Invited Talk at SBI Leadership Institute

 Had an invited talk at SBI Leadership Institute in New Town, Kolkata. It was for emerging leaders at Clearing Corporation of India, which is into settling transactions of different types, like Derivatives or Forex trading. I had to research their business, being new to the terminology. But linked it to crises of the past two decades, and also to leadership in times of crisis. Was well-received, according to me.

Pics from the class and the campus. It is residential, for participants and faculty. Reminded me of Kirloskar Institute.

Organisation Structure

 Structure follows strategy, someone has said. But structure does play a major part in any organisation. A family can be patriarchal or matriarchal or neither. That makes a difference to how it functions. Same is the case with an organisation.

Top-down decision makers like the Army work differently from a grassroots driven organisation like a few NGOs or cooperatives. Decentralisation is possible through SBUs or Strategic Business Units, if it's a large organisation. But the style of leadership and decision making plays a role there too.

In other words, structure is the beginning, but not the end, of the story.

Performance of the organisation depends on all these.

Contingency Theory of Academic Leadership

 I know, unlike Trump, I shall not be nominated for a Nobel for this, but it's still worth trying to put my thoughts out. At least, they will not cause wars.. maybe a war of words, at most.

Academic leadership is different from its corporate version, in my view, after having been in 3-4 such situations. The top institutions in any discipline have motivated faculty who only need opportunities, and autonomy to thrive. Some incentives can help. But if you try too much to assert yourself as a leader, it has the opposite of the intended effect- they lose their motivation. They are put off, and stop excelling. They may even quit.

Of course, every institution may not be the same, so you may need to tweak this a bit based on the situation - the contingency part of the theory. But in general, the corporate version of push, push till the subordinate performs- or drops dead (I am not kidding, it happens)- will not work too well in academia. 

Which is why, I think Publish or Perish is a bad idea. Incentivise publications, or case writing, or whatever is your organisational goal, but also recognise teaching excellence. Faculty can innovate in learning methodologies instead of publishing for its own sake. That could be incentivised too. Admin. work usually goes unrecognised. For me, a placement chair or an Alumni affairs chair who does well in a B school is also valuable, just like a guy who publishes a good paper. Or teaches well consistently, and in tune with the times.

Leadership Types With a Twist

 Actually, it's different types of leaders. They get glorified unnecessarily, sometimes. But instead of a positive typology, let's look at some negatives or negative types among leaders, for a change. The following are the major ones-

1. Spineless 

2. Heartless

3. Witless

4. Bureaucratic

5. Consultant-driven

I shall elaborate. The first has no spine. He/ She will not back up subordinates, blame someone for all wrongs, and take credit for things he/she did not do/initiate

The second may be good at getting things done, at a great human cost. He/she does not recognise that humans are working for them (though it could be robots soon). No thoughts for feelings, or other unnecessary things that hamper work.  Sometimes, ethics also go out of the window.

The third are entertaining at best, and completely useless for the tasks on hand. 

The fourth act as if the organisation is a government office with file pushers- not doers. Nothing ever gets done, and subordinates get exhausted with procedure.

These guys come up with a new flavour-of-the month fad every month, usually suggested by BCG or McKinsey or a home-grown consultant. Everyone tries to do Design Thinking, or IoT, or Benchmarking for 4 weeks approximately, until a new word catches his/her attention.. and then, you know the rest. 

Learnings Over 40 Years

 The first step after my MBA in 1984 was into advertising, and then into Marketing Research. Followed by a trip to the U.S. that lasted 5 years, including a Ph.D. and a lot of teaching experience. And driving too, on beautiful 4 lane roads and 2 lane country roads. A couple of pics, from Niagara Falls and Bryce Canyon, below-

Then, my academic journey started in India with XIMB, followed by VJIM, KIAMS Harihar, IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode, PES Bangalore, IFIM, IMT Nagpur and Ghaziabad, IIM Indore, NMIMS Bangalore and now, Prestige University Indore.

