…SWIM…

It may be true that men are from Mars and women are from Venus but August 25th 2007 was all about bringing both sexes down to the same planet. The SWIM (Successful Women in Management) event, an inspiring initiative by the Great Lakes Institute of Management showcased the need for equality between men and women. The support of our Hon. Dean Uncle Bala and an enthusiastic SWIM team ensured that the show was more than a huge success. The second edition of this initiative, SWIM 2007-2008 was held amidst much fanfare at the Tidel Park Auditorium, Chennai on 25th Aug 2007.

The theme for this year’s event was

“The New Age Woman: Redefining Power, Success and Compassion” and the tagline
“The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world” was apt for the event.

After the traditional invocation and lighting the lamp, the event was kicked off by Uncle Bala’s welcome address. A tribute to Uncle’s Mother, Mother Teresa and Mata Amritanandamayi were highlights of his address. They were the people who inspired Uncle to start SWIM.

From L to R: Prof. Sriram, Ms. Jeyasree Ravi, Ms. Indra Subramanyam, Dr. Kiran Bedi, Ms. Mallika Srinivasan and Uncle Bala

Dr. Kiran Bedi was the keynote speaker and this was no surprise. She symbolized the strength and courage of women that is still largely untapped in India. Her passion to communicate the importance of leadership to the soon-to-be MBA graduates was simply inspiring. Dr Bedi told the next generation business leaders that women must aspire to acquire the 3M’s (muscle, mobility, and money) of men and nurture their own three H’s (Humanity, Healing touch and Compassionate heart) in order to be equal to men if not surpass them in today’s society. Apart from Dr. Kiran Bedi, we also had power talks by eminent women personalities including Mallika Srinivasan, Director, TAFE, Jeyashree RAvi, propreitor, Palam Silks and Ms. Indra Subramanyam, Managing Director of Ehlrich Laboratories, Chennai. They epitomized the fact that the true woman of substance was here to stay. Ms. Mallika Srinivasan had inaugurated the SWIM initiative of Great Lakes in 1995 and has been actively associated with it ever since. We also had with us, Padma Shri Dr. Nalli Kuppuswamy Chetty who along with his family has been a staunch pillar of support to the Great Lakes Family since its beginning.

The SWIM magazine was also released during the event by our four guests of honour. The magazine created in line with the SWIM theme, contains articles by successful women from various walks of life including Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chanda Kochchar, Mrinalini Sarabhai among others.

Lunch was followed by a thought-provoking panel discussion which focused on the theme “Women – How free? How Equal?”

moderated by Mr Kiruba Shankar. Kiruba is India’s No. 1 Blogger and a celebrity in his own right. He hosts the “Kiruba Show” a podcast with interviews of eminent personalities. For more on him, visit his blog @ http://www.kiruba.com/.

Kiruba Shanker

The panel comprised of women who are leaders in their own right and who have fought their way up the corporate ladder. The panel comprised of:

Ms. Sathya Shankar – Senior Manager ,Life Sciences Vertical, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Chennai.

Ms. Sree Vidhya – Managing Director, D Group Securities, Chennai.

Ms. Susmita Dasgupta – Assistant Vice President, Asipac, Bangalore.

Ms. Asha Mathen – Regional Head & Vice President – South and East, Deutsche Bank. 

 With tremendous participation from the audience, their thoughts brought a whole new perspective to the idea of a truly free and equal woman.

Panelists: From L to R: Ms. Sathya Shankar, Ms. Sree Vidhya, Ms. Susmita Das Gupta, Ms. Asha Mathen

The need for self-confidence, work-life balance, emotional strength, dedication and the constant hunger for success were some of the key highlights of the discussion. Ms Asha Mathen made an assertive point that while a woman has to work doubly hard to make a mark in today’s corporate world; performance is what makes the difference irrespective of gender. The discussion ended on a contemplative note with speakers agreeing that despite the significant strides taken in the race to reach “equality” with their male counterparts, women today have to work doubly harder to sustain the work done by women generations before them.

The much awaited quiz conducted by “The Landmark Quiz” Quizmaster Dr. Navin Jayakumar was the other crowd-puller for the day. The six teams qualifying for the finals put on a great show as they battled it out in a four-round quiz special focussing on Women. With prizes worth Rs 20,000 for the winning team and Rs 15,000 for the runner-up the stakes were quite high! Team “Citi citi bank bank” (no prizes for guessing that they represented Citibank) turned out the clear winners. Team “Mahila-pore” from Irevna was runners up.

