The Road to L’ Attitude 13º 05’ has begun

Our flagship event… L’ Attitude 13º 05’… is only a lil over two months away… 

For further details, watch this space or visit the L’ Attitude 13º 05’ page

http://www.greatlakes.edu.in/lattitude0708.htm

Internship Season at Great Lakes

The past few days have been maddening, with our batch mates running helter skelter within the campus,  amidst interviews for internship. TCS was here a couple of days back and they shortlisted 4 people, and Reach Technologies, a start up from Bangalore is interviewing candidates over the phone. Frost,Mphasis and Castrol have finalised their offers and tommorow, Glaxo would come to campus. Citibank,Deutsche bank and Neo IT would also be finalising their offers in a day or 2. We got more running to do, expect a detailed update in some time.

Vipassana session at Great Lakes

Vipassana introduction session was organized at Great Lakes on 31st of August. Garvita Tanwar of the 2008 PGPM batch was instrumental in organizing the session. The guest speakers Mr Santanam (Assistant Consultant, TCS, Chennai), Mr. Prashanth (CEO & MD, Akmin Technology [P] Ltd.), Mr Aravind (M Sc, IIT Madras, Founder MOTHER, a social organization) and Mr Vinayak, Manager, Dhamma Setu (Vipassana Centre, Chennai) briefed young managers on how, meditation techniques can help keep a balance in stressful work-life situations. The impact of Ms Kiran Bedi’s mention of the Vipassana way of meditation during the SWIM event had created a lot of interest in the session.
The session began with the introduction to Vipassana. Mr. Santanam explained that Vipassana (Pali word), meaning seeing things as they really are, is one of India’s most ancient techniques of meditation. This was rediscovered by Goutama Buddha more than 2500 years ago and was taught by him as a universal remedy for all ills, i.e., as an ‘Art of Living’.

A Video, about application and relevance of meditation delivered by Mr. Satya Narayan Goenka at Harvard Business School, was shown. Mr. S. N. Goenka is recognized for bringing the Vipassana meditation technique to India from Burma. The video highlighted the importance of a calm and controlled mind in today’s competitive and challenging environment. Elaborating the non-sectarian technique, which aims for the total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation, he emphasized that all the issues/diseases which one comes across are psychosomatic in origin. They can be cured by making the mind purer by the medium of meditation. The scientific laws that operate one’s thoughts, feelings, judgments and sensations became clear. Through direct experience, the nature of how one grows or regresses, how one produces suffering or frees oneself from suffering is understood. Life becomes characterized by increased awareness, non-delusion, self-control and peace. Not merely the curing of diseases, but the essential healing of human suffering, is Vipassana’s purpose.

After the video, as one of the exercises to get an insight into the way mind works, participants were asked to close their eyes and observe their natural breathing pattern for 5 minutes. Then Mr Santanam asked participants to share their experience. Great Lakers shared that it is difficult to concentrate on the breath even for small durations, that the mind is always wandering and it is difficult to control it. He then pointed that if by any tool we can control the mind, then we will be able to effectively modulate personal as well as professional environment.
Further, Mr Santanam explained Vipassana as a way of self-transformation through self-observation. The technique focuses on the deep interconnection between mind and body, which can be experienced directly by disciplined attention to the physical sensations that form the life of the body, and that continuously interconnect and condition the life of the mind. It is this observation-based, self-exploratory journey to the common root of mind and body that dissolves mental impurity, resulting in a balanced mind full of love and compassion. Another session of observing the breath for five minutes was conducted a while later, wherein Great Lakers tried to concentrate more. Many Great Lakers were able to observe their breath for the full five minutes.

Towards the end, Mr. Prashanth shared his experiences of how this meditation technique had helped him gain self control and peace of mind. He shared his professional experiences where in the beginning his personality started getting affected by the surrounding work pressures which soon began affecting his personal life as well. He emphasized that things started changing once he came in touch with this technique, almost 18 months back. He also mentioned examples in great detail on how application of this technique to his personal life and in his organization had helped him gain personal satisfaction. Lastly Mr Vinayak briefed the students about the activities that are done during 10 days Vipassana course. He also shared how thousands of people are benefited by practicing the technique across the world.

Students at Great Lakes exhibited great enthusiasm to know more about the technique as was seen in the question and answer session. In the end, a significant number of participants expressed interest in participating in the meditation course.

Dr. Subramanian Swamy @ GREAT LAKES

from l to r: Dr. Subramanian Swamy, Uncle Bala, Dr. M S Ananth, (Director, IIT, Madras) and Prof Sriram

Great Lakers were privileged to hear the thoughts of Dr. Subramanian Swamy on the subject ‘India Vs China – The Economic Development Model’. Dr. Swamy is and has been a champion on the subject of Indo-China relations.

Dr. Swamy, a doctorate from Harvard, still continues to take classes at Harvard in economics. He came into the spotlight for protesting against the emergency in 1975. He is one of the founding members of the Janata Party and was elected its President in 1990. He has been a Member of Parliament five times. Dr. Swamy also took charge as the Minister of Commerce in the Chandra Shekhar government of 1990 and was also a member of the planning commission. He is known for his efforts in normalizing India’s relations with China and Israel. In 1981, he persuaded Deng Xiaoping to open the Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet to Hindu pilgrims. Even though Dr. Swamy has a strong political background, he restrained himself from speaking about politics in his talk.