My learnings are not easy to summarise, but let me try-

1. Learning never ends, whether you are a student or a teacher. Unless you close your mind.
2. People are generally nice, except for a toxic minority. If unchecked, the toxic ones spoil the environment for others. 
3. Productivity is hard to measure, and so is success. Sales figures can also deceive, because quality of customers matters.
4. Advertising is losing its credibility, but over a long period, brands can achieve credibility through good performance as per customer expectations.
5. Hard work does help, in various phases of a long career.
6. Conceptual skills and problem-formulation skills separate a leader from others.
7. People skills too, sometimes. 
8. Most employees are confused by contradictions in the workplace. Advice? If you have control over things, be consistent.
9. How to succeed? Have multiple goals, and achieve as many as you can. If you cannot achieve some, it may not matter. Refer to No. 3 above.
10. Chill, have a hobby, travel, meet friends. This always works, no matter your situation.

Leadership- With a Pinch of Salt

 Keep your tongue firmly in your cheek. This is not serious, unless you take it otherwise.

Leadership is of many types- for instance

1. Leader as Cop. He has to keep tabs on everyone, and try and hang at least one person a day, for crimes of omission, commission, or remission. Committed or not, because the cop is only as successful as his number count!

2. Leader as Saviour. He thinks he is the Noah who has to navigate the ship the subordinates are on to safety. If not, they may drown and he will shoulder the blame, and rot in Hell.

3. Leader as Parent. He thinks he has many idiot children (subordinates), who tend to be infantile. As a parent, it's his responsibility to knock some sense into them, so they can one day grow up! 

There could be more types, but I am tired now, so let me stop and take a (deep) breath!

Leadership in a Crisis

 There are many different things that a crisis will test. For instance, the speed with which you can act to respond. Obviously, that power rests with the leader/s in an organisation or nation/state.

Second, getting advice from the right people. If the leader has no expertise in a given matter (and he/she can't possibly be an expert in everything, by definition), he must know who the expert is, and get them on board on his side.

Some anticipation of what different options will result in. A cause and effect prediction-not just one, but for at least 3-4 options. Typically what we do in a case analysis pioneered by Harvard University, and now copied worldwide. Except that it's more complicated in a crisis. Multiple actions may be needed on many fronts.

Another option is using simulation, where multiple scenarios instead of only a few, can be used for scenario-building, with consequences that can be debated. Any scenario can be tackled if you know it's probability. It keeps you much better prepared.

Firmness or decisiveness once the discussions are over and done with, willingness to try one option out, while keeping your mind open if anything unexpected happens, are some other desirable qualities.

Yes, this second wave of COVID is what inspired this post. No blame game, but an academic point of view.

Trip to an MBA Class

 I mean my MBA class, as a student. That would be late 1982. The subject was Organizational Behaviour. I recently found some notes-cyclostyled (you may not know what that is, but it was a primitive form of copying or Xeroxing. They involved some readings, an exam description, a definition, and an analysis of my personality. Here they are. Most are self-explanatory-

This set of courses- 3 of them, including one elective, were some of the best I had at IIMB and the others were not bad either! Only a couple I slept through. But O.B. really opened my eyes, helped me understand myself and others a lot better, and I think may have contributed to whatever little success I have had at managing people in various positions of academic leadership I have held in my 40 years since! That's a lot of contribution, but of course it was the foundation for other learning over the years. This is probably the most important subject in an MBA program, if taught by experts.

Memories of Bangalore

 I passed the Silk Board junction yesterday. Brought back memories, not all good. But the good ones were of joining PESIT in my first academic leadership role, with a set of 15 faculty and 120 MBA students. A university affiliated system in India was new, and some challenges were to transcend its limitations. We did Ok, with a journal being published (PES Business Review), case method adopted by many faculty, and training programs and conferences being done. An international collaboration with Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania too.

Then came a brief stint at IFIM in Electronic City. New colleagues, and we tried new things in admissions, touring 30 centres to admit students from all over India. I went as far as Dehradun and Amritsar, apart from Chandigarh, Udaipur and Jaipur. We achieved our target.

One common feature of places I was in-charge of, were the FDPs or faculty development programs we ran for our own and other B school faculty. On research methodology, or Case method of teaching/learning, Case writing, etc. that saw good participation. Alumni connect was also strengthened in most places I worked in, and continues to this day.

