The official blog has been shifted to www.iiml.org/blog

The  official blog  of IIM Lucknow  has shifted to the official domain and can be accessed at www.iiml.org/blog

Please do check it out!

IIM Lucknow students learn lessons from Bollywood

IIM Lucknow has played host to many a CEO and budding entrepreneur in the past – learning the latest in management trends across the traditional industry verticals. Tuesday evening came as a welcome refresher when IIM Lucknow invited one of the most creative minds of the country - R Balakrishnan, aka R. Balki for an interactive session with its MBA students. An Ad Film Professional-turned-Film Director par excellence, Balki is the Chairperson and Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of Lowe Lintas and the director of Cheeni Kum and Paa.

Balki is known for his no-nonsense approach to advertising and his “Daag Achche Hain” campaign for Surf Excel is a case in point. His “Jaago Re” ads for Tata Tea and “Walk when you Talk” Idea Cellular campaign have brought in a much needed fresh social voice to advertising. His penchant for exploring different creative avenues led him to Bollywood in 2007. He wrote and directed Cheeni Kum, with Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu in the lead. Paa(2009), starring Abhishek Bachchan, Vidya Balan and Amitabh Bachchan was his second directorial venture.

The interactive talk was held on campus as part of ‘Prodigies – the Leadership talk series’ facilitated by the student run Industry Interaction Cell of IIM Lucknow. Based on the theme of ‘Ad & Film Making – Through the Management Lens’, it was very well received by the IIM Lucknow community with a jam-packed auditorium. From the Tanishq to Idea, Surf to Havell, Balki had the audience floored with his anecdotes and insights on these brands. Over the course of an hour and a half, he took the students through his journey of ad making, playing out different ads and explaining their significance, story board and the like.

The session gave the students a flavour of how the Indian advertising industry works in general and how Lowe Lintas, with Mr. Balki at the helm, succeeded in producing top-notch, eye-catching ads. “If an advertisement does not make you interested in the product, then it is just a piece of good filming not a good ad”. Highlighting the nuances of designing integrated ad-campaigns, he shared his perspective on the changing consumer behaviour in India which throws up new challenges to today’s marketers. In response to a student’s question on ad failures and successes he said “Learn from experiences that have worked best for you, success trains you and makes you strive for more”. He also discussed with the students how the downturn and recession had actually affected the marketing ideas and budgets. The students were particularly amazed about his experiences as a director to some of the most noted actors in Bollywood.

Away from all the shine and success, Balki shared some stories from his personal life which left the audience wanting for more. Commenting on the talk, Dheeraj Sarwaiya, a second year student said, “Today’s MBA student is more enterprising and bold than ever before. We have students who choose not to tread the beaten path but simply follow their dreams in unconventional fields. These talks are a good source of inspiration for us to pursue what we truly believe in.”

Gender Parity at the Workplace: Findings by Bain & Co

“We want to bring in more diversity on campus, with fewer engineers and more women” said the Admissions Chair, IIM Lucknow in one of his latest interviews. The prospective increase in percentage of women on campus has created a buzz, not only in terms of hostel expansions and allocation but has also led to a series of rumors on the exact number. The number quoted around the campus grapevine, informally, keeps increasing every day, from the modest 75 to a whopping 120 (out of 400+ students) as compared to the current batch which has just about 50 girls (out of 370).

This new development is very promising as compared to the last decade, where women were mostly not even considered for corporate jobs. Times are certainly better now, but it’s not as if much has changed. Fact remains that only 3% of the top CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies are women!

When the most dreaded question of any MBA admission interview is asked, “Why MBA?”, the most frequent answer encountered is speedy career progression with an aspiration for senior leadership roles and greater responsibilities. It is interesting to note that at the junior level, the number of men and women entering the industry are almost the same. However one can’t help but wonder why there is such a sharp decrease in number of women who successfully move up the corporate ladder! Why are women unable to achieve the career goals that they started out with? Is it a perception mis-match? A study by Bain & Co in 2010 provided insights regarding general trends in the top multinational corporations with respect to perceptions of both men and women.