The crux of his talk focused on the strengths India must leverage in order to become a truly global superpower. He spoke with conviction about India’s demographic strengths and its ability to overtake China possibly by 2015. According to Dr. Swamy, in the future India has the capability to compete effectively with the USA.

Dr. Swamy began by explaining the drivers of growth for any economy. He put forth equations explaining how the rate of growth of an economy depends on the factors of capital, labor and innovation aided by savings of an economy. (It was wonderful to see him use the white board and marker to make his point, while mentioning that he despised Power Point presentations). He stated that developed countries rely up to 75% on innovation to fuel their growth and 25% is contributed by perspiration (labor and capital). He then explained how important it was for economies to develop their infrastructure to attract investments. He said that while emphasis is on hard infrastructure like power, roads and ports, the importance of soft infrastructure like Governance, law and order, stability and financial markets should not be diluted.
Dr. Swamy then went on to comment about the growth rates. During the period 1950 to 1980 both India and China, followed the Russian economic model and clocked a modest growth rate of 3.5%. In 1980, China changed its economic model and started clocking a growth rate of 9% while the growth rate of India still lingered at around 4%. It was only in 1991 that economic reforms were brought about in India and since then we have maintained a healthy growth rate in comparison to China. But India has still not been able to plug the gap China had created during the eighties.
Dr. Swamy then went on to compare the two economies. Firstly he stated that India is more efficient in the use of resources than China, which he substantiated with consumption of Oil and other resources within the two countries. He then stated that the disparity in the living standards between eastern and western China is more thus the progress shown by China is partial only to the eastern provinces.

Also China is surrounded by countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea etc which are economically strong and healthy countries. On the other hand India has neighboring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh etc which have a weaker economy and not much scope for big trade relations.
Then Dr. Swamy went on to explain the drivers of Chinese exports with the help of diagrams. India could, opined Dr. Swamy, break this chain of China importing from the East Asian countries and export to the US by diverting this trade through India and has the capability to take on China.

In fact China’s dependence on its export-led model is one of the key problems facing the country. India, on the other hand follows a predominantly service and consumption model with more dependence on home-grown entrepreneurship capabilities. This according to Dr. Swamy would strengthen India’s position in the long-run compared to China which is still largely dependent on U.S.

Another strong point in favor of India is the rapid pace of continuing liberalization and the democracy which has allowed it to attract a larger number of foreign investors. China along with the longstanding dominance of the communist party and the problem of intellectual property rights has “made foreigners exasperated” according to Dr. Swamy.

Despite China’s present success and India’s opportunities in the future, Dr. Swamy was quick to point out that both countries still face many problems due to a malfunctioning financial system. For instance, in China the banking system has become bankrupt and public sectors are uncompetitive. In addition to this China is yet to follow the World Trade Organization mandate that allows foreign banks to take deposits from Chinese citizens who are currently earning zero interest on Government deposits.

Dr. Swamy goes on to point out that India’s issue is not just purely due to the financial system but more related to state and center budgets, which in reality is bankrupt. In fact state government budgets are being financed by the center. Also, defense, subsidies, pension, salaries, interest on past loans are the irreducible components of the budget and they constitute 98 % of Indian government revenues. The rising issues at the Center have forced the Government to finance development projects through loans from banks. “For every rupee the government takes as fresh loan, 99 paise has to be paid for past loans and interest,” explained Dr. Swamy.

Dr. Swamy went on to point out India’s resilient nature, and its ability to react best when in a crisis. “India’s problems can be solved only through crises,” he said. “We throw out existing people in power and bring in new people for taking reformative action.” Therefore we may require another crisis and a revolution before we not only catch up with China but leave them behind.

The people are also an invaluable asset according to Dr. Swamy and India’s rising population can be used for creating a strong economic growth model. “I want men also producing children if they can” he said on a lighter note. The one child policy (under heavy debate in India) has made in roads into China which now faces a declining active workforce. It is therefore a must to leverage India’s clear demographic advantage, by actively promoting primary and secondary education. Dr. Swamy praises the Great Lakes Institute of Management’s slogan “Global Mindset, Indian Roots” and added that higher education must reflect a value system that includes risk taking, team work, giving due credit to people and holding people accountable.

The audience which comprised primarily of students, looking to become future business leaders, were truly inspired by Dr. Swamy’s optimism. India has the capabilities and innovative capacity to spearhead the convergence of Information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology which is sure to bring about a huge boom in the economy. He advised the audience to elect leaders intelligently and to elect those with the ability to perform in a modern and complex world. Our goal should be to compete headlong with the US on innovation, and to innovate we must build an atmosphere of freedom and high quality education.

