AGSM: Where Diversity Is A Strength

This article was originally published on BusinessBecause. Checkout www.businessbecause.com for great stories from the world of Business and B-schools .

No, this isn’t a pair of world music-loving backpackers doing something they’ll regret when they wake up from a bad trip next week.

My friends Phil from Australia and Rose from Hong Kong are MBA classmates who agreed to take part in a fake Indian wedding to celebrate the end of Diversity Week at the School last week. At AGSM diversity is our biggest strength as we have people from over 30 countries representing all the five continents.

There are eight Indians in the class of 2010 and we decided to showcase our culture with a wedding extravaganza, so we talked these two sports into it.

There’s a lot of talk within the Indian community about racism in Australia and abuse against Indians here, but I’d say incidents like that can happen anywhere. From June 9th to June 12th, 65 students at AGSM had fun exploring the cultures of Europe, Asia and Latin America and two non-Indians were married Indian-style. Need I say more?

Checkout at the original article here.

Whatever Happens, Happens For The Best

There is famous saying in Hindi which when translated reads as “Whatever Happens, happens for the best”. It is basically a statement meant for the optimists and indicates that there is always something positive that comes out of any event that takes place.

Take the current economic climate for instance. There is a lot of concern and apprehension in the minds of the students, employed and un-employed professionals about how long the global financial crisis will last and what the future would be like. However not all industries are being adversely affected by the current crisis. Business Schools around the world are witnessing a surge in applications as people realize that this is probably the best time to invest in oneself and go back to being a student.

Business schools however are not taking it easy. The fact that most of the decision-makers who led the world to the current economic crisis were MBA’s has put a lot of pressure on b-schools to change their curriculum so that it addresses real life problems(read here). At the full time MBA program at AGSM for instance the lectures and course contents are being changed so as to include some detail about the crisis and how such scenarios can be avoided in future.

The picture above is what the AGSM MBA is like, except that you can’t afford to keep those binders on the shelves for too long. Most of the subjects that you see above have introduced some component that talks about what caused the current crisis and what we as future managers should do to to avoid it. So while the Organizational behavior lectures talk about tackling and preventing “groupthink”, the accounting classes talk about how difficult it is to recognize and value assets correctly and how in today’s times it’s better to be conservative in preparing financial results.

Our economics classes have taught us that the media definition of a recession(2 consecutive quarters of negative growth) is absolutely incorrect. As we move ahead into the program more changes are being made to make the learning more relevant and practical. A major step in this direction is AGSM MBA Integrative experience, a rigorous 2 week period where the entire Full Time MBA class would work on real life cases where they would have to bring together their knowledge from all the subjects that they’ve studied. Catch the Academic Director of AGSM MBA Programs, Professor Murali Chandrashekaran talk about this in the video below.

So while the global financial crisis of today can be partly attributed to MBA’s, I suppose the good thing is that it is leading to a re-structuring of the curriculum and should lead to smarter future MBA’s who would be able to ensure that a similar crisis does not occur again. Thus we probably can agree that whatever happens, happens for the best

Social Entrepreneurship – The Need Of The Hour And The Demand Of The Future

Economics states that the Theory Of the Firm is essentially to perform those activities that maximize profits. A firm should focus on improving the productivity of it’s inputs so as to decrease the cost of production and increase profits.

Well, this is what has been taught in Economics at Business Schools for the past many years and it is unlikely that these basic theories would ever change. However the Business Environment today demands new rules and new ways of thinking and that’s what makes it exciting to be a B-School student at reputed International university as of today. The theory of the firm is essentially what has led to the current Recession and it is this ideology that needs to be changed over the next decade.

Any kind of change would always trigger the birth of new ideas and concepts and one such Idea is that of Social Entrepreneurship. So what exactly is Social Entrepreneurship:

Social entrepreneurship is different from business entrepreneurship because the main goal of the former is to promote social development, not profits. Social Entrepreneurship is not Charity, Philanthropy or CSR, it is all about optimizing profit rather than maximizing profit.

