinav believe the 2 years spent at the institute was very instrumental in embarking on Shopholix . The case based learning methodology practiced at IBS was insightful and inspiring for the students. A great deal of learning took place in projects where they had to collect and analyze the primary data.The faculty had always encouraged them to be out of their comfort zones and taking calculated risks in life.

Contributed By :  Abhinav Midha and Chinmay Bhatt, class of 2006 IBS Gurgaon

Have you ever kept a diary? Writing down what you did during the day, what your thoughts were and what you plan to do? When you maintain a diary, it becomes very easy for you to flip back through the pages and know exactly what you were doing on a certain date, say about 6 months back. If you had put down your thoughts, you would also know what your feelings were at that time. It becomes easier for you to analyze why you were feeling as you did and so on.

You can do a similar exercise with your studies, especially when you are preparing for your entrance exams. We call it a learning diary.

What do you need in order to maintain the learning diary? You should have a syllabus, hand-in dates, a reading program with links to exam questions.

The diary will record the your schedule, your targets, what you have accomplished during the day, what problems you are facing, how you plan to overcome them and what action you are taking.

Set out in detail the syllabus, that is, what you need to study and where you need to prepare. This is a one-time exercise. Plan in advance your study schedule, based on what your syllabus is. Make a rough outline. It need not be refined, because it is quite possible that you may need to adjust your schedule to accommodate some unforeseen or unexpected circumstances. You may have some other commitments too, such as you could be pursuing a sports activity or may be taking music or drawing lessons. You just need a rough signposting.

Now start your actual diary. At the end of each day, write down what you have studied, how much you have studied, what problems did you face and whether you managed to overcome them. There is no harm if you want to put down your feelings and emotions too. If you are feeling frustrated or irritated or annoyed or jubilant you can put that down. Later on you can look back and think exactly how you felt and why you felt like that.

Your diary will help in identifying your pain points and pin pointing exactly the areas where you need to work more and the areas where you have expertise. It will give you a definite direction and allow you to focus on what is important.

The success of maintaining a learning diary lies in following these few points:

• Be consistent
• Be honest – that is, write down only what you have accomplished and whether you are satisfied with what you have accomplished
• You need to analyze your diary entries periodically
• Stick to your learning schedule
• If you have not completed your target on any day, try to make up for it in the subsequent days

There will be some days when you will be progressing fast and other days when you will be slow. On the days that you feel energetic and able to do a lot, work harder and longer but do not try to overstretch yourself. It is not wise to do that. For instance, if your normal capacity of work is at around 60 percent and on certain days you feel that you can do 90 percent, stick to 85 percent. There is no sense in exhausting yourself too much on one day and be too tired to work the next day.

Here are some tips for you to maintain a learning diary.

1. Syllabus content : Write down the details of your curriculum and what you have to study

2. Date by which I have to be prepared : What is the deadline for you to complete your studies and how much time do you have with you?

3. Schedule of study : Write down what you plan to study each day and how much of the course content that you plan to cover.
4. Topic 1 :   no. of days of study
5. Topic 2 : no. of days of study

It makes it much easier for you to embark on your course of study when you know what you have scheduled for the day. It also allows you to plan the other activities of the day.

Your diary entries could look something like this:

• What I did today
• Targets achieved
• Problems faced
• Areas I need to work on
• My thoughts