The study reports that 80% of the women believed that achieving gender parity should be a critical business imperative as compared to only 48% of the men. Sixty six percent of the men reported that they believed women share equal opportunities to be promoted for leadership positions and alarmingly only 30% women felt the same, indicating a sharp perception gap in the status of gender parity. One aspect that both men and women agreed upon was that although there exist no gender disparity during recruitment for junior positions, there existed a significant disparity while considering promotion to senior executive roles. How exactly does this play out?

Mitali, a Junior Manager at an MNC, says “I feel that my work environment is more man-friendly”. “I think women are more passionate when it comes to work; it is like my work defines me.” She further adds, “The HR initiatives in my company are just not flexible enough”. The Bain and Co. study sends this strong message to the business leaders that majority of their employees do not see the current initiatives, such as flexi timings aimed at helping achieving gender parity, as successful. Women in secure jobs have changed to a similar post in another company only because their company’s policies did not allow them the sort of environment they needed.

The proverbial glass ceiling phenomenon has been well documented at the workplace, and it is a fact that a woman has to work much harder than a man in the same work team to gain the same amount of recognition. But this glass ceiling has given way in many organizations, and the important factor to consider should be “Is work place culture adaptable enough to retain women employees?”

Another reason for lesser number of women in the higher echelons is the issue of work-family imbalance. Not only is the woman considered to be the caregiver in a family, the Bain report also shows that more number of women are ready to relocate for their spouse’s job transfers, or choose to work from home as compared to men. Women are also more likely to take a flexible career path, and three times more likely to work part time. Company initiatives in such a case can be very helpful in retention of their women employees by allowing for part time or work from home for a period of time. But the Bain survey results revealed that the employees were dissatisfied with their organization’s insensitivity to the progression of male and female career paths. More than three-quarters of the respondents said that their company had implemented gender-parity initiatives such as flex-work programs and mentorship but mostly felt that these programs were not effective.

It would also be interesting to note, that the number of female entrepreneurs increased by 15% from last year. This could possibly be a fallout of company initiatives failing to provide women with a suitable work environment or perhaps another dimension of change in the world of business. Further studies would  give us the insight to that.

All things considered, admitting more female students in MBA colleges is a positive first step that could help open up a plethora of opportunities for women. In the end the success of any such policy would depend on the organization these women are hired into. A lot of companies of course, do have very competitive gender equality recruitment policies where they make a conscious effort to select a healthy ratio of male to female employees. The success of an organization depends on the growth that it offers to the women employees. The way forward for any company would be to have less rigid promotion processes, and career paths, and also actively promote and de-stigmatize flexible career arcs within the organization – so that the employees flourish and grow in stop and start careers.

USTS, A global IT consultancy to launch social operating system in India at IIML campus!

US Tech Solutions, a New Jersey based Global Consulting and IT Services Company, offering a wide range of solutions customized to various verticals and horizontals plans to launch its business social operating system called “Encanvas Secure & Live ES” officially in India at IIM Lucknow on the 9th of March. They also plan to release the product for the IIM-L community as well.

US Tech Solutions has decided to launch its Encanvas Secure & Live ES platform in India at IIM Lucknow.  The launch is a first of its kind where a global consultancy is officially launching the software product suite at a B-school. Moreover, the company also plans to conduct a case study competition and let the winners of the contest be involved in the marketing charter for the product suite.

US Tech Solutions has also decided to work with the Incubation cell at IIM Lucknow to launch the software product at other educational institutions in India. This would give the IIM-L student community a great platform to be a part of a business enterprise even before graduating from IIM Lucknow.

The students at IIM Lucknow eagerly await the product launch given that it is a precedent across schools where a company plans an official launch at campus and let the students drive the marketing effort for the product across communities.