Power Talk: Mr. Rajesh Gupta, MD, Bearing Point

MD, Bearing Point, India addresses students at Great Lakes

In continuation of power talks arranged at Great Lakes in the month of September Mr. Rajesh Gupta MD & General Manager of BearingPoint India entity (a captive unit of BearingPoint, Inc.) addressed students at Great Lakes here. Mr. Rajesh Gupta is responsible for development of business operations strategy for global sourcing assignments covering strategy and assessments, developing sourcing business models and conducting operational assessments, building service provider capabilities, and managing relationships. He is currently managing a team of 350+ professionals in India centre. For about 2 hours he spoke elaborately about the topic, illustrating it with quite a lot of examples from his own experience as a consultant and as a leader of a top notch company with consulting as the mainstream business.

 He defined consulting as “sale of advice” – unbiased recommendation and solution to problems faced by various client firms with an “outsider looking in” approach. He said that, the three fundamental steps in a consulting project are: to diagnose the problem, device solution and implement it. He stressed upon the importance of knowledge management in a consulting business ie… knowledge acquisition, consolidation and exploitation. It is important to learn by experience dealing with customers and apply this knowledge appropriately for a new problem and a new customer. He observed that it is difficult to always find all the right people a customer wants in terms of specialization and credentials, in which case it is necessary to collaborate with competitors and exploit the synergy of resources. He also touched upon the fundamental differences in the way core consulting firms like Bearing Point and other multi-business companies with consulting as one of their verticals operate in Indian scenario.

  Talking about the growth opportunities in India, he noted that global clients increasingly want to exploit the off-shore advantage which India provides. The overall domestic demand is also on the rise due to booming sectors like financial services, knowledge management, entertainment & media, aviation, hospitality and retail sector. He was optimistic about the upswing in global demand for both analytical consulting based on data crunching and management consulting by working closely with clients.Towards the end of the lecture, he spoke about the values, ethics and passion that one needs to inculcate and the need to align what one does, sees & says, for succeeding in a business. He cautioned that while starting a business, one has to be conscious of the following: wrong reasons for choosing a business, importance of being passionate, choosing the right team, right business plan and how one is different from others while doing that business.The session was an eye opener for the large group of students at Great Lakes who have ambitions in consulting career. The lecture gave a holistic view of the challenges and opportunities in consulting business and the thumb rules to follow when one gets into it. The audience enjoyed the experience and it showed in the enthusiasm with which they interacted with the guest of the day. Mr Gupta on his part expressed happiness on the high level of participation and enthusiasm displayed by Great Lakers and pledged his continued association with the institute.

Great Lakes in Business Today

A smashing story on Great Lakes has appeared in the latest business today.

For the complete article titled “The ISB Challenger”, please visit:

http://www.business-today.com/btoday/20070923/cover5.html&SET=T

or hurry to your nearest bookstore/vendor for a copy… 

Also click on the below link to read the document covering the entire story

ISB Challenger – Great Lakes

Venu Srinivasan, CMD, TVS Motors at Great Lakes

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A power talk was organized by Great Lakes on LEADERSHIP and the speaker was Mr.Venu Srinivasan Chairman & MD of TVS Motor company Ltd. and MD of Sundaram Clayton Ltd. He is also a director on the boards of Cummins India Ltd., Lucas-TVS and Sundaram Fasteners. Coming from one of the most well known business families of India, namely from the TVS family, he has worked hard for more than a decade towards successfully reviving the business of TVS Motor company from the hard times it faced during early 1990s. He has been instrumental in making the company stronger and finally by 2001, strong enough to split with Suzuki on favourable terms and start manufacturing on its own. Under his stellar leadership, the company won the coveted Deming International award for quality management in 2002 for its successful Total Quality Management (TQM) practises.

Mr.Srinivasan talked about the characteristics of a successful leader, namely integrity and vision and related these to quality of leadership and quality of processes. He said every institution has a finite life and quality helps in making this life respectable and determines its relative longevity. Quality supported by standardization of processes results in costs becoming less finally. Total Quality Management is an approach towards this, focussing on breakthrough in selected areas identified strategically and continuous improvement in other critical areas. A system of excellence is built by appropriate training, discipline and ordering of things – the manthra of Japanese quality covering the breadth and depth of processes. Such a process doesn’t give birth to extra-ordinary people but brings out extra-ordinary results from ordinary people. A typical TQM model involves identification of critical problems, finding solution, standardization and passing it on for control and further improvement.

Such a model is applicable to all cultures and countries. Talking about entrepreneurs, he said the greatest challenge for an entrepreneur is to make his creation bigger than himself and TQM would be an effective tool to achieve this. Finally he talked about the respect that every employee in an organization deserves and the importance of moulding them as leaders. Leadership builds culture in an organization and culture builds next generation leaders. This ensures that there are quality leaders in pipeline, which is the concept of sustainable leadership.

The speech was profound in thoughts about quality leadership and inspiring for the students. After the formal questionnaire session, Mr.Venu Srinivasan stayed on for a while for an informal chat with the students and it proved to be an enriching interaction for them. This session was again indicative of the respect Great Lakes commands in the industry. Needless to say students couldn’t have asked for more!

PodTech:Prof. Bala on Management Education Challenges

Uncle Bala’s Podcast Interview