C.K. Prahalad- A guru who foresaw the future

The newspapers on the morning of 17 April were abuzz with the sad and sudden demise of Prof. Dr. Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad at the age of 69. In his passing away the world has lost an eminent management guru whose bottom of the pyramid theory is perhaps the tipping point for social entrepreneurship activism seen of late. His thinking and work is sure to inspire the next generation of management thinkers, entrepreneurs, strategy consultants, and a broad spectrum of people to whom his research holds relevance.

Prof. Prahalad was born in 1941. His early roots were in Chennai where he got his B.Sc. degree from the Loyola College in 1960 and went on to study MBA at IIM-A (1966). His research on multinational management won him a Doctor of Business Administration in just two and a half years from the Harvard Business School (1975). After serving IIM-A as a professor in 1976-77, he joined the University of Michigan.

According to the University of Michigan website, Prof. Prahalad, The Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, US, is a globally known figure and has consulted with the top management of many of the world's foremost companies. His research specializes in corporate strategy and the role and value added of top managements in large, diversified, multinational corporations.

Prof. Prahalad has been among top ten management thinkers in every major survey for over ten years. Forbes said of him: "a brilliant Teacher, Futurist, he may well be the most influential thinker on business strategy today."

Prof. C.K. Prahalad is the author of a number of well-known works in corporate strategy including The Core Competence of the Corporation (Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1990). He authored several international bestsellers, including Competing for the Future (with Gary Hamel), 1994, The Future of Competition (with Venkat Ramaswamy), 2004 and The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, Wharton School Publishing, 2004. His last book with co-author M. S. Krishnan is called The New Age of Innovation, which became a best seller. At the time of his passing away he was still on the board of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs.

CK's greatest contribution shall always remain his prophecy for India and the catalytic role he played in helping India dream big. His book "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" concentrated at the economic opportunities that existed at the bottom of the economic ladder. A visionary, he talked about India joining the big league way back in 1995. His initiative- India@75 partnering with CII, launched a massive visioning exercise simultaneously across 22 Indian states. Adopting a bottom-up approach, through various stakeholders' workshops, primary data is being collected to help India become economically strong, technically vital and an ethical global leader by the year 2022.

He showed the signs of becoming a good instructor and consultant early. While still in his early 20s, he would organise simulation-based management games for young managers at his company, India Pistons, part of the Amalgamations Group. Prahalad left for IIM Ahmedabad soon, where he was a student in the first graduating class of that institute. He then left for Harvard. He came back to work in India, at IIM-A for a short stint. It was at the University of Michigan, which he joined after returning from India to the US (almost for good), that Prahalad really blossomed, first as an instructor, then as management thinker, author, and consultant.

Business strategy was his forte, which could explain why he focused on issues such as competition, collaboration, and innovation through the 1990s. His best-known book is Competing for the Future, co-authored with Gary Hamel. The book gave the world a buzz term: core competence. In the late 1990s and 2000s Prahalad started talking about the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid (which resulted in an eponymous book).

All through, he remained someone who believed in India, although he was acutely conscious of the problems the country needs to overcome if it wanted to claim what he thought was its rightful place under the sun. Despite his fame (and fortune) Prahalad remained almost the same person who had worked as a young manager at India Pistons.

Prahalad may be gone but his emergence paved the way for a succession of Indian management gurus and writers—Bala Balachandran, Vijay Govindarajan, and Tarun Khanna among them.

He was the first recipient of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Award for contributions to Management and Public Administration presented by the President of India in 2000. He was honored with Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2009. The Times voted him to be the most influential management thinker on its Thinkers 50 list in 2009.

Prof. Prahalad might have passed into history but his influence on us will continue for a long, long time to come.

Contributed by Sarathy Guru Shankar. K, IT Varsity, CBS Batch 4 (2009-‘10)

Microfinance Projects by CBS Students!

