What They Still Do Not Teach You at IIM

Business Management has been divided into the several constituents of Businesses, and the Management Institutions try to deliver specialization in each of these constituents separately. Let us try to diagnose each of these constituents and titrate them against the real world indicators.

1) Finance Management: This has been the Talk of Town for quite some period. The perception is that either the Finance Management people or the Marketing Management people get all the gravy in a corporate Institution.

2) Management basically means managing the available resources most effectively. Our scriptures define योगः कर्मषु कौशलम् । Meaning ‘Yoga is Excellence in Action’. Hence Yoga and Management have similar domain.

3) Now let us examine Finance Management:: It would mean Broadly Managing Companies Financial Resources effectively .As per Copy Book or IIM A Financial Manager is required to Manage the Finances, ensure Statutory compliances etc., In managing finances one has to ensure proper Book Keeping, and make available finances for a company’s functioning and growth.

One hardly needs any fancy degree or elite college education for these. A Finance manager is un important when the corporate entity is doing well. Requirement of Managing skill goes down substantially when resources are plentiful..His role becomes pivotal or critical in the time of crisis or crunch.

An excellent example of an ingenious Financial manager we find in the character of Mr Ramlingam Raju of SATYAM.Computers.He needed to show a particular level of performance to justify his shareholders confidence. When the performance was below par,he cooked up books, showed higher profits than actual. To Offset the fake profit, he generated a false cash balance and got away with it for several years. He would had been able to clean the slate and balance the books, if his land deal in his Real Estate company MAYTAS had not gone sour. Yet herein the ingenuity of managing finances was remarkable. Mind it, this ingenuity needs lot of skill. He failed was a coincidence does not make the skill any less conspicuous.

Ambanis were reported to have thousands of Finance companies, which they used to prime up their share prices and inspire confidence among its share holders. This called for Marked Financial Management which no IIM teaches.

Birlas had a “PADATA” system of preparing a daily balance sheet , that helped the Patriarch G D Birla keep a watch over his interest in dozens of companies strewn all around India.Mark it, this was much before the days of computers and internet. Plain Vanila Telephone lines and Data collated on plain paper was all the hardware.

4) Marketing Management:: It is to preempt customers demand, sometimes prompt or generate a demand by repetitive suggestions/media hammering. Then service the demand.

There is a joke that exemplifies the principles underlying the Marketing Management.

One Indian approached Harrod’s Store Manager in London for a job.The Harrod’s Store Manager (HSM) asked him what sort of work experience did he posses. This chap said he had had a grocery shop back home in his native village. OK said the HSM ,” Go and man the counter no.19. Today being Friday, we do expect a surge in customers and an extra hand would be help.

In the evening when his shift was over he was summoned by the HSM to take stock of his output.

HSM: Well how many sales did you make gentleman.

Indian: One

HSM: Only on a Friday is too low. Others did at least 20 or 30 sale, BTW what was your sale value of the single sale that you did.

Indian: Sir, about 95,000 pounds.

HSM: Ghosh! 95,000 pounds to one customer. Hey man what did you sell him.

Indian: Sir, I sold him a small size fishing hook,a medium size fishing hook and a large size fishing hook.

HSM; OK and……………

Indian: Sir, and a Small size Fishing Line, Medium size Fishing Line, and a Large size Fishing Line,

HSM; OK and…………..

India::Sir, I asked him where would he like to go for fishing. He said Sea. Hence I sold him a 26 ft long double engine schooner.

HSM: That’s Great . Yet it does not add up….

Indian: Sir, Then I asked him how would he carry the boat to the sea. And I sold him an 18 wheel caterpillar truck to carry the boat to the sea.

HSM: Amazing. You sold all this to a guy who came to buy a fishing hook.

Indian: No Sir, He never came in to buy a fishing hook…Actually he came in to buy Sanitary Napkins for his wife. Thence I only suggested him that tomorrow and day after being weekend and his wife needing sanitary napkins, his weekend was finished. He may as well go fishing...

This is smart Marketing management. Generate a demand where none existed and maximize your sales.

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THE MAI BAP SARAKAR

Sarkar is a Hindi word for Government. Yet the very word in Hindi has connotations way beyond what is commonly construed by the word ‘Government’ in English. The Hindi word “Sarakar” virtually means an unbridled AUTHORITY. During the British regime the Government was even termed as a Mai Bap SARAKAR .Lately even in Independent India the Government of India is once again metamorphosing into a Mai Bap SARAKAR.

It all seemingly began in 1975 with the proclamation of much written about, commented, condemned and apologized for, the ‘Emergency’. On the 26^th June 1975 midnight, the Democratically elected Government dropped all its pretensions and Became a ‘Mai Bap Sarakar’. The local SHO or Police station Inspector-in-charge assumed the ultimate powers. Any one protesting against any form of authority, did it at his peril of incarceration. “Fear was the Key”. People crawled when they were asked to merely bend.

