'Dream Quotient' of MBAs

In this post, I am writing about my experience while trying to prove my mettle as an MBA who joined IT as a management trainee. I am sure many of management graduates whom I have interacted in last 2.5 years of my IT experience or others who will read this post would agree to the following:

First thing first, any management graduate joining IT shall know that he is competing with every single individual in this field whether holds an MBA degree or not. To elaborate, take any field: automobile, teaching, sports, cooking or pharmacy; these can be called a profession but management is not a profession, it is the driver of all the professions but not a profession in itself. So, any person who has worked on the shop floor in any of these fields can very well be a manager in that field. Same holds true for IT too.

How an MBA at entrant level in IT shall react to this? Reaction shall depend upon the work & work culture. I have found a crucial difference between MBAs & non-MBAs in IT and that is 'Dream Quotient':

For this analysis, I have considered only two kind of people: people from technical background and MBAs. I believe rest are so less in numbers they can be ignored.

What I have seen over the last few years is, people from technical background while studying technical degrees like B.E. or B.TECH. (CS), have thought of becoming a software engineer in a reputed MNC, which if they pass out from an average institute, eventually achieve in less than 2 years. Then what? Then they just follow the ladder which their manager has gone through or has setup for them. This would be called bottoms-up approach. I would call it as a myopic, unadventurous and poor in dream quotient. My gut feel data is 80% of IT professionals from technical background would fall in this category having poor dream quotient.

On the other side, what MBAs learn in B-school is always from a point of view of an organization or CEO. When we are studying we often come across words like "Will you ever as a leader would ......?" I would call it as top-down approach. Unfortunately, we never see any problem as an individual trying to keep ball away from his court (indeed it is a top quality in IT, but we would take that later). Even if an MBA starts from the lowest level in an organization, his eyes would always be at what top management is doing. Dream quotient of an MBA is very high.

Along with the dream quotient, there is a pile of things which I could be pointed out as different in these two sides such as communication, presentation, orientation etc. (later more on this)

In field of IT, you will find more no. of people who belong to the first side. If they reside at a leader's position, do hinder the growth of second side. This can happen if you are in a services company & are living in trap of billing from client.

I thought, this difference can be helpful for the new entrants and people sitting in placements choosing script writers of their future. So, shared it.

I at personal level, am confident enough to find a way out.

Dussera in my childhood...

All festivals in childhood are very joyful as compared to adulthood when they are just counted as leaves. Each of them have a different taste then. We all would agree, as kids we used to wait for these festivals for weeks. On this Dussera, I am writing about how I have celebrated Dussera in my childhood, killing 3 Ravans each year...yes, 3 Ravans. The joy of Dussera to me used to start at 7 am in the morning with different racing competitions on the square.

The anchor annoucing start of the games and crowd cheering loud for winners, really used to create an amazing environment. An hour later, to buy fresh floweres, make malas and put them on our home's entrance was once a year activity for me. Only on this holy day, I would worship my books/schoolbag. In history, this tradition originally came from farmers who would worship their instruments on Dussera. To me it came from my father and as a student I followed it on my instruments, of course those were books then :)

The best part would come in the afternoon, when I would make a Ravan of my own. I did this for years buying stuff from local stationary shop and putting crackers inside, with all my friends then watching it this will be a proof of my creative self for the whole life. I would keep it ready before I leave with my sis n dad for Dussera maidan for my 1st Ravan Dahan of the day. After the 1st Ravan Dahan on our way back we would bring home Sona-patti. And on return, we would kill Ravan made of rice on a table where all males of the family would kill it together with a knife and find a golden ring inside it..that would be the 2nd one. And then for 3rd, I would force my family and friends to join me and see my Ravan burning. It was kind of great with every one just watching and I putting it on fire. This whole day used to be very amusing, but now that's history.

Not sure if everyone knows Dussera is not a single but two days celebration, second day is called Basi-Dussera. On Basi-Dussera, younger generation takes blessings of their elders by giving them Sona-patti and bowing across them. In our days, this was a leave and we all friends would gather and visit each house of colony to give them Sona-patti and get blessing in form of sweets/eatables, at least those were the preffered ones :) This would help people know each other and create a friendly environment. In last 4-5 years, I have lived in places where I hadn't known my immediate neighbours.

Sad but those celebrations are a history now. It has been 8 years since I enjoyed Dussera and saw people celebrating, burning effigies of Ravan.