Dr. Navin Jayakumar with the winners “Citi Citi Bank Bank”

Overall, the SWIM event was inspiring and entertaining. With powerful and courageous women taking center-stage the event promised much and delivered much more. For all youngsters and aspiring business leaders, especially women the lessons from the SWIM event are obvious. Comparisons between men and women are only for those belonging to the old school of thought.Today, success comes from learning to co-exist harmoniously with each other. More importantly, women must always be one step ahead and strive for excellence along with equality.

                                                  -With inputs from Roopa, Shriram, Nandhini and Ashutosh

SWIM EVENT…. SATURDAY 25 AUG…TIDEL PARK…CHENNAI

The SWIM event starts 25th Aug at Tidel Park Auditorium at 10 AM sharp.

Be there for the most happening event of the year so far.

Chief Guest: Dr. Kiran Bedi

GLitz War Quiz by Dr. Navin Jayakumar of Landmark Quiz fame

Further details at:

http://www.greatlakes.edu.in/swim.htm 

Meet The Dean Saturday 25th Hyderabad

Great Lakes is delighted to announce its “Meet the Dean” event in Hyderabad
on August 25, 2007. The venue of the event is

Dr. Reddys Laboratories,
Corporate Centre, Auditorium 7-1-27 Ameerpet, Hyderabad-16

Reporting time is 6.45 p.m.

The session would be presided by Prof. Bala Balachandran,
founder and dean of Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai. Prof. Bala is
a distinguished professor at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern
University and is a regular feature in the who’s who list of American Indians.
In this session, Prof. Bala would be taking you through the formation and
journey of Great Lakes Institute of Management in the last four years. If you are
looking at pursuing MBA in future, please make yourself available for this
meet and get your queries, regarding the institute and its admission process,
answered.
For further details of the event, please visit Great Lakes Official website

http://www.greatlakes.edu.in

Or register yourself for the event at
http://www.greatlakes.edu.in/meetthedean.htm

Great Lakes association with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs

Great Lakes Institute of Management, tasked by the Central Government, has been asked to prepare a project report on the establishment of an Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, looks forward to inviting suggestions from the professors of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

The Great Lakes Institute of Management (Great Lakes) has been selected as one of the agencies by the Ministry of corporate affairs to prepare the project report on setting up the institute.

“We will submit the project report or white paper before December. The report will suggest the organisation structure, finance, curriculum and other related matters,” Bala V. Balachandran, founder and honorary dean of Great Lakes, told reporters here on Wednesday.

Great Lakes will form an expert committee to formulate its suggestions, said Balachandran, adding that the experts from the IIMs will be invited to be on the committee albeit on no-cost basis.

He clarified the government was not paying any fee for preparing the project report and the payment option will arise only when the Government accepts the report and mandates Great Lakes to take further action.

The Government has asked a couple of overseas organisations to give their inputs on the modalities of setting up the corporate affairs institute.

The Government had on Aug 21 announced plans to set up the proposed institute to assist in capacity building and training for the Indian Company Law Service and subordinate cadres, provision of value-added services and service delivery in areas like investor education and awareness and corporate governance.

The proposed institute will also act as a think tank for the corporate affairs ministry

Original News Article Published here

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Uncle Bala’s Interview in THE ECONOMIC TIMES

Our Honorary Dean, Uncle Bala was featured in a half page interview with the The Economic Times. The Interview can be viewed here

‘Get over that mindset of networking with an agenda’ 20 Aug, 2007, 0510 hrs IST,Malini Goyal, TNN