Objective of the study

•To gain an insight on the concept of a Self-Help Group (SHG) as a tool for micro credit, its working, bank linkage.
•Working of Sruthi SHG

Sruthi SHG’s Model

•Started in 2005 by 18 women residing in the same locality
•All of them had no previous “work” experience
•But they did small scale business activities like undertaking party orders, selling homemade snacks, sarees, etc
•They got to know of SHG concept through another similar one operating in the same locality
•Approached Women’s Development Committee of TN and formed Sruthi SHG
Associated with an NGO called Asha Nivas
•Started off its SHG activity by setting up a canteen in Co- optex, Chennai
•Initial money was invested by the members
•On initiation, 5 notebooks for account maintenance is given
•Bank loans are based on the strict maintenance of the accounts
•Weekly meetings are held and the minutes of the meeting are recorded
•Discussions are held on current affairs and info from the weekly magazine circulated by the NGO
•Profits are shared on a weekly basis and the salaries are weekly too
•Brownie points for CSR activities
•Awarded the Best SHG by the TN Govt for 2008 & 2010
•Common account opened with Indian Bank with minimum savings of Rs.100 p.m
•Members can borrow from the fund at an interest rate of 1paise repayable in 10 months
•The interest received is again split among the members
•The members also borrow on the SHG account for their personal & business development needs.
•Prefer to borrow as SHG because of low formalities .
•Accounts are maintained by 3 members nominated by the group.
•Loan amount to members is based on the monthly savings they have in the common fund
•Sruthi SHG has so far borrowed close to 5 lakhs from Indian bank through their micro credit wing under the Bank –SHG linkage programme
•I Loan – 40K (Repaid)
•II Loan – 1.3 Lakhs (Repaid)
•III Loan – 3.6 Lakhs (Active)
•Out of the loan amount, 36K is taken away in the beginning and a fixed deposit for that amount is made.
•Only principal repayment for the Fixed Deposit value.
•In case of default the FD is taken by the Bank
•If repaid, the FD along with the interest is given to the SHG.

Sruthi SHG Canteen

Advantages of the Bank – SHG Linkage

The linkages of SHGs with banks aims at using the intermediation of SHGs between banks and the rural poor for cutting down the transaction costs for both banks and their rural clients. The objective of the linkage Programme could be:
-To evolve supplementary credit strategies for meeting the credit needs of the poor
-To build mutual trust and confidence between bankers and the rural poor.
- To encourage banking activity, both on the thrift and credit sides, in a segment of the population that formal financial institutions usually find difficult to reach.

Besides, financing through SHGs reduces transaction costs for both lenders and borrowers.
•While lenders have to handle only a single SHG account instead of a large number of small-sized individual accounts,
•Borrowers as part of a SHG cut down expenses on travel (to & from the branch and other places) for completing paper work and on the loss of workdays in canvassing for loans.

Project submitted by S Shanmugapriya, BFS Varsity, CBS Batch 4 (2009-'10)

Lessons from the Trenches...

On a gloomy Saturday morning we assembled for a presentation by Mr. V. Vishwakiran, who is handling the module on "Sales and Large Account Management" for the students of Marketing and IT. A PGDM in marketing, Vishwakiran joined an Indian IT major in their Sales and marketing support function, after a brief stint in media and advertising agencies.

His presentation was mind blowing, amazing and colorful, with picturesque visuals from his Mac. His session titled "Lessons from the Trenches", kept us spell-bound throughout.

The objective of the session was to make us understand that as managers we must, in addition to managing the repetitive and regular issues, be dynamic, resilient and mature to handle crisis with the required clarity and not get overawed by the situation. In this context he narrated the lessons he learnt the hard way in his corporate career and the hits and misses he had in his life.

He delivered this in an innovative way. For example, the presentation's first slide had a World War-II trench picture with soldiers in bitter condition. The idea was to convey the lessons the world learnt under tough conditions during the brutal trench warfare of WW-I.

He had done his homework of going through our profiles from our college website and he called us by names and asked us to recall our experiences in the appropriate context, thus making the whole session a participative event. He was open and shared some of his personal experiences at a conceptual level and discussed his learnings.Some of the themes discussed during the session were:

- Creating your value systems
- Dealing with others
- Staying on top
- Art of communication
- Work ethics

Mr. Vishwakiran had his own unique way of conveying his messages that was loved by one and all in the class. This was through movies and quotes from famous personalities. A hollywood movie buff, he made effective use of movies to convey critical points. To suit each context, he quoted relevant movie dialogues from Hollywood movies and presented them in a picturesque way in his PPt's.