In the game of cricket, the aim is to bowl at the wickets and get the batsman out; in soccer the aim is to strike the ball into the net between the goal posts, across the goal line; in basketball the aim is to put the ball inside the basket. Every activity we do is associated with a goal. In fact, goals are important because they give you a definitive path, otherwise we would just be wandering around at random.
In the same way, before you start preparing for any test or exam, the first thing you need to think about is – what is your goal?
The type of a career you want to pursue is dependent on your goal or goals. As a student it is quite possible at this stage in your career your goals may not be well-defined, but you will definitely have some idea what you want to be or do in the future. What do you want to do with your degree in both the short and long term?
Next, you need to analyze your goal/goals. Who or what is your inspiration? Where do you expect your goals to lead you? If you are not able to do this analysis on your own, you need the help of an older person or at least someone knowledgeable you can mentor you. Remember your goals should harmonize with your interests. If you are interested in literature and the arts, it would be a mistake if you decide to be an engineer merely because all your friends are planning to get into engineering colleges.
Goals need not necessarily relate to your work or profession. It can also be non-career goals relating to personal or community aspirations. Sometimes your other goals can also turn into a career, such as volunteering work for a social cause can guide you towards working for a non-profit organization.
That is why analyzing your goals is so important because it can assist you in formulating the framework of the education you will need in order to pursue your goals.
Analysis of goals is not as scary as it sounds. It is one of the easiest tasks in the world and it is fun, as it allows you to dream what you want your future to be like. There is no harm in having more than one goal – because as I said before, at this stage in your life your ideas still have to crystallize and it is possible that your interests will keep shifting.
During the course of your education, you need to keep monitoring your progress and adjust your goals to meet your requirements and the direction in which you are heading.
There may be days when you may not be satisfied with your progress, but don’t get frustrated. Try new tactics to keep yourself motivated. A little persistence makes an enormous difference.
By developing a plan, you are setting definite career goals for yourself.
REMEMBER: There is no particular track to reach your career objective. It may keep changing as you go forward. The process may get more complicated and it may take more time than what you had initially planned. Whatever your situation, stay calm and strong. Be flexible and adjust your goals or if needed create an entirely new set of career goals. If your current budget does not support your goals now, you can do something else for a while and then get back to your original goal. For example, if you are unable to do your MBA now, you can work for a couple of years, and then do an executive MBA.
There are some exercises that you can do in order to formulate your goals. Write down your goals and then analyze each of them to check if they are Realistic, Pertinent and Appropriate. Do not discard a goal just because you feel it is very hard to achieve. You should be prepared to struggle hard to reach you goals.
Fill in the details of each of the goals above – what are your present qualifications and what would you need to do in order to achieve those goals?

You have quite decided that you are going to join a management school. You know that with a management degree under your belt, job opportunities will simply open up for you. Well, good for you that you have come to this major decision in your life.However, have you also decided which management institute that you want to join?

Yes, that is a bit of a problem isn’t it? There are so many institutes to choose from, all of them claiming to give you outstanding education and giving you the best entry to the corporate sector. They all look the same to you. Should you just blindly choose the more popular ones? Should you apply to the institute where your friends are joining?

Well, I think you need to be a bit more scientific in your approach to choosing the institute, and deciding which is the best for you. Here, we will give you some of the important parameters whereby you can arrive at the right decision. All the parameters that we have listed here are easily available on the Internet because there are business magazines that do annual surveys and conduct rankings of the top B-Schools in the country. Here goes:

The Faculty: This is of top priority. The quality of the faculty, the professors with whom you will be learning, is very important. Experienced, qualified faculty will give you not only domain expertise but they will also give you the right skills, which you will need in the corporate sector or anywhere in your job. Academic brilliance is fine, but a faculty with industry experience is invaluable as they will be able to relate what you are learning with the real world. Those from the industry will be able to give you relevant tips on how to deal with problems in the real world. A lot of information is available on the Internet. Go through the faculty list on the institute’s website and search around for information on them.

Placements: You are joining the institute in order to increase your job prospects, so placement record of the institute is very important. Look at the placement statistics for the institute. See their record for the past five years at least. Look at what kind of companies are making campus visits. You especially need to check if, for any reason, their recent placement record is not up to the mark.

The Curriculum: Often there are complaints from the industry that the curriculum in some schools do not reflect the current reality. They are still following a course set up two years ago. B-Schools have to make sure that their curriculum is constantly updated. Not only that, the curriculum should give you the opportunity to join any industry sector and assume any role. If the course curriculum is too specialised you may end up without a job if there is no demand for that particular stream. Some institutes have general management programs that equip you to tackle any kind of a job function.

Value Proposition: There is a tendency to run after brand names and the most high profile institutes. You have to look at what your needs are and whether you can get that from the institute. A low-profile, small institute with a highly skilled teaching staff ,excellent resources and corporate contacts may be better than a big, high-profile institute with an average teaching staff. You need to make a careful analysis of the value proposition.

Alumni Feedback: The alumni are the best ambassadors of an institute. They may be biased but you will get the inside knowledge about the institute, its strengths and weaknesses. You can gather first-hand information as to how the institute has shaped their career and goals. These days top management institutes have their own alumni forums, which can be accessed publicly. You can listen in on their chatter to find out what they have to say.

Your Budget : This is probably the most important criteria when choosing an institute but we have left it to the last because we think that if an institute scores on all other parameters and you are confident about your goals and abilities, you should not let a mere matter of money get in your way. Academic loans for professional studies are available and if your own finances are not enough, apply for a scholarship or a loan.