He is a Padma Shri awardee who sits on board of companies like Godrej and Crisil and is a consultant to a long list of companies like TCS, SAP. Bala V Balachandran, distinguished professor at the Kellogg School of Management, Chicago is also a dean at the Chennai-based Great Lakes Institute of Management. He shuttles between the US and India juggling both jobs, spending three months every year in India. Great Lakes, alongside ISB is the second private B-school that has been set up with a very strong linkage with top global B-schools. Mr Balachandran talks about the state of B-schools in India, the challenges that lie ahead for professional education in India and the Great Lakes Institute. What do you think are some of the big challenges for Business Schools in India? It will be better if I keep the comparison between the top 10 B-Schools in India and the United States. Here I think that as far as the IIMs are concerned, the professors are supposed to give 65-70% of their consulting fee to their college. In the US if I do consulting I keep the entire money. So where is the incentive here to do real research? In the US faculty spend up to 50% of their time in empirical research and that I see lacking in India. How do IIMs compare with the best in the world? IIMs, especially IIM Ahmedabad, are dream schools. Students at Indian Institutes of Management are diamonds — in fact polished diamonds. I got to be an idiot to make them rotten. But I think IIMs need to increase research work and do less of classroom teaching. Funding is a big issue. We get a lot of our funding in the US from philanthropic-minded American companies. It is beginning to happen in India too. This kind of realisation began barely three years ago. Adequate funding is a very important aspect for B-schools to maintain their quality. Going forward, how do you see professional education evolve in India? Professional education has to shift from being generic to being more customised. For example, if I take TCS, Cognizant executives, what they need is more customised solutions in their executive leadership programme. We have to find ways to convert entrepreneurs into innovators. We need to find ways to bring academics closer to reality. How would you compare Indian students with their global counterparts? Indian students are very good — they score 120% in left brain-related work. But barely use 20% of their right brain. Indian students have a very analytical mind. But they need to pick up on softer skills, relationship building, and so on. From your experience, tell us how important you think networking is in today’s world? It is of the utmost value, very important. Since I was 28-30, I actively began cultivating relationships. But I believe in nishkama karma — don’t meet people with an agenda or expecting returns. Just do your job, results will automatically come. It is important to get over that mindset of networking with an agenda. And you will realise that you have an amazing network of people who endorse you, who you can reach out. Every month, I set a target for myself to meet so many people. What’s your take on the growing number of returning Indians? A lot of Indians like me left India due to the controlled nature of the economy at that point of time and everybody called it India’s brain drain. Now things have changed — many Indians educated and working in America are returning to India because India has changed. India is the new land of opportunities. There is brain drain from the US now. In fact, returning Indians find that even though the salary here may not yet equal the salaries in the US, but in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms Indian salary actually beats the living standard that one could afford in the US. It’s been two years now since Great Lakes was set up. How has been the experience so far? We have had 100% placement. We are so happy — placements got completed in 2.5 days with an average salary of Rs 9.3 lakh. Our USP has worked — we are a school of global excellence in quality of education at Indian price. Some would say that 100% placement is no big deal in a booming economy like India. What would you say is the USP of the school that sets it apart? Besides being cheaper we have visiting faculty — the best of them — coming from Harvard, Kelloggs, INSEAD, Wharton teaching the course. Sixty-five to 70% of the faculty is visiting. To all this I would want to add that all the students have to do an empirical study — joint publication with a faculty member. This helps our students work and collaborate closely with the faculty member even though they are visiting. I also believe in experiential learning — since our one-year programme does not have summer internship, for a month between November and December we ask our students to undertake real projects, it is mandatory. We are also making sure all our students understand and learn Chinese language. Above all here there is an emphasis on individual social responsibilities — our students have to work with under-privileged children and NGOs during their course. Is there anything different that a B-school in an economy like India should be doing? We are offering lot of electives keeping in mind the needs of SME sector and entrepreneurs. For example, we offer a course elective on entrepreneurial marketing. You mentioned about a large number of high-profile visiting faculty? Isn’t getting such faculty a problem? We already have seven full-time faculty members. We expect that to go up to 20 in two years time. I have worked for 25 years in the United States and am well networked with Indian faculty there. I see many of them are looking at opportunities to teach here and come back. Even as I talk, the chairman of finance in North Eastern University is leaving to join us. Today our (ISB, Great Lake) salaries are at par with those in the west. Is there any issue around Great Lakes not getting AICTE clearance and hence being asked to shut down? To make matters clear, we had applied for the AICTE approval in March 2006 itself and so far we have not got any reply. Possibly, the one-year, fast-track programme is not in their scheme of things at the time of our application. We are pursuing the same with them and hopefully arrive at an amicable solution soon.

Susan King at Great Lakes

Susan King at Great Lakes Institute of Management

Susan King of the Carnegie foundation was here last week. She spoke to us on the importance of corporate communication in the area of business. She was stressing on the fact that if one doesn’t tell his story, somebody else will in this era where the better communicator wins. She was giving examples of how George Bush Senior beat Ronald Reagan in the US elections, thanks to a better branding campaign that was carefully built around a communication that made Bush more aggressive and Reagan more wimpy. She also touched upon the changing paradigms of competition in the new economy, and how communication has started to be more than just the print and TV media ,by extending across social media on the web like Blogs,discussion forums and social networking forums like Myspace. She also spoke on her role in the Carnegie foundation for doling out cash for organizations and causes. Susan was accompanied by her daughter and Rathna Mukherjee(Cultural Affairs, US Consulate)

Here’s a heads up of Susan King’s profile.

Susan Robinson King is vice president, external affairs, director of Journalism Initiative, Special initiatives and Strategy. She is responsible for the Corporation’s relations with outside groups and devising strategies to ensure the Corporation’s work has an impact on society. She oversees the Corporation’s communications including its publications, web site and media and dissemination grant program. She leads the Corporation’s Journalism Initiative, begun in 2005, which focuses on university based journalism education, its role in America’s research universities, in preparing the next generation of media leaders and its commitment to strengthening journalism’s seminal position in a democratic society. She spent twenty years as a journalist covering national and international issues and before joining the foundation served as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Labor.

