My First Management Lesson

I got to learn my first management lesson from my elder cousin brother, Sachin, when I was in a huge dilemma over finalizing NUS or ISB for my MBA. When ISB result was declared on Feb 10th, I had a mixed feeling as I had admit from NUS as well. I called up Sachin's elder brother, Nitin, who is working in Shell (Hague, Netherlands). We decided to have a conference call in the night. After that I called up Sachin and told him to attend the conference. He agreed. Then he asked me what is Nitin suggesting. I told him that he would place his bet on NUS.

Around 11PM we started the conference. Nitin preferred NUS and Sachin ISB. In the middle, I was analyzing their opinion. After approx 40 minutes, having discussed a lot we departed. It was an inconclusive talk. I knew I had to research more to make a decision. For next 2 days, I talked to ISB alums/students and made up my mind to go to ISB. I called up Sachin and told him about my position. He sounded amused at my decision. I told him that even you preferred ISB that day. He laughed and told me that he asked about what Nitin is inclined at only because he could take the other side and represent ISB. Otherwise, there was nothing to discuss in the call. Both of us would be talking about NUS and I would have got influenced by a biased conference call. He then told me that he also thinks that NUS is a much better destination at these circumstances. I, then, told him that I've only talked to ISB's alum/student for last two days. He quickly pointed me that this is because I've heard only one side of the story. He asked me to talk to people representing NUS.

I talked to many NUS folks then and finally I'm headed to NUS. During these 4-5 days, I got to learn my first Management Lesson (thanks to Sachin brother): "It is important to have views from all sides while discussing a strategy/case. If not, then your final result/decision is biased."

MBA Journey - Part 1

My journey to get into an MBA college has finally ended. I applied to 3 universities: Kellogg, ISB and NUS, this year and got admits from NUS and ISB. Earlier Kellogg gave me a false admit. It was a tough decision to choose NUS over ISB, but, after talking to so many people choosing NUS seemed to be more strategic.

In this post, I'll just discuss about my preparation for the GMAT exam.

Well, to be frank, my journey to MBA started during my last semester in IIT Bombay. My elder brother, an IIM Bangalore Alumnus, preferred to do a foreign MBA over an Indian MBA and, hence, guided me to prepare for GMAT examination. He told me to take the exam before graduating from IIT because the score remains valid for 5 years and, hence, makes sense to take the exam before getting into the corporate world. I did a one month preparation and scored just 660. I was kinda happy because I targeted 650 and I heard that above 650 is a good score. But, once I entered the job market I realized that at least 700 is a must to apply in good colleges. I was in no mood to take the exam then, so deferred it. But, importantly, I made a conscious effort to read articles, editorials seriously to improvise my grammar. I did that for almost 3 years. Truly speaking, learning grammar is a fun. There are rules, so if you know them it becomes a cake walk to spot a mistake.

Then after 2 years, ie in 2006, after making a trip to California I decided to prepare for GMAT seriously. During this time, one of my very good friend, Dhruv Garg, took the exam and scored 760. I took complete advantage of him and discussed strategies to click the score. One of most important ones I remember is to take the date when one is half done with the course. Mostly people take the date first and then start preparing. Bad Idea. What one should do is familiarize oneself with the course, take some practice tests and identify how much time is needed to be completely fit for the exam. With this intention, I prepared for at least one month and then took the date keeping in mind about the limited time I had for studies. Another strategy we discussed was to never take Kaplan tests. Standard of Kaplan test is way higher than the actual GMAT standard. So, why bug yourself with difficult questions. Kaplan acts as a de-motivator.

When I started, I felt quite comfortable in solving sentence correction and critical reasoning questions. I had some serious trouble with reading comprehension. I was scoring reasonably well in stars, biological related comprehensions, however, when it came to philosophy, humanities related comprehension I was getting screwed big time. So, I discussed this problem with my friend Dhruv and he suggested me to change my strategy to answer such types of comprehensions. I tried several strategies such as writing a line about what has happened in a particular para, writing only keywords (such as however, therefore, but etc.), reading the question first and then reading the comprehension, etc. The one that really worked was writing the keywords. Writing these keywords helped me understand the tone of the paragraph.

I never spend too much time on Maths. For essay writing, I understood the basics from Official guide to GMAT and gave one week time of preparation. I referred to following books/materials for preparation:
1. Official Guide to GMAT
2. Manhattan Sentence Correction (Awesome Book)
3. 1000 questions on Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension, Critical Reasoning (search on net)
4. ETS and PowerPrep Tests (I scored 720 and 740 in 2 ETS tests)

This was my strategy to crack GMAT and in the end it worked out pretty well. Scoring 750 and 5.5 (essays) was something I never thought of, but then while I was writing the test I got the feeling that I would score more than 700.

My Walk Towards Old Age

I forget things, places, names etc..

Recently, many activities have happened to me that reinforced my belief that I don't have a sharp memory or I've reached the phase where "old" people start forgetting stuff . Really, Am I getting old? I got embarrassed recently when I forgot the name of my teammate while I was having snacks in the cafeteria. I was watching the television. As he passed by, I wanted to call and ask him to increase the volume. So, I, hastily, raised my hand to call him. But then I stopped. I just couldn't recall his name. Amit, no anuj, no shit !! whats his name. Finally, I gave up and did this: "whistle, oye, could you increase the volume please?"

And, can anyone forget a girl and that too a hot one? Not many, but I did. In my office, we (My friends and I) used to call a girl '2nd Floor'. It has nothing to do with his seating location being at 2nd floor. But the way she used to comb her hair was unusual. We thought that the starting point of pony tail was a bit higher than usual. So, 2nd floor it is for referring her. She worked in the office for a short period of time. After 3-4 months, one day my friend (Devesh) and I were going out for dinner and while talking he referred to the girl as 2nd floor. I just could not remember her face. I asked Devesh to tell her name and he, cunningly, replied "we never try hard to know anyone's name. We just know her by 2nd Floor." Bull shit !!! What the hell. And now all I was interested in recognizing her face. I, immediately, called our third friend and he gave me some hints and I could finally locate the 2nd Floor Neuron in my brain. How can anyone forget a girl's face? Awful!!!

I'm seriously contemplating whether these are the signs of me walking towards old age. May be its usual, but I need to be more proactive in remembering things. Anyhow. Would grandma's philosphy of eating 5-6 almonds a day work? I guess I should try.

Black Dog

Last year I decided to taste all kinds of Whisky and Rum to understand what I like. I tried numerous brands, of course GlennFiddich and Black Label are still out of range, and finally settled with Black Dog. I loved the taste. However, explaining taste of a Whisky to anyone is a difficult job. So, whenever someone asks me why I prefer Black Dog, I take help of Bollywood's Super-Duper movie - Shahenshah. In a certain scene, Amrish Puri, after a brief interaction with Meenakshi Sheshadri, decides to order Black Dog instead of the regular one. Prem Chopra gets intrigued and asks him for a reason. Amrish replies:

"Jab bhi me koi hasin titli dekhta hoon, mere ander ke sainkado kutte bhokne lagte hain. Unhe shant karne ke liye me Black Dog peeta hoon."

haha. It gives me great pleasure when someone asks me why Black Dog and I pay tribute to the movie by repeating this dialogue.