Resources for information on B-Schools: Business Today magazine does an annual survey of B-Schools. Click on this link for more information.

Contributed By : Disha Parekh Mohanty

As the MBA course progresses towards its end, would-be managers gear themselves for entering the corporate world which is often referred to the big bad world of pressure, deadlines, money, power, politics and smart work. Often, it is seen that students referred as ‘fresher’ end up committing blunders during their first jobs, due to lack of their awareness about this new world. Hence, I bring to you 10 quickies or say ‘vaccinations’ for new entrants to the industry, so that they feel more confident and comfortable in this new environment.

1. Knowledge and Experience are Above a Degree

Till now, you have been learning subjects in a course format but in the corporate, the scenario is very different from theory of the books. A degree is an acknowledgement of a certain level of knowledge but job and work are about implementing and grasping more knowledge. Your MBA professors will always tell you to focus on the content of your PPT’s but the corporate will always be interested in figures as well as conclusion from your presentation. Do not argue with your boss even if you have complete knowledge because this makes him feel inefficient and that harms you in long run.

2. Money is Crucial

Money is crucial not just for you but also for the companies employing you. Whenever you present bills, expenditure, projections and quotes, companies expect them to be lowest or say minimal. Remember businesses are not just about profits but money invested, used, earned, spent and the returns on them. For you money is salary, but for employers or companies, money is fuel that affects, boosts or slows its growth and progress. Never ever think of mismanaging funds because getting caught makes you lose management’s trust; harms your moral character and reduces your credibility.

3. Need to Appreciate Health

A healthy mind resides in a healthy body. A lot of my friends tell me about their Vitamin-D deficiencies that occur because they are indulged in table work for more than 7 hours a day and do not get adequate exposure to sunlight. Moreover, due to excessive junk food and alcohol consumption; many face weak digestive systems and poor organ health. Hence, one has to really remember to include de-stressing techniques, exercise or stretching, exposure to sunlight, proper hydration and diet etc to remain healthy.

4. Work-life Balance

This might sound futile but remember the fact that your parents grow old and require your time and attention while you dedicate your life to your work. Your spouse constantly needs your care, support and advice through different stages of his/her life. You must understand that your child needs you throughout his childhood for guidance, support and love because once you retire and have time for them, you will realize that their childhood is over. Further, there is no need to stick to office for socializing after working hours when you have a family that needs you more than them. Please do not carry office work to your residence!

5. Worry is Futile

A lot of corporate-entrants carelessly invite stress to their lives. In such cases they must learn from sales people on the job who treat stress like daily appetizers and remain stress free. Remember the management has nothing to do with how much stress or worry you carry for your work or personal life. They want you to do maximum work with a peaceful mind and worry only affects your productivity. Remember, we all love our first job, but it is not the only job in the world; something worth worry or suicide attempt. We all make mistakes in our first jobs and learn from them.

6. Holistic Success Belief

Management doesn’t ever appreciate employee’s self-centered progress decisions and looks for win-win situation for its employees and itself. Any decision of yours that invites an individual gain will never be liked by the company unless it is a decision regarding improvement in their process, their product etc. that would bring them greater profits. One must be company-centric and believe in the one’s success in the company’s success and growth. Do not overpromise if you want to remain a positive employee in management’s view. Try to achieve greater than expected.

7. Enjoying Minute Refreshments

You must let go of all high expectations and respect the little retreats and refreshments planned by your company. An aggressive sales company I worked for had employees who were always running for targets, facing failures or success but most people remained calm and waited anxiously for the month of April when they would be invited to company’s private party and July when they were taken for a movie. Jobs are not about very gigantic surprises but about finding happiness in small things.

8. Non Personal Friendships

I tell this theory of mine, time and again in my write-ups that personal life and corporate life are different. Do not mix your personal life with professional life because both are neither similar nor comparable. These are 2 parallel lives demanding clarity. Remember an office colleague must remain an office friend who cannot become a best friend till the time either leaves the company. Bringing office people into personal life risks your privacy and brings in insecurity of disclosure at office, which you might not want. Don’t let people know your weaknesses so that they remain unaware of your other side of life and can’t capitalize on them at office. Learn from the US culture, they have logic behind segregating the two.

9. Excuses Don’t Work

All of your valid reasons transform into excuses in the corporate. The people in corporate really are concerned with why the work wasn’t done, no matter how valid reason you give. It is simple, your senior will be only concerned getting the work in time and not with why wasn’t your work done and who will do it? His focus will be on judging your genuine efforts to complete the work. All your manager would expect is productivity, punctuality, completeness and delight every time so that he can do his work and delight further.

