Reflections From Academia

 Just as corporates have their learnings from the company they keep (or the company that keeps them), academics have our own.

When can one call an academic successful? When he publishes a huge amount of papers? When he earns a lot? 

Practically, I would say, in order of ranks 1 to many, these could measure his success-

1. Touching lives of students in some way- inspiring them or showing them the path to self-discovery.

2. Treating the students with respect- lots of teachers fail on this count.

3. Blending practice with theory or concepts in the same course, in a trimester or a semester.

4. Doing contemporary projects with or without industry cooperation. Case writing could be one kind.

5. Bringing his/her experiences into the class. Therefore, getting those experiences too..

6. Using innovative learning methods, experimenting with many.

Balanced Scorecard Approach To Life

 I have now read a few-quite a few- ways to approach life, from philosophers and self-help gurus and many well-meaning people across the spectrum. But my mind went back to something I had read in an article, that talked of a Balanced Scorecard to measure a company's performance. Maybe this can be adapted to scoring how well we are doing on various measures of success. You can tweak this to suit your life goals, of course, but the general framework can be as follows-

Success in career. This for a working middle class person is an essential fact, for about 30 years of his/her life. You cannot wish it away. Therefore, some amount of success is required to keep you afloat. If you are a housewife, maybe you can skip this.

Success with enterprise. You may not be an entrepreneur, but you can be enterprising, and take the initiative and do things. Simple or complex things. You can go on a trek, make some meetings with family or friends happen. Or anything else. A game of Bridge or Golf, or whatever. For academics, a conference paper, leading to a visit to the conference. 

Creative pursuit. A book project, or a painting, or learning a musical instrument, singing, acting, photography etc. This could become a lifelong companion. 

Supporting Role in someone's life- a child, parent, spouse are obvious people that come to mind. But it could be a friend or stranger too, like your working for a cause, like pets, or disadvantaged people.

Living life without too much of planning and thought, spontaneously, enjoying it to the fullest for its own sake, apart from all the rest of it, expectations, family, society, come what may.

Hope this helps in some small way..

Placecom Yearend Party

 At NMIMS Bangalore, it is a tradition that we host a party for the senior placement committee members at the conclusion of the placement process of their batch. Since I joined, this is the second one, and this year was a record in terms of early completion of the process for 2022 MBA graduates.

Some pics from the outing, posed and candid. Ayesha, Divya Anand, Sreelekha, Mehul, Reshma, Sneha, Vasu, Rishika were some of the members

With Ekalavya in the centre.

Some of the goodies- fondue etc., that added to the fun!

International Men's Day

Men think they rule the world..maybe they do, in office. But homes are mostly unruled by them, because they are never there, mostly. The race for a promotion, or meeting targets, or just sending money home (for migrant workers) keeps them busy.

It is the women who do the bulk of the work back home even today, which makes it a comfort zone for all who live there - a bit of nagging is a small price to pay for it! This is not to celebrate the unequal partnership, but to express gratefulness for women who do what it takes, in spite of many challenges. Hopefully, one day, men will return the favour in larger numbers.

If men can at least understand the situation, it is half the battle won. Thanks to the women in our lives. It is not one, but several women who are usually behind a successful man.

Dropping Out

When I was researching the Key Success Factors in the success of anyone successful at anything, I hit upon the most obvious one. Dropping out.

Just to cite one example, Microsoft would not have been founded had Bill Gates completed his education. And he employed Satya Nadella (who completed his education), not the other way round. Dhirubhai never started, so I consider him a virtual dropout.

Excited with this discovery, I have now decided to drop out. Whenever anyone asks me to do something, I prompty drop out. The other day, my family asked me to accompany them to dinner. I dropped out, and they went ahead and had a successful dinner. I contributed to someone's success, didn't I? Likewise, when my friends asked me to join them in a startup, I dropped out. I was only imitating Bill Gates, albeit in my own way. I am sure my friends will succeed.

An enthusiastic group of friends decided to go and run in a marathon the other day. Guess what I did? I dropped out, and they successfully went and ran 22.4 (or was it 44.8?) kilometres,  and were too tired to run back. So I successfully (and permanently) got rid of friends I did not like in the first place. I have also unfriended several 'friends' who believe in life-threatening activities such as gymming. When you can lie on a couch and dream, why go to all that effort?

So, to put it succintly, if you want to succeed, learn to drop out. You will thank me for it one day.

What is Success?

We often make the mistake of treating success as a single accomplishment or event, a light at the end of the tunnel. It may be that we are wrong. It is actually a multidimensional construct- ok, concept, if you want to be jargon-free.

What does that mean? In life, we go through various stages. We are expected to study, work, marry, have kids, care for aging parents, marry off kids, be grandparents if we live long enough, and have successful careers. So that’s about half a dozen different things already. I have not included relations with siblings or cousins or other relatives. If you add these up, the list of things we do (at least most people do) is a pretty long one.

Being a good parent may mean different things from being a success at work.  And being a good employee is quite different from being a good husband (or wife). Also, we may have preferences for certain roles, tasks out of the multiple ones that we have to perform.

It may be essential therefore, not to put too much pressure on oneself measuring only one aspect of yourself (or others) to the exclusion of all the other dimensions. It is quite possible that your kid may be bad at Maths or Science, but could be good at, and interested in say, arts or physiotherapy. Good parenting needs to look at these aspects of a kid’s personality and aptitude while counselling him on a path towards self-sufficiency. Even for your own self, blind pursuit of a particular position in an organisation may not be worthwhile, if all it does is cause frustration in every other sphere of life.

It is important to feel worthy, no doubt, but the measures of self-worth need not be blindly followed because someone else set them. Rather, you could set them yourself, regardless of what the world thinks. That may be the route for many of us to be “successful”.

Doffing the Hat to Flipkart

Working out a successful logistics model in India is a nightmare, as anyone who has tried it will probably tell you. But to do it consistently over a period is almost an impossibility. In a time when we keep eulogizing the Apples of the world, Indian companies must not get the short shrift. Flipkart is one such company that has managed the 'Mission Impossible' mentioned earlier, and pretty well too. Any customer of theirs I have talked to, swears by them. It is a different story that my autobiography started selling a little more when they started selling it. That's more out of convenience, I guess.

One more I can think of is Golftripz, for amazing customer service. I have used their services to go on a golf tour, and I feel sorry for myself when I miss one of their tours. There are many such companies that have done well for themselves and their customers and given time, will do so for the shareholders or investors. Some have not, but everyone is not eligible for bailouts like the banks which defrauded millions of investors, and still survived and are thriving.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that Indian enterprise is thriving, and lots of examples are there to prove it. Let's give them their due, once in a while.