A Friend Retires

A friend (right, above) retires this month to go back to his hometown, Chennai. And I am happy that I can bug him a little more when we meet (more often) on our Golfing trips together. We have known each other since my days at Harihar (1995), when we worked at Kirloskar Institute. Also played Golf together at the wonderful course we had on campus.

I learnt a lot from him, including some of the niceties of SPSS. He is a natural teacher, and has also co-written a chapter in my Marketing Research book (on its way to a fourth edition soon). I was happy that he joined IMT Nagpur, where he has been the last few years, teaching HR at first, and then Analytics, which is his forte. He has helped countless people with their Ph.D. s, officially and unofficially.

I am happy I am in his list of friends. Happy retirement, Vijayakumar.

Portraits of Batchmates-14

Some classmates on an exploratory walk around the campus. Some others below.

Zee

The people of Gaul were brave by comparison! This man believed that the water heater would blow in his face so he always switched it off after he had used it. Other people coming for a bath subsequently were obviously no concern of his – a real random number for you!

Planter

A cat in anything he takes up, he is still trying to figure out why with his looks and build, he still doesn't get the looks he should be getting. No wonder he sticks with Benji who operates in a sellers' market. "I am too modest to fill in the 'Man of the Batch' and 'Person of the Batch’, he said. Modesty, thy name is A R!

Parthos

All souls in need of help and solace (specially in HR/Personnel) beat a bee-line to his door. What Parthos did not know about HR was not worth knowing. He had this unique ability to present an Act to its barest details. In his spare time, he experiments with high-power homeopathic beverages and attributes his slim physique to self-therapy.

Happiness and Productivity- What is the Correlation?

I am into correlations for the moment. Commonly accepted wisdom in Human Resources Management says that a happy employee performs better, is more productive, etc..

Is that necessarily true? I was unhappy and good at my studies in school. Many sales managers (and other managers) increasingly ill-treat, mistreat, and abuse their subordinates into performing or being more productive. Usually, they succeed.

The contingency theory of leadership claims that leadership style should change according to the type of subordinates and the context. China today produces goods at a lower cost than mot people in the world. Are their workers happier? I don't know, because I never heard of worker satisfaction surveys in China. Not sure if these are permitted under their system.

The question simply is this- is happiness of the employee at work over-rated? Now that I have provoked you, let us hear from you readers.

HR Analytics

Can human beings be analysed? There are jokes galore about men being an open book and women being difficult to figure out. But seriously, HR analytics is an idea whose time has arrived. In line with analytics of customers (marketing analytics) and Financial analytics (analysis of anything financial, such as instruments, investments, companies or what have you), HR analytics- both explanatory and predictive, has the potential to improve HR strategy and its impact on the organisation.

IMT Nagpur today launched its centre of excellence (a research centre) on Human Resource Analytics in style- at Hotel Airport Centre Point, Nagpur. It brought in HR experts from corporates in Pune, Delhi, Bangalore and of course, Nagpur. There was a good gathering of all HR faculty and some others, student managers with interest in the area, and faculty research associates. An old friend, Mr. Vijay Phanshikar, who had launched my autobiography in Nagpur a year ago, was also there.

We hope many good things will come out of this initiative.

Inauguration at IMT Ghaziabad

It was the inauguration of the IMT Ghaziabad PGDM (MBA) batch today, and a large crowd of expectant students filled the hall up. It was their first day in class at IMTG, and they had a lot to listen to. The guest for the occasion was Mr. Ramana Murthy, Vice President HR at Coca Cola in India, who incidentally is from A.P.

He shared his life story briefly, drawing lessons for a typical student to transform into a leader over his career, with some sage advice. He also outlined pitfalls that come in the way, and suggested means to tackle them. He also asked them to identify their passion and select a career related to it. Of course, some of this advice gets clearer in hindsight, or as one progresses in one's career. For instance, my migration to teaching- and many others from my MBA batch did something similar, either becoming professors or entrepreneurs. Two of them are also into spiritual pursuits full-time (not the United Breweries kind). He also tackled well some tricky questions from the young minds.

All in all, a good beginning for all the youngsters, and my debut at Ghaziabad. The campus seems a bit small after Nagpur, but it's vibrant with 1000 plus hearts beating on it.