10. Management is not Emotional

Management has the least amount of space for your family duties, problems etc. You might feel that I am talking heartlessly about machines but you will feel that there is a devoid of emotions like sympathy in corporate world. The only emotions that are valued are remaining inspired, dedicated, motivated such that you can continue to deliver expected results. At times you may feel hurt in uncontrollable and emotional situations but you would be only responded with surface level or say minimal emotions and understanding.

Contributed By : Chayan Jain (Class of 2011-2013, IBS Hyderabad).

Opportunity! You might have heard this word many a times and must be waiting for one. You must be wondering what opportunity is? And how can I come to know about this? Answer to the above question is very simple. Opportunity is an appropriate or favorable time or occasion. It is a situation/condition favorable for attainment of a goal or a good position. It is a chance or a prospect for advancement or success.

It is very important to know when and how opportunity comes and it is equally important for anyone to foresee the same and work in same direction so as to utilize and make full use of it. At times it becomes very difficult to know how opportunity comes and how to take advantage of the same. But if u can envision that, then probably half of the work is done and you will only need to work on the remaining half. The biggest question that arises now is how to foresee good opportunity? What shall we do so that we get good opportunities? Answer to the question is simple, even if you are doing business or a salaried employee.

Broad Minded– It is very important to be broad/Open minded as it helps you to understand the situations in a better way and come to know more about different things. If you are narrow minded then you don’t give room to your mind which will close most of the doors for thinking. If you give room to your mind to think, then probably you can get new ideas and you can work on the same. It is always wise to understand different people and respecting their thoughts as well. You only can learn and grow by doing so. If you become stubborn then you probably don’t grow and become contended in your life.

“Nothing makes a man broad-minded like adversity.”

The above quote is true, it’s better to become broad minded from the beginning than to wait for an adverse situation and change the mindset. If you take efforts to change it from the start then gradually it will become a habit.

Eyes and Ears open– One of the very important ways to attract opportunities is to keep your eyes and ears open. You never know from where a good opportunity may come and you can grab the same. If you keep your eyes open then you can see if there is something which can help you in your future course. If you keep your ears open then you can hear about a good opportunity from someone and make use of it.

Opportunities may come in various forms – in the form of a scholarship, a raise in the salary, promotion at work, and a chance to spend quality time with family and friends. So, it is important to keep one’s eyes and ears open so that these opportunities don’t slip by. Once these opportunities slip through our fingers, it may take a long time before they come knocking on our doors again.

Hard work– Hard work is very essential to attract opportunity. It is very simple if you work hard and if you do good in your activity then good things are going to come to you and you will get desired fruits for the same. If you don’t work hard and only wait for an opportunity then probably it’s not going to happen. To get something you need to work hard and in right direction. The most essential character to success is hard work.

Let’s take an instance, if you want to do a business and you don’t know what business to do and from where to get finance? If you will wait for an opportunity to get you an idea and money to start a business than probably it’s not going to happen. But if you go out and do market research try to find out demand of a particular good or service then you get an opportunity to start something. If you go and meet investors and visit different banks than probably you can arrange finances. Sitting ideally at home gets you nothing and you end up waiting for an opportunity and fail.

“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”

 Desire – All above qualities are very important but desire to work and foresee an opportunity is equally important. If you desire to find a good opportunity then it is very to do that. If you don’t desire then probably you will ignore opportunities coming to you and will end up getting nothing.

“The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.”

The human race is divided into two classes-

• Those who go ahead and do something, and
•  Those who sit idle and enquire, out of idle curiosity that: – “Why wasn’t it done the other way?”

Success in life, be it in any task or field brings happiness and once reached must be won over and over again. It’s not easy, but in the difficulty lays the opportunity, its rewards are great, but it belongs only to those brave and courageous souls, who care to have the faith in themselves. Who recognize and opportunity when it comes their way, grab it, make the most of it and continue to move forwards towards success. The winner says- It may be difficult, but it’s possible. The loser says- It may be possible, but it’s difficult. Now which category do we want to belong to? Winner or loser?

One thing is certain, that if a person is willing to brave the hazards of the road, he will grow strong in the journey. Only the strong, courageous and the determined, find success in their journey. Such people don’t explode into success; they GROW into it. A successful man once said “When I can run, I will run; When I can walk, I will walk; When I can only crawl, I will crawl; I will sat least always be moving forward.” Successful men always move forward and grab opportunities. The secret of being successful is grabbing the opportunity and make full use of it.