Of course, the metro railway is new, and the pubs and microbreweries have grown in number since then. 2020 was a peculiar year due to the COVID pandemic, but there's a lot to explore in Bangalore.

Bangalored Once Again

Having been here several times before, on work and study stints, it's not a new place, except that the city continues to be a growth magnet for all types of industries, not just technology based ones. It's the new Bombay/Mumbai, if you will, and additionally has the best weather among all metros. 

My new stint here is as Director, Bangalore campus, with a reputed deemed university..Narsee Monji, or NMIMS for short. I started on the 25th, and already had a couple of Zoom meetings, and a couple of  physically distanced meetings on site. We have two campuses, at Bannerghatta Road (saw bus nos. 365 and 366 which were familiar sights in 1982-84 when we lived at IIMB) and Koramangala. 

We have some undergraduate departments (Commerce, Law, Economics and Science) as well as an MBA program. About 1200 students in all, though due to COVID, they are not here at the moment.

View from my office at Bannerghatta Road, the main/bigger campus.

and a view of the other side, from another floor.

Behaviour and Leadership

 I think if you wanted to study contrasting styles of political leadership, you only have to look at New Zealand and the USA in the last few years. No idea where Jacinda Ardern came from, but for me, she symbolises what leadership is all about. Of course, economic growth is important, but it's not everything. We are human beings, not robots. 

Even robots may not be too happy with the kind of crass behaviour that the last POTUS put up, I am sure. He posed as a successful businessman, but I am not too sure that was also misrepresented like most things about him. Of course, he was legally elected, and had a right to his political and economic views/policies. My point is more about the human angle. Maybe if COVID had not shown him up for what he was, he may have won again. In a way, Biden must thank the virus too for helping his cause.

Hope the Biden-Harris era reminds us more of the gentlemen of the past.

Leading Professionals

There is an expectation from leaders in many situations, that they will do a lot of leading-in other words, micro-manage their subordinates' work from A to Z. In an academic institution though (and perhaps in other places which are full of professionals who have entered the profession with a will to do well), less is more. The major difference between an academic job and many others is that people here resent being told what to do and how to do it. Most are here for the autonomy to decide what they want to spend time on, and how to do it too. Mentorship for young faculty who want it is an exception to this.

To quote a former IIT director, your best bet is to hire the best people (faculty) you can, and leave them alone, and hope they will perform. This may be the best way to nurture the crazy set of autonomy-loving professionals.

Of course, this does not work with the non-teaching staff, who may need directions AND control. So, it is horses for courses, depending on the kind of subordinates you have. Contingency theory of leadership, anyone?

Administration Versus Leadership

I have deliberately not used the word Management, because I am not talking of MBAs alone, but more generally, about spheres that affect more people than the corporates.

Administration can be the routine activities, and more to do with implementation of rules that were framed by someone else. For instance, the Municipal administration mainly has to do with implementing rules and duties already assigned to the department. Few new things, maybe once in a while, like building a new flyover.

Leaders may be distinguished (if they are at all) by some creative ideas that they are able to come up with for the non-routine, which may benefit a lot of people. Many leaders give us hope, but few live up to it. In our political landscape, maybe three or four have solved problems of masses creatively, though many may have contributed in bits and pieces. TN Seshan, E Sreedharan (Metro Man), Verghese Kurien, and a few other bureaucrats from within the system were leaders who did this by probably going beyond their brief. The Metro has the potential to solve public transport problems if designed well- I have now travelled by Kolkata, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore metros and can vouch for this.

I had the fortune to live in Andhra Pradesh when Chandrababu Naidu came up with a computerised service for citizens to pay their bills in one place. It was called eSeva, and was later (much later) copied by other states. Before this, people spent huge amounts of time in lines to pay their own utility bills.

The latest example of good leadership is the way the Orissa Cyclone called Fani has been handled, with able leadership directing the various administrative wings in saving at least a few thousand lives. It involved coordination among different administrative bodies/wings, making it all the more remarkable.

I am pretty sure that we can keep up a flurry of such innovations to ease the life of a common man, if we give enough thought to it. That would make for smart cities and villages, and much more. Maybe a citizen scrutiny and rating system may work, and get people to participate more in governance too.