During her years as a journalist, King was both anchor in Washington television and a political analyst known for cover story reports on politics, diplomacy and major issues of the day. She worked for ABC News and served as a White House correspondent during the Reagan administration. She has reported for CNN and served as host for CNBC’s Equal Time, NPR’s Talk of the Nation and WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show. She began her career working for Walter Cronkite and became an on air reporter in Buffalo, New York.

SWIM Event…. One week away… Hurry!!!

The SWIM (Successful Women in Management)  event is going to be held on Aug 25th 2007 @ The Tidel Park Auditorium, Chennai.

The full day event boasts of a plethora of celebrities and fun filled events. 

Chief guest for the event is none other than ‘Supercop’ Ms. Kiran Bedi.

For more on the event and for registrations, please visit:

http://www.greatlakes.edu.in/swim.htm

Hurry!!!! 25th August is just a week away

Great Lakes – Deccan Herald

Four years after setting up a global university with an Indian approach, Dr Bala Balachandran is a proud man. It is easy to see why, Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM), Chennai, has managed to carve itself a unique name as an institute that offers world-class education. For Dr Balachandran, education is not his profession. It is his vision…Read More

MBA Universe Interviews Uncle Bala

‘Indian industry is racing against time, we need trained people today, not day after’: MBAUniverse.com’s exclusive interview with Bala Balachandran To go through Uncle Bala’s interview on MBA Universe, pls. click on the below mentioned link.

http://www.mbauniverse.com/innerPage.php?id=ne&pageId=471

Dr Nirmal Gupta at Great Lakes

Dr Nirmal Gupta at Great Lakes

Prof Sriram, Uncle Bala and Prof Nirmal Gupta

Nirmal Gupta’s knowledge on the Indian marketing scene just bowls you over. He is a prof who can very unassumingly engage you in a class discussion when he goes about substantiating his arguments with data about the Indian advertising and Marketing scene. We at Great Lakes, were just listening in rapt silence when the man taught as Marketing Management II. If you want a session with clear takeaways and a feeling of enlightenment in the Indian Marketing scene, Prof Nirmal Gupta is the prof to have. There was so much of insight in the numbers thathe was throwing at us and his course was all about suggesting to us to always play the game at your strengths and not the opponents strength.

The course was over in a breeze and the amount of marketing insight we have gained out of this interaction was really something which makes your mind delve deeper and ask a lot of questions. It was no wonder that Nirmal Gupta was voted thrice the best faculty at ISB. Dr Nirmal Gupta’s profile can be read here.

Sangamithra 28th July 2007

Sangamithra happened on Saturday 28th July 2007 @ MGM Resort on East Coast Road, Chennai. A lush green, open aired area played the host to the event. With clouds looming there was a chance that rain may play spoilsport but thankfully they stayed away until after the event.
Nalli was the main sponsor for the event. A stunning backdrop was prepared for the stage. The backdrop had photographs of all the 165 Jaycees along with photos of Uncle Bala, Prof Sriram and all other senior faculty members.

The Chief guest for the evening was PadmaShri Shri. Nalli Kuppuswamy Chetti.

The event kicked off at 6pm with music from the Great Lakes Band. They managed to keep the audience engrossed with foot-tapping Hindi and English numbers. Then we had a small video about Life @ Great Lakes which was shown to the audience. Prof Sriram then welcomed the gathering. Uncle Bala then spoke and as usual we were enthralled to hear him. Our Chief Guest then spoke on his experiences with Uncle Bala and Great Lakes. Prof Murthy then provided the vote of thanks.

The festivities of the evening resumed with the first of many dances. Archana and group provided an enthralling display of contemporary fusion including Classical Dance and Kalaripayattu for the song “Taye Yashoda”. Then we had a totally fun filled dance by Arunachalam and Group for the song “Saroja”. It was a totally fast paced number and had the audience dancing with them. Then Sudhir, Vaibhaw and Rashmi provided a dance which was quite well done. What made this dance even better was that Vaibhaw and Sudhir both had broken hands to worry about.

Then cameth the skit. A 20 minute performance titled “Munnabhai MBA” had the audience rolling in laughter. Brilliant performances and amazing voice overs were the hallmark of the skit. The directors Sunil, Suraj and Dharmesh deserved the huge applause that they got. Abhishek Rai then got into the groove with some awesome mimicry performances.

Rashmi Bhat then gave a solo performance which was simply superb. Ankur and Naveen danced their hearts out to a Bhangra number which then was followed by a medley. Three dances back to back.

Finally came the dance that everyone wanted to see. Arunachalam and Sudha with a Michael Jackson Medley truly capped an amazing night for all.

A big kudos to the events team and all the people who made it possible.