“If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.”

I have read the ‘One Minute Manager’ (Ken Blanchard & Spencer Johnson, Berkley Books) at various times during my life and each time it is with a new perspective.

The first time I read it was when I had just started on my career. Frankly, I was a bit bored by the book and I missed the whole point of it. Then after some years, I again read the book. This time the concept intrigued me. Everything done in a minute!

Then more recently, I read it again and this time I got the idea and it was no longer intriguing, but downright enlightening. It seemed the most efficient way to do things – in the shortest possible time.

The purpose of this blog is not about the book as such but to extrapolate on the concept that is explained in the book and what we can learn from it. To those who haven’t read it, the book is essentially about managing people, who are the most important resources in any organisation. If we extend the learning from it, you can also interpret it as getting the results you want in as little time as possible. As a manager, you should not be spending too much time in doing things – whether it is setting goals, praising your employees and chiding them.

The one-minute time is not that important. What is important is how much time are you spending on doing things? How fast is your reaction time? Are your goals so complicated that your employees get confused?

I am sometimes amused reading the mission and vision statements by companies. It runs into several sentences and statements. You have to be able to explain your vision and mission in one sentence. If you are putting in too many of them then you have lost focus.

In the same way, as a team leader or manager you should have well-defined goals for your team that can be read or seen at a glance. Goals, whether the manager or the team members set it, should not occupy more than a sheet of paper. In addition, it should be written in such a way so that it can be easily

We have lost the art of simplicity. In fact, we like making things sound complicated because we think that makes us look clever. If what you say sounds too complex to be understood by others, then the problem is not with their understanding but your ability to explain and communicate.

Since our thought processes are not simple, the way we go about doing things is not simple. Our corporate structure also reflects our complex thinking processes. India’s retail king, Kishore Biyani is a staunch advocate of the simplicity theory. He holds the idea that an organisation should have as few layers as possible, in order to simplify the decision-making process. The more layers, the more time is spent in transmitting information.

The essence of any good manager and management principles is being ‘people friendly’, that is, treating employees with care. Finally, organisations and corporations are all about people and if they are not happy, you cannot have a happy organisation.

The root of all enterprise is people; they are the most important resource. Next comes the processes and systems and then we have the purpose for which the enterprise has been set up. It doesn’t matter if an organisation has two people or 200 people. If their attitude is not right then it doesn’t matter how innovative or how novel the venture is; it will not work.

In the book ‘One Minute Manager’, the manager takes just a minute to praise or reprimand his employees. Extrapolating on this idea, we can conclude that timely action is of the essence. React to events – positive and negative – as soon as they occur. Events do not wait for you. Sometimes you also need to anticipate events and then take action accordingly.

Managers and senior team members in corporates spend a large amount of their time in meetings. Those who have been part of these meetings know that there is a good amount of time wasted in these meetings. Most meetings are inconclusive and some of them have no agenda at all.

If you were an efficient manager, you would not need these meetings. If you have conveyed your instructions properly to your team, they would not need to speak to you frequently, unless it is to update you on their progress – and does it require hours to do that? As a team member, how much time would you really need to explain to your boss how much of your goals have been achieved?

Even meetings need to be efficiently held and should be productive. The meeting agenda should have the objectives clearly laid down. What is the purpose of the meeting? What are the items to be discussed? What are the actions points and by when should they be achieved? Finally, what are the conclusions reached?

People often have meetings to raise issues but they come up with no solutions.

This is a wasted meeting. Some people hold meetings because they claim that is the way they interact with team members. Even if this is true, you have to keep such meetings short.

Large projects need to be broken down into smaller ones with short-term goals. All the short-term goals lead to medium-term goals, which in turn lead to longer-term goals.

Simplifying things and making them into smaller achievable targets is the way to introduce efficiencies in the system. If your systems and processes are efficient, then employees can perform at peak efficiency and be more Processes and systems in a company are meant to help employees. They are not to create roadblocks or hinder them in the course of their duties. Keep them simple so that it is easy for employees for them to follow it and most importantly, understand why they are there.

I have seen some organisation where their workers’ manual, run into several pages. Do you really expect employees to remember all that and work according to it? What’s wrong with a one-page set of instructions?

As aspiring management students and future managers, you have to internalise this idea in your DNA – simplicity is of the essence.

Contributed by Disha Parekh Mohanty