Social entrepreneurs drive social innovation and transformation in various fields including education, health, environment and enterprise development. They pursue poverty alleviation goals with entrepreneurial zeal, business methods and the courage to innovate and overcome traditional practices. A social entrepreneur, similar to a business entrepreneur, builds strong and sustainable organizations, which are either set up as not-for-profits or companies.

Today the Students of AGSM, Australian School Of Business had the wonderful opportunity to listen and interact with Dr.Pamela Hartigan(see picture below), a pioneer in Social Entrepreneurship and the former MD of the Schwab Foundation of Social Entrepreneurship.

Her experience and stories truly left the audience spell-bounded and drove home the point that Social Entrepreneurship is the need of the hour and the demand of the future. Watch the video below, to hear her amazing stories and thoughts about Social Entrepreneurship.

The Leader – Manager Dilemma

Today we had a very interesting session in class dealing with leadership. Every person of our 65 people class(at my B-school AGSM, Sydney) had to walk up and talk for about a minute about one important characteristic of a good leader that they think they embody. Now, I know this sounds a bit corny, but the main issue was getting people to speak about themselves and see their presentation skills as well as getting the know everybody.

There were some very interesting presentations and many people talked about important characteristics: Well organized, a good listener, Able to take harsh decision under pressure, passionate, determination, confidence, delegating of authority and more.

But the process and the above mentioned list did get me thinking about the difference between leadership and management. A lot of people mix them. Do leaders really need to be well organized? Or have confidence? I can think of a few leaders who aren’t. I do think it is more important for a manger to have these characteristics.

I was wandering why people mix the two definitions (actually the words are sometimes used as synonyms). I think it is because in too many roles, people are expected to be both. The problem is it is hard to be both.

I think leadership and management are different. I really like Marcus Buckingham’s theory in the book “The one thing you need to know“, claiming that managers’ role is to find the strength of every employee and do what they can to allow him exploit it to excellence while leaders are agent of change, their role is to paint a vivid picture of the future in order to dissipate the our natural fear of the unknown and the uncertain.

Recently, I read Seth Godin’s book Tribes, where he writes:

Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done… Managers manage a process they’ve seen before, and they react to the outside world, striving to make that process as fast and as cheap as possible. Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change that you believe in… Leaders have followers. Mangers have employees. Managers make widgets. Leaders make change…

So why is the difference important? If you accept that there is a difference then you accept that there are different talents, skills and knowledge for each group. That means that usually, we cannot expect the same people to do both. But so many roles do. Instead of finding out what is more important to the success of the role, there is an attempt to achieve both, which ends up in an average result. And average, in our society, is just not good enough. So I think this is another conventional wisdom that needs to be broken.

A Journey Back To School – First Day At AGSM

Hi, this is the first in a series of blog posts that I plan to write about my MBA experience at the Australian Graduate School Of Management at Sydney, Australia.

Today 12^th January,2009 was my first day at B-School, a day I have been looking forward to for the past many months and something I was working towards for the past 2 years. An International MBA is truly an enriching experience and quite similar to a roller coaster ride. A full-time MBA is a significant investment in time and resources and is a life-changing decision that pulls people away from the comforts of home, a steady job and carefree weekends with no guarantee of what lies at the end.

Starting out on the MBA can be tough and may involve a lot of after-thought. You may wonder whether you made the right decision, sometimes you may think that you made a big mistake in deciding to do an MBA, because it is an investment in your future and the future is always uncertain. But the MBA is like adventure; one that will give you opportunities for self-development, learning, personal growth and most of all discovery.

Imagine walking into a class having about 64 students coming from 30 different countries right from Honduras to New Zealand. Imagine sitting in a classroom where the youngest person is 25 years old while the oldest is 35+. Imagine a day when you get to meet and interact with all these people for more than 8 hours whilst also learning the fine points about making effective Business Presentations. Such was my first day as B-school, an experience I’ve never had before and one that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.

Before I end, I would like to share some important points on the art of making effective Business Presentations that I learnt today.

• Always Start Slowly And Clearly: This helps to establish rapport and rhythm
• Pause… And Allow Ideas To Land: It allows your audience to relax
• Breathe: Allows a person to relax and just takes the tension away
• Remember To Smile: Shows that you are relaxed and confident
• Stillness Is Strength: Shows that you are centered and focused