No-thought Leadership

I thought about various things today. Yes, I do that at times. But then, this thought-thinking business is addictive, and one thought follows another for no good reason. This train of thoughts finally came to a halt, and I became thoughtless-yes, just like you can be speechless in the face of some beautiful object, person, etc., you can also be thoughtless. Not thoughtless, as in uncaring, but just without thoughts crossing your mind- there is a red light that stops thought, flashing in your mind.

All gurus talk about how being - just BEING, with no thought, I mean, is the key to many good things. So I decided that being a Thought Leader may be passe, and I need to be a No-thought leader. The more I thought about it, the more it appealed to me. But how would I convey this thought to others, that they should be without thought, I wondered.

Ok, I am still thinking about it. But the idea is good, you must admit...

Leadership Fundamentals

I think I'll give it a shot. I know there are a lot of leadership theories in vogue and out of it. I studied quite a few while doing my MBA and Ph.D. But these insights are mostly my own, though they may bear a resemblance to theories living or dead.

The first thing a good leader needs is not an MBA, but clarity of vision for his/her organisation. Many flounder on this count, I think. As some great man said, "If you don't know where you are headed, the rest of it is a waste of effort." Just like when you are shaving, it's a good mirror (and lighting) that is most useful, rather than a great razor (I beg your pardon, Gillette).

The ability to appoint the right people for the right job (skill needed- being a good judge of capabilities), and lay out a vision for the key people. So they can achieve it (if they are the right people, that is).

Motivation- the greatest motivation for each type of job may vary, but for some, it is autonomy. For others, it could be tight monitoring (sales type of jobs where targets are what make or break a company).

Courage to sack people is another important one, if you discover that you chose the wrong person or that she is not performing in tune with organisational needs. Merit should count.

I think I will stop here, or else I may be tempted into doing another Ph.D. 

On Handling the Non-routine

It is very important to learn how to handle the unexpected, non-routine situations in life. Let me try and illustrate.

There are many things we expect, or even take for granted. Simple example- we expect parents to be around for a long time. Suppose one of them is absent, or passes away early, what are you supposed to do?

You fail in a class/course. What next?

Your spouse threatens to walk out of your love marriage...?

You are fired. From your job. Much more common in the U.S., now the fever is catching on in India.

Your aspirations to get into a program, a course, a sports team, are not fulfilled.

You are broke, because of over-using your credit cards/taking on too many loans.

Many of these situations can seem nerve-racking, or worse. More so because nobody told you this could happen to YOU. How you deal with these may be vital to your well-being. Of course, in all these situations, it helps to have someone like a mentor, or a friend to talk to. But I know of lots of people who have faced one of the situations described here, and come out looking good, in control, after the immediate trauma had passed. There are many different ways of coming back, including finding alternative avenues to engage onself, or starting off on a new hobby, or just taking a break to think things through.

My leadership stint also taught me that work-related situations can get sticky, and need careful handling. They can cause trauma to others, and therefore, being thoughtful rather than hastily "fixing" things is a useful way to approach things. 

My Past Bosses

My Bosses over 20 odd years

This one should be a super hit (as they say in Bollywood), as bosses and spouses are the most talked about (maligned?) people on earth.

Boss at the Ad Agency: A lady was my first boss at this workplace. I was a fresher, and I felt she did not make use of skills (ha!) that I had. But I did learn how to be pushy from her. She was not that good at her work, but adequate for a small agency that had no ambition. My (women) colleagues did not like her one bit, and my (male) colleague Sunil Jariwala who was in media, was also fairly cool. She wrote my first appraisal in my work life, and it was not flattering. I did not stay long enough for the second appraisal.

Market Research Company: At my second job, the bosses (three of them) I had (C.K. Sharma, Matthew Paul and Shyam Sunder) were some of the nicest guys on earth. They were very democratic, and being from a similar background as mine (an IIM), maybe, were understanding. They gave me challenging work to do, and appreciated good work when I did some. I was rapidly transferred to their biggest territory (Mumbai), and they were cordial even when I left to go to the U.S. I really enjoyed my work, though the pay was not so great.