Few hidden things in life

Few inconspicuous (hidden) things and I never read about them anywhere, think:

• A person walking on the road will always react to car swifting by causing him a bit of trouble as "There is no place for people to walk". While if he is driving the car and someone walking comes in his way he will get irritate and say "Can people see such a big car is coming behind, can't they make way?"
• In Gym, if you praise someone for his good physique, he will tight his muscles and say "should have seen six months back..." In Hindi "Che mahine pehle dekhni thi... ab toh kam ho gayi hai..." :))
• In a tenant-landlord relationship, landlord will always have upper hand. No matter who has a point.
• Husband/Boyfriend has to seek pardon first, doesn't matter whose mistake was it.
• You will always find most "difficult to talk" people in PR jobs where they are needed least. At least in Govt. of India :)

Flaws of Perfection...

Perfection has its own flaws. It may idealise a particular thing, but affects others negatively in parallel. I found this when I completed one of my assignment at work putting all my efforts for straight eight months in that assignment for making it "Perfect", it was delivered at its best. Later, when people were asked for their opinion about my work, opposite to my expectation of receiving bombshells of accolades, many of colleauges used these word "He is good, works well, but.... " and that's what made me realise your strive for perfection creates troubles amongst others, especially when you are working in a team and they do not share the same spirit. How perfect perfection might be, it brings some side-effects. You have to sacrifice relationships for being perfect or sometimes you never start something waiting for that perfect moment and it never comes making things even worse. All your life you pray for life to become perfect never realizing present one is best for you.

Clearly, we should look for excellence and live life in a balance.

Prayers or Faith

God is great. I believe this. What puzzles my mind is the thought when people tell me that one should pray to god, he sets everything right, takes away one's worries and fulfills one's wishes n all. People keep fast, visit distant temples, do every possible stuff to keep the God happy.

I disagree and believe that God is unbiased and loves everyone in the same amount. He is omnipresent. Whether you pray him or not, you are a theist, atheist or agnostic is immaterial to God. He decides what happens to you on the basis of what is best for you. It is human (read as ignorance) to classify it as result of prayers or not praying.

I believe in keeping faith. Rest of the things shall fall in place naturally.

Temptation..

1. You get attracted towards doing it
2. You know it is not good to go further
3. You take a step back and start thinking ''I will not do it..''
4. You keep your promise and don't do that for next 10-15 days
5. Then, you again get tempted: You break your promise and do that
6. When you are done, you are filled with shame and think you will never do it again
7. Few days later, you go to the step 1

And life keeps going. These steps fit into many places in life.

Pendulum of Luck

"Pendulum of Luck" is the theory which I have decided to call it. This is based on my own experience with success and failure. Suppose, center of the pendulum lies the success and at its extreme ends lies failure. Then luck is the string oscillating between success and failure. This pendulum oscillates all through the life and depending upon what point our luck is we succeed or fail. No matter, what effort we put across, result is dependent on which point the string of our luck is at that point in time. There is no way everyone can be successful or fail all the time. It just that success and failure are alternative. We gotta keep working.

Wonderful Thought

I recently came across some wonderful lines for anger management. "We think our only options to deal with anger are either swallow it or float it on someone's face but there is a third option, just let it go. And only when we do that and it is really gone then we can move forward." Wonderful thought.

Letting anger go can help in reducing weight from your heart. People would know you don't care. Many a times there is no point in fighting / dragging issues. Giving up something for someone dearer is a great feeling in itself. But I think letting anger go when it is needed or not getting angry when required is poor habit in itself.

I would follow these lines whenever possible.

Annual Performance Review

Annual performance review at my workplace was just over. This thought came to my mind - fantasied but still what if we had annual performance review every year with God. It is said that fate of a man is result of his own actions. True, but I think a man can only take actions in a set frame of mind which is set by his surroundings. Very few people are born with the talent to break this set frame of mind, think out of box and take actions to change their fate into unbelievable achievements. Performance review at workplace gives inputs on what good or bad we have done in our assignments at work. Similarly, life is full of assignments intermingled with each other. Once we take our actions to do these assignments, we should get a chance annually to get them reviewed by almighty. He will tell us how and where we could have done things differently and made the result more favourable. It is like result of one better action could have caused some better input in another, but we failed to think that action could exist. Many people give up thinking nothing better could be done, I am talking about winning at that particular moment and creating a series of wins to become a legend.

Magical thinking - but just think.

