Being a GMPian

I couldn’t pay 8 bucks for two cups of Chai to Dadu, as I had no change. He asked me to pay later. And in my mind
“Expenses a/c Debit Rs.8.00
Dadu a/c Credit Rs.8.00”
I laughed at myself.

After spending 6 years in Fashion industry this was a surprise since I expected myself to sleep in accounting classes, which I thought could never be fascinating. Other classes are no different. The first sense of ‘Being GMPian’ was in MHB (Managing Human Behavior) class, where each one of the class had as many perspectives as the number of people and none of the arguments were discountable. In the same week the ‘OutBound learning brought out the best of the strategies among us. I’m sure we have broken all the previous records.

Bright red skies in the evening have always been the badge of Jamshedpur. Thanks to TATA Steel. In the Campus academic grind and weekend chill outs make an incredible blend for our new lease of life far away from corporate cries. Unforgettable weekends with music from DJ (we call Bhaskar) was real delight including Folk songs of Bhojpuri, an offbeat.

The time is surely short and moving fast ; we have more of XL to experience and more synergies to create….

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Vijay

Management on the Rocks : The GMP way

GMP Students at XLRI Learn Management Lessons on an Adventure Trip

XLRI Jamshedpur's General Management Program (GMP-1 Year MBA) students recently went on a three-day adventure trip co-ordinated by Tata Adventure Sports Foundation (TASF), Jamshedpur. This is a regular annual event to be taken up by all students.
This program aims to inculcate management lessons among the students the natural way. TASF, a professional body under dynamic leadership of Ms. Bachendri Pal, is engaged in organizing such adventure programs for corporates and institutions all over the country.
The three days trip involved students admiring the hardships of nature as well as actually tasting the same by means of several exciting management games which brought out their mental and physical prowess to the fore. The events included rock-climbing, caving, trenching, abseiling at a place near Jamshedpur and water rafting at Dimna Lake.
Ms. Bachendri Pal, the first Indian women to climb Mt. Everest, gave a pep talk to the students on leadership skills. She was all praise for the enthusiasm and high degree of involvement shown by the students. The trip ended with the event of water rafting at Dimna Lake and the names of the overall group members were announced by a senior TASF official. The trip was ended on a sweet note with recapitulations of learning spread over three days. GMP students were upbeat with the rigor and relevance of this program. Some of the learning's from the program include leadership skills, working in teams, building strategies, making optimal use of available resources, overcoming the fears of unknown, leadership, and introspection skills.

URL:http://www.coolavenues.com/bschools/070706/xlri-adventure-1.php

Getting out of the comfort zone

June 19th @ XLRI

A call which had to be taken, was taken.Getting into XL was difficult , once the hurdle was cleared the greater diffculty lay in tackling an existential question of whether to quit a comfortable lifestyle and a successful career ( reasonably so ,very humbly) and take the plunge.

A rather intimidating question for the newly married's and for one of us who was about to take a five day leave in the middle of the programme to get married.

Even this could not flinch people and now we have a group of guys with an average experience of 84 months, with as diverse profiles as you could possibly imagine. We do have professionals from PSUs and IT . We also have CA's, Ex defence personnel , scientists and hold on - a Jesuit Father on board with us. Also need to mention the women partcipants who are managing quants and their kids with amazing ease. And for once average figures not to be taken with a pinch of salt, in Team GMP there are no outliers.

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Suman

Unlearning at XLRI!!!

These are my first days at XLRI jamshedpur and I am being told that I am here to unlearn and time permitting learn.The entire system is conspiring against me to shed old prejudices and take up new ones. I was never prepared to hear "profit is a liability and loss is an asset"- at least not from the Accounts prof.Nor was I ready to see the linearity in the circle in a case methodology class.I have been asked to put my thoughts in spatio temporal coordinates and explicitly state the implicit assumptions before I open my mouth to present something.Settings are perfect to make me believe that whatever I learnt last 30 years are past their use by date....these are the days of unlearning...its fashionable!!!!

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Shailendra

Measures Of Central Tendency In CR Elections

Is the CR ( Class representative) spokesman of the group or leader of the group?This question hit me when I was busy with our XLRI GMP 2007 CR elections.When our batch met for the first time I was sure about the name who should be the CR and it turned out like that eventually. I chose to revisit the existential experience from a cognitive perspective. CR is a central tendency of a class and so is the Leader.However, more often than not, elements of a class would be more tightly concentrated around the CR whereas they will be loosely scattered in the case where leader is the central tendency.In other words the standard deviation in a CR scheme is less than that in a leader scheme.In a leader scheme, an element becomes leader because of its own attributes and its ability to influence some of the attributes of the other elements. In other words when an element , because of its own attributes, asserts itself as the leader, the other elements can get suitably conditioned to revolve around it. If one of them doesn't, it has to then assert itself as the leader.If it can't, it gets dismembered.Primarly , a leader is a distinct element , its likeness with other members is only desirable.In a CR scheme, CR's likeness with other elements is paramount. Hence, a CR does not need to assert itself as CR.Other elements of the group see the "likeness" and designate an element as the CR.My cognitive faculty has run out of fuel..so I will stop here.My existential faculty hopes the CR will take the burden of the collective insecurity of the class.Good Luck to our CR!!!!

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Shailendra