My Ph.D. guide at Clemson (Mike Stahl) was great, a very focused guy, and but for him, it would have taken me much longer than three years. He was quick with feedback, and pushed for acceptance from other members of the committee if he was convinced. When I see some struggling doctoral students in India, I am reminded of my good fortune.

At Lander, my Dean Dale Molander was very respectful (because I could teach quant subjects?), and supportive. Quanti teachers got a lot of respect in the U.S. anyways. He was also a very straight-talking and easy-to-get-along-with guy.

My first Indian academic boss (A Jesuit Father): At Bhubaneswar, I was aghast when I attended my first faculty meeting. It was more like a discourse in a Sunday Mass, and the boss was unstoppable. Anyway, I got into a fight and left fairly quickly, but it bothered me for a long time, coming from a democratic system in the US where faculty even voted on critical matters. This guy was also vindictive, and left a bad taste in the mouth.

Boss at Hyderabad: An officer and a gentleman is how I would describe this guy, ex-Air Force officer and ex-faculty member at Administrative Staff College (ASCI), who saw us through the initial few years. We jelled well. It was a nice experience while it lasted- about three years.

Kirloskar Institute: Boss No. 1: He had pedigree (had been at IIMA for donkey’s years), and good teaching style, but was somewhat introverted. We got along fine, and I learnt how to invest in infrastructure (intellectual) from him. We had a great collection of Harvard cases, films and business books. One of the films we used there, called “Who Killed the Sale?” was a classic.  We also had great visiting faculty from IIMs and elsewhere. We also valued people- salaries were twice those at other colleges.

Boss No. 2: Though not as illustrious as his predecessor in management training, he was a great human being, respectful and nice to work with. He succeeded in getting an MBA program going at Harihar, and genuinely wanted the good of the institution and all stakeholders.

Boss No. 3: A devil incarnate, and my first inspiration to strike out as a director. Absolutely without scruples. I had the most altercations in my life with this guy, and I don’t think they had any impact on him, as his skin was too thick. Teflon coated, as U.S. president Reagan was once called. (Some Teflon may be good for the boss, but not too much.)

At Lucknow: He was a director with a reputation for leadership, and I had no trouble at all from him. He had a lot of finesse in dealing with people, though it was apparent that there were many who did not approve of him. But then, a leader or anyone in an administrative position can rarely please everyone. One of his bad traits was getting less than qualified people to teach at IIML, but most IIMs were in dire straits for faculty, so maybe there was some good in that. I don’t know.

Other academic bosses: Boss No. 1: A very shrewd guy, managed his self-interest, but not that of his team. Did not have a clear plan for the institution, except claiming to be high and mighty. Lived on his past reputation, mostly.

Boss No. 2: Another inspiration for my directorial ambitions. Had a severe case of verbal diarrhoea, and people ran miles to avoid getting into the trap of his one-way communication. But a relatively ego-less guy, and therefore easy to get along with if you could tolerate the earlier-mentioned fault.

I become the boss: I also have a few (!) faults. I am the big-picture guy, not too target-oriented, tough, and so on, but I believe I am easy to work with (mostly), and concerned about an individual’s development. I also delegate extensively, and (I believe) give enough rope to people to hang themselves. I have no illusions of greatness (either mine or anyone else’s)- I believe we are all fallible.

Leadership Memories

I spent a few years leading some Indian business schools in the period between 2005 and 2013. The things I remember that I think made a difference, during those years, to various institutes I was in.

1. PESIT, Bangalore. My first and only stint in an institute that was not autonomous.

Creating a self-belief that faculty there could do anything that autonomous B schools could. Running a scholarly journal, interacting with industry, teaching through cases, publishing, teaching internationally. Most of these worked beyond belief, with some of the performance indicators exceeding the then norms at better ranked B schools.

2. IFIM Business School: Streamlining the admission process for MBA. We had spectacular success in reaching out, to roughly 30 cities in a year for admission. Bringing in research emphasis. Repositioning the International Business program as a desirable one.