That was a short lived experience. Within 19 months by 1977 March, emergency was abolished. Now let us do a fast forward to 2012 AD. Lately once again the ‘Democratically Elected Government’ is trying to assume the status of a Mai Bap SARAKAR in a surreptitious manner. The arrogance of Electoral Victory is prompting the ‘People’s Representatives’ to don the mantle of Autocracy. The basic tenets of Democracy are being tempered with, brazenly.

The first and the most corner stone or breast milk to democracy is ‘The Freedom of Speech’. Caveat no one is talking about an absolute freedom. The old axiom still stands that Your right to swing your Arm stops a few millimeters before my Nose.

Lately the Noise Emanating from the Government of the day is very Ominous on this regard. Mr Kapil Sibbal is talking about Regulating Social Media even. The ground reality is, “the Formal Media has been made completely subservient to Indian political Rogues. It has been bought over either for Love or for Lucre by the self seeking politicians. The only media that SPEAKS truth/lies/nonsense yet sentiments of the hoi polloi and does not ‘PARROT’ ‘His/Her Master’s Voice’, is the much maligned social media. The rise and the might of social media has lately made its presence felt via the ‘Arab Spring’ and Anna Movement, closer home.

I wish to draw a seemingly grisly analogy. I remember a Doctor explaining an Ex Leprosy patient, who had weak neural sensibilities in his feet, certain facts. The Doctor was explaining that Feeling of Pain is an important element for survival. Absence of Pain is bad for health. Without this feeling of Pain one is likely to cause self inflicted injuries unconsciously. Pain activates the self protection mechanism. One’s body is normally more or less on auto pilot mode. The sensation of Pain is the Enunciator that makes one aware of the injury/ailment and thereby seeks protection/cure/takes remedial action. Without the early feeling of this Pain, the self protection mechanism would not activate itself. The delay can render the cure difficult and or impossible.

Similarly if one puts Covers on NEWS and Public speech, it would be akin to removing the Pain sensing faculty. The wounds in the society then would keep festering without the HEAD/brain becoming aware of the injury. Slowly and surely soon the problem would become carcinogenic and incurable.

The second most important element of Democracy is the Trust between the State and its Citizens. The recent statement of Supreme Court clearly castigates the State on this issue. Supreme Court states in the Baba Ramdev case, that the incident of the midnight adventure by Delhi Police clearly show a major trust deficit. The state without this trust is merely a Geographical entity and cannot be testified as a nation.

In the minimum it erases all our pretensions of being a Democratic state and reduces India into an autocratic state and in the maximum it reclassifies us a Failed State.

Free and Fair ELECTIONS are a pre requisite to any pretensions of a Democracy. Elections are the most important festival of a Democratic Process. Yet the Mighty powers in Delhi are now conniving to tie the hands of the constitutional authority of the Election Commission, behind their back. They are trying to convert the august office into an ineffective arm of the Ruling Party aka Government. With a weak election commissioner and toothless commission, the party in power would bend all rules in the book and play havoc with the entire process of elections.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has been Satirically renamed as Congress Bureau of Investigation. The high and mighty CBI must play Footsie to the Party in Power or bear the brunt.

A very ominous remark that has not been deliberated much was made by the Solicitor General against SC Judges during the CVC Mr Thomas’s Case hearing. The “Sarakari” stooge remarked that ‘If the Judiciary wishes to review all important appointments, Government would initiate intense Investigations against all the judiciary appointments…….. That is to say that If the Judiciary would initiate any problems for the State, the state would retaliate by investigating all Judicial Appointments intensively and make their life difficult. This is an extremely unfortunate remark with widespread ramifications. State is threatening Judiciary and asking them to not to mess with the State.An extremely ugly expression of Arm Twisting by the STATE.

Our Finance Minister threatens the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, “We know how to create problems for you and we know how to solve them too”. It is neither democracy nor federalism.It is plain and simple Dark Threat or Blackmail, fall in line or else.

Now the NCTC, all these antics show a complete disregard for Democracy,Federalism and it veers towards ‘Feudalism’.

Rahul Gandhi has been shouting from Roof Tops that India’s Prime Minister’s post is just for asking for him. He says he could had become the PM of India at the age of 25. He has trivialized The Congress Party, the Nation and the PM’s post all of them abominably. This juvenile claim is an utter disregard for any democratic process.

We are witnessing an alarming situation. The Nation is being transformed into a fiefdom. The nationals are being transformed into SERFS with State as ‘SARAKAR’ and 'one Family' as Mai Bap.

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