The launch saw the presence of the top management from US Tech Solutions including Ian Tomlin (Sales Director and author of “Cloud Coffe House” and “Agilisation” books) and Dhiraj Adya (VP-Corporate Strategy). Ian Tomlin was extremely pleased with the proceedings and student community of IIM Lucknow. “We are looking at IIM Lucknow to provide a creative platform to market our product and innovate”, said Tomlin. When asked, why only IIM Lucknow, Dheeraj replied by saying “The rigour of IIM L is much more. The media cell and IIC are doing a fantastic job out here”. Us Tech Solutions is bullish on the chances of success of their social network products in India. “If there is a place to start a new technology in IT, its India”, added Tomlin. US Tech Soln seemed optimistic about growing Indian business needs. “Business needs secure spaces to share, and we introduce social networking tools in this space”, added Tomlin.

US Tech Solutions has a highly process enabled approach developed and evolved over a period of time.  They have achieved the pinnacles of process and quality credentials through ISO 9001: 2000 (Quality Management Systems), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Systems) and SEI CMMi. This shows their commitment towards providing world-class solutions with standardized procedures, frameworks and methodologies to their global clients.

The Industry Interaction Cell (iic) of IIM Lucknow which is working with US Tech Solutions on this launch sees this as a great opportunity for the students of all specializations (marketing, finance, strategy et al.) to apply their learning to an event which promises to test their expertise across the board be it in non traditional marketing, marketing communication or managing technology.

IIM Lucknow’s Mentorship program for call getters for GD/PI preparation CAT 2010

The students of IIM Lucknow have launched the third edition of IIM Lucknow’s Mentorship Programme for call-getters christened Ignicion 2010. In its third edition, Ignicion promises to be bigger and better than ever before, buoyed by the enthusiastic response received over the last two years. Ignicion is a unique mentorship programme where the entire student community of IIM Lucknow comes together to assist the institute’s GD/PI call getters by proactively answering the various queries that they might have about the selection process, about MBA and about life @ IIML.

An entirely student driven initiative, Ignicion’s primary objective is to ensure that prospective students get every possible help and information from a reliable source quickly. Team Ignicion maps the profiles of the aspiring candidates to those of student volunteers at IIML, in order to come up with the best set of mentor-mentee pairs.

This ensures that the mentees are able to connect better with their mentors and can get appropriate advice based on their mentor’s past experiences. To avail the benefits of this programme, aspirants who have a GD/PI call from IIM Lucknow are required to register themselves on the Ignicion website at http://www.iiml.ac.in/ignicion. Soon after registration, they are allotted mentors who will guide them through the GD/PI process and will try and resolve all their queries.

The registered candidates can also post their queries on the Ignicion forum at http://synapse.iiml.ac.in/ignicion/forum/, which shall be promptly replied to by the Ignicion team. As an alternative, candidates can also mail in their queries to ignicion@iiml.ac.in. Akshai Varma, a student from the batch of 2010 at IIM Lucknow and one of the members of the Ignicion core team in 2009, believes that after last year’s terrific response, where nearly 80% of the call getters registered themselves on the forums, Ignicion is all set to go to the next level. “The current Ignicion core team has some fantastic initiatives lined up, including mock telephonic interviews and interviews over Skype; networking through various social media portals such as Facebook, Twitter and Buzz; and regular disbursement of information regarding frequently sought topics such as Careers after MBA, Life @ B-Schools etc.”

Representative of Ignicion have also taken up the task of attending to queries put forward by aspirants on popular MBA forums such as PagalGuy and MBAUniverse. The Ignicion team has also launched Ignicion pages and communities on popular social networking sites such as FaceBook, Orkut, Twitter and Google Buzz, which focus on life at IIM Lucknow in order to help aspirants get a sneak peek into the happenings at IIM L.

Given the already huge number of hits and registrations on the Ignicion website within 2 days of its launch, this year’s programme is all set to scale new heights. For more information about the initiative, visit the Ignicion website at http://www.iiml.ac.in/ignicion, or visit the Ignicion page on Orkut and FaceBook. You may also follow the user ignicion2010 on Twitter and Buzz to receive continuous updates from Team Ignicion.