3. IMT Nagpur. Encouraging both faculty and students to excel, all-round, in academics and extra-curriculars. Adding placement reps in metro cities to market effectively. Alumni relations were recognised for their importance, and channeled into chapter meets. And, of course, building a Golf course, even if it was only two holes. And using it. Running conferences successfully, also. Industry interaction with compulsory industry guest lectures. Wrote my first video case on Golftripz in the process, with the help of an alumna from KIAMS. Institutionalising an annual faculty outing for introspection and just building up a rapport among the team.

4. IMT Ghaziabad. It was a rather short stint, but getting faculty interested in research, case-writing and their own career development was a priority. Working towards accreditation was illuminating, too. Again, alumni relations were consciously improved.

In the current role, I am in charge of our training programs or MDPs and it is amazing to unlock the potential that my staff has, to increase the business significantly. Of course, backed by colleagues who do the hard work of delivering.

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.

Leadership- Faculty Management

This is a longish post, with some original thoughts based on my experiences on leading B schools.

Faculty Management

I found faculty the easiest to manage, for some reason, in my few years as head of various institutions. According to me, the key is to treat the faculty as an equal unless you have some reason to exert your authority. I was a faculty member once, and found this above-mentioned facet to be a key differentiator in the way I was dealt with by various bosses.

I am not suggesting that this is the same as abdicating your responsibility or not thinking problems through. For example, assertiveness is required in some situations. For instance, I have had to sack faculty in exceptional circumstances too, but they were exceptional. I was also forced to take a call on performance evaluations at times, in unpleasant ways, but did not shy away from it.

But in the normal course of events, faculty are your biggest assets, and should be respected as such. They will actually go beyond the call of duty, and do, if their basic need- respect- is given to them by the bosses and the management (owner/promoter). This can happen in any level of B school, not just in the top ten or fifteen. Sometimes, even the reverse happens- resulting in better than expected performance in lesser known B schools.

How do you gain the confidence and respect of a faculty member of your team and help them perform better? First, you need to convince them that their development is aligned with the name and fame of the institute. Philip Kotler is an asset to Kellog’s at Northwestern University, and not vice-versa. Srikant Datar has brought fame to Harvard with his book on ‘Rethinking the MBA’ in recent times. Parasuraman of SERVQUAL fame is better known than his university, in fact. I am not sure which university he works for.

So a faculty member can actually play a major role even in branding his institute. But above all, he must contribute more than just good teaching. He could develop his training skills by offering or teaching in Management Development Programs, or publish scholarly work in journals of repute, or write a text book (where would Kotler be without his famous text?).

Value-added Activities

I call these value-added activities, and these are as important as teaching. Of course, your students will remember you if you teach well, but the whole world will salute you if you do more in different forms suggested above. You could also lead a PhD program or at least be a guide to some doctoral students, or start a journal for your institution, or do some more innovative things- for example, consulting. Faculty need to excel in at least two of these besides teaching. And then you will automatically become a much sought-after person in your field of expertise.

Setting Expectations

At PESIT, Bangalore, I first set out my expectations that every non-PhD faculty would get a PhD. To their credit, every single faculty who did not have one, enrolled for one, and we had 100% faculty who either had one or were registered for one- including a 58 year-old! It helps to set out expectations in terms of teaching, research, Ph.D., training, and academic administration.

Let me tackle some of these. Academic administration is the toughest. Most faculty members ask, why should we do this (unpaid labour)? My answer is, I expect you to be a Dean or a Director of a B school in a few years. These are valuable experiences along that path. I was once a placement chair in an institute. Not a very good one, I might add, because my selling skills were weak. But I learnt how to handle students and placement chairs after that stint, which was to prove useful to me later on.  I was also an MDP chairperson at another school, and a research chair at IIMK, in addition to coordinating admissions and the Post Graduate Program at various stages in my career. All of these were useful stints, and helped me grow. I saw one of my major successes in appointing the right people for the right job, in some of my later stints as head of an institution.

Teaching

Load for teaching needs to be defined, and should not be exceeded beyond a maximum. It is an exhausting process when you include preparation and evaluation (in an autonomous school the faculty does this himself), particularly when class sizes are large. Therefore, to find time to do other things that are important, teaching hours need some control. Unlimited teaching may produce a good teacher incapable of adding value to himself or the B school over a period. Four courses could be a good starting point, for an annual academic teaching load at a top autonomous school, because grading papers takes a lot of time in these. In some cases, you may need one or more additional courses to be added.