Varunvita

I have spend two wonderful years of my life with around 10 wonderful people in my college. As it should be, all of us were different in our approach towards life and thats what made it awesome. I frequently recall once incident which happened in our one day trip to Panshet dam. At that time I used to have habit of customizing everything for no reason. Everynight at our cafeteria there were two kinds of milk with bournvita sold: Cold n Hot. But I used to buy the third kind: Warm, a mix of cold n warm and thats not where I used to end this, over that customization of one and a half spoon sugar and kind of spoon: plastic/ steel and its size. And by that one of these friends coined this term "Varunvita" for this special bournvita. I always remember this whenever I drink milk or bournvita. My friends made me feel special. Thanks mate :))

Where were they??

I can see Shiv Sena and MNS's campaigns for Marathis are putting Marathis and Maharashtra's image in trouble in rest of the India. Mumbai was considered one of the secular metro before. Now I can hear people from other states making hue and cry of Marathi culture here and there (outside Maharashtra). It hurts. To best of my knowledge the fight for Marathi cause has been existing for long. Both the parties are now exploiting it really well to fill their vote bank. For Shiv Sena, this has been their agenda for long, now MNS coming into picture it has divided their vote bank. So, now both the parties are trying their best to make it to the news for Marathi cause and earn the votes. It involves violence and vandalism. The cause has been taken on extreme ends of human nature, either nobody bothers and have guts to take it forward like dumbs or some parties make use of it involving huge violence spoiling things all over. I pity more on MH govt.'s position, they can't see themselves; either of SC, HC or Govt. have to give them instructions everytime to do something about it. Will somebody take up this right cause and address this with right actions?

As far as SS and MNS's actions are concerned, they are surprising for eg.: To throw people out of their places, to not allow Rahul visit Mumbai, be regretful to Sachin's comments (of course, they can't dare to touch him), to ask SRK for apology over comments on including Pak player in IPL or move to Pak. They have no idea about the side effects of their actions. Marathis outside Maharashtra can face rampage. I liked Rahul still coming and SRK's comments over this. Their stupid actions can put young and still immature Muslim minds in dilemma. To make realise someone that it is only political, we don't have to do much. just ask where were SS and MNS for 10-15 days when Mumbai was facing terror attack on 26/11???

Its time to decide now...

From the childhood fantasies to teenager's wishes, from college dreams to corporate aspirations... my mind has been full of to-be and to-do items. Of course, not all the wishes came true, most of them died because of lack of feasibility. But looking back I see of all wishes possible I could achieve only few. Doing the right assessment of what life has offered me and what I have achieved, I have missed a lot of things being indecisive. I have taken abrupt decisions where I needed to stay firm. Fortunately, some of them have been very fruitful, some were sour.

Career has been one of the most important thing in my life. I have made a lot of sacrifice to be here. Today, I stand at starting point of multiple journeys of which I have to choose one. I feel its high time I decide where to go in life. Choosing between the options troubles me the most. Back in highschool, I never knew this exercise will go all through life. But now that I have realized I also know the earlier I choose better it is. I have to choose which field I got to make my career in.

One more New Year....

Bringing several ups and downs, 2009 has finally passed through. We all need reasons to celebrate, as I remember since last 10 years I and people around me party at 31st Dec night, get up late on 1st Jan and start living normal life. The only change new year brings is for first two weeks we make mistakes in writing year part of date. Like some of us will write coming 10th Jan as 10-01-09 instead of 10-01-10. Hehe...

But, what I like about welcoming new year is it gives us time to pause and think through our actions-inactions of passing year. Though I believe we hardly learn anything from this analysis; (what helps us really is how we felt immidiately after certain experience) New year gives us opportunity to reduce the weightage of bitter experiences and hopes for positive ones.

One interesting and tempting myth about new year is you will keep doing the same thing you do it on first day of year. No, I tried several times even doing blast at first day results in spending rest 364 taking exams, attending lectures, office etc. Can't help it. BTW this myth also holds true for BDay. I wonder how many of us do the same things on both the days??

Resolutions: All of us take at least 2-3 resolutions each year. I am sure roughly 2% of people would be able to keep their resolutions. Ask smokers, they know best.

Horoscopes: People like me who are expecting some change in their life, go through all websites, newspapers where we can read positives in the coming year. Though, we know all signs will contain same story different words.

Holidays: As soon as year starts ending, we start scanning through next year's calender in thirst of holidays. What disappoints us is conflicts and festival on weekends. As a child (secretely admitting still) I check what day Bdays are falling.

Parties: Every closing or new year, we put loads of efforts planning and executing worth memorising parties. As I said in the begining we need reasons to celebrate.

I quoted some of the points coming to my mind at this point in time. Surely, new year brings us happiness and joy. With this, I wish you all A HAPPY N BLASTING N PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR :) ... hope this year will remain blasting till 2011 joins us.