Publication

Either empirical research or case study publication is a must to prove that you are pursuing current knowledge. Contribution to the profession is also measured through publications. Accreditation agencies like AACSB, EQUIS, and NBA,  and ranking agencies evaluate a B school on the basis of their faculty’s publications, which is counted towards the intellectual capital. Therefore, for various reasons, publishing your work is crucial. Training and hand-holding of new faculty may be needed to help them achieve this goal. Journal lists of potential journals to publish in must be generated and updated. You could start an institutional journal. Research seminars by internal faculty can be organised regularly for sharing of work in progress. Training on research methods could also be imparted internally or through sponsorship to programs done by other B schools.

Conferences

Conference papers are more easily accepted than journal papers, but do need effort. They can be co-authored with faculty from other B schools or your own. The presentation of papers is a break from routine, and can expose you to new ideas as well as new peers. I once found a co-author at one conference at MDI Gurgaon- he happened to be an Indian working in a New Zealand University and it led to a decent international publication.

Industry Interaction

This can take several forms. If the budget allows it, faculty must get industry speakers to come in to their class for a couple of sessions in a course. This builds a network with industry, and exposes the faculty to some industry jargon and events. Also, consulting or training opportunities may come as a result of these interactions. Industry seminars on  a theme that is current or trending, can be organised as a day-long event, with the help of student interest groups. This may create leads for placement or projects.

Case Writing

I believe, and have proof for this assertion, that anybody can write a case. In fact, students have written several cases for me based on both real and simulated or fictional data. Faculty can certainly do so, if they put their mind to it. I have had a faculty colleague write a case in I.T. , and I have thought about cases in other areas that I know nothing about. Of course, in Marketing or Organization Behavior, it is far easier to think of case situations. I have also done a video case by interviewing the protagonists once.

A novel idea we tried out at IMT Nagpur is writing cases on the companies of participants in an Entrepreneurship program. This involved documenting and rewriting the experiences of a dozen participants of a long training program, where they presented their own case studies. Rewriting these for a particular set of problems or questions made them very good topical case studies for teaching. We also encouraged people to write cases at a conference that we (IMT Nagpur) conducted at Goa every year. Budding case writers were encouraged to write cases and were given feedback by experts who have written several cases for teaching or publication.

Evaluation of faculty

Usually a mix of criteria, that include teaching quantity and quality (measured through student feedback and other criteria such as novelty, etc.), publications, and service to the institution through academic administration are used in evaluating faculty contribution. You can devise a method that suits the goals of the organisation. But this needs to be clarified many times orally and in writing. Goal-setting for the institution also needs repeated discussions with individual faculty and in groups.

International Exposure and Development

You need to handle faculty with care, as an important resource. Their developmental needs can be met through exposure to training, foreign teaching, and networking opportunities. Future leaders can be groomed through such exposure. For instance, at IMT Ghaziabad, over 80 partner institutions are available for faculty and student exchange, as MOUs have been signed with them. In a given year, at least 10-12 faculty go out and teach internationally. This brings in great exposure and an incentive for faculty to continue with the institution. In other words, it is a retention tool for those faculty members who value such opportunities.

Designing Faculty Development Programs

While designing FDPs, there are three major (and one minor) areas that must be covered.

1.      Research techniques and methods, which help in publishing

2.      Use of cases and other innovative pedagogical tools

3.      Publishing avenues and strategies

4.      Networking with faculty and industry

The programs can be designed and conducted in-house with internal resources (if available) or external resources, if these are not available. Usually, the payoff is immediate, in terms of increased productivity, if the exercise is handled correctly. For example, in a Bangalore based B school, we had faculty papers going up from nearly nil to about 15 per year, including conference and journal papers.

A liberal policy of encouraging conference participation funded by the institution needs to go hand in hand with raising expectations and conducting FDPs or sending people to attend them elsewhere. It is probably cost-effective to conduct them in-house for the topics/themes mentioned above. For specialised or technical training which is very narrow, they could be sent out to other institutions, or even to industry as ‘interns’.