For example, he quoted a dialogue from the Tom Cruise movie, Jerry Maguire- "The Key to any Business is Personal relationships"
“If everyone is thinking the same thing, someone is not thinking”
- from the movie MacArthur
“Every battles is won before it is ever fought…”
-from the movie Wall Street
“If you don’t dream, you don’t have anything…”
-from the movie The Rookie

We had a good practical insight into management and work ethics. It was a Saturday that will linger in our minds for a long, long time.......

Contributed by Sarathy Guru Shankar. K, IT Varsity, CBS Batch 4 (2009-‘10)

Enhancing our Spiritual Quotient

This year’s women’s day would be an unforgettable day for many of us, as we were exposed to a new kind of engineering- inner engineering by Mr. Vinod Hari of Isha yoga.

Belonging to no particular belief system, Isha yoga offers what is needed for the modern world. We were shown videos by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, the founder of Isha yoga about what is inner engineering and what could it do for us. The questions posed by Sadguru in the video were so powerful and so piercing.

Why inner engineering?

All human experiences are internal- be it happiness, joy or blissfulness, but the problem is that we have given the starter button for this in someone else’s hand.

If the world is not happening the way you want it to, it’s absolutely ok. But if the main person i.e. you, are not working the way you want it to, there comes the real tragedy. Inner engineering is an enabler to make at least this one person (yourself) to work your way.

Inner engineering combines the powerful yoga technique called “shambavi mahamudra” and “pranayama” (breathing technique). People like Mr. Ravi Venkatesh (MD, Microsoft India) stand testimony to its prowess.

Samples of Sadguru’s wisdom

He narrated the interesting story of a bull and pheasant where a weak pheasant eating bull’s dung reaches the top of a tree and gets shot, inferring that, “At times even bull shit can take you to the top but never lets you to stay there”. This is what would happen if we don’t know how to handle ourselves.

As Sadguru says “we did a lot of engineering to our external world so that it functions better for us, now it’s time we do a bit of engineering for ourselves.”

Sadguru was right in stating that “The best moments of our lives are when we express our love- not when we search for it”. But unfortunately for most of us, much of our lives is wasted in pursuing happiness.

He was scientific in his approach when he said that peace is just a kind of chemistry and said that what a pill could do for you for a brief moment by bringing calmness, yoga could do eternally. The entire chemistry of our system could be changed by yoga, bringing us back to our natural self of joy and happiness.

All his words are of utmost clarity. He was right in saying “be human first”- forgetting humanity, divinity is just farce. No two humans have the same capability, if you function to your full potential you are a fortunate being and would always be blissful, and inner engineering is a starting point to realise your full potential. Mr. Ravi Venkatesh asks in the video, “If you are unable to manage yourself, how could you be a manager managing others?” This made all us future managers to think.

Answering to a question on how to be stress free Sadguru was right in saying that “whenever people are in a state where they have no control over their inner situation they would be stressful, not because of any external situation.”

Most of us act compulsively not consciously and to be aware of knowing oneself is the first step and inner engineering initiates this process.

The presenter was excellent in the way he communicated and the way he answered our questions. As Sadguru pointed that, “unless you do the right things, right things will not happen to you." I think we have done the right thing on having a speaker from Isha and enrolling ourselves for this life changing inner engineering program.

Special thanks to Vidhya ma’m from Orchid for making this happen.

Contributed by Manoj A, IT Varsity, CBS Batch 4 (2009-10)

“Karthi-keen” on new HR ecosystem

Today I attended a rather intriguing lecture, by none other than the well known Dr. R. Karthikeyan, a qualified psychologist from National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), as well as a consultant and now the management educator and pioneer of the Gemba School of HR, Chennai.

He first started with how he got into the field of HR or should I rephrase as how Dr. Karthikeyen believes- "how HR chose him." To explain this he began with a small flashback, when he was in his first job at Salem Steel, where he was asked to conduct a four-day training session for the employees. He admitted openly that he was totally baffled as to how to go on about it. Yet with proper groundwork, he said with a slight glint, that he 'somehow managed to pull it off.' Hence, his first bump with HR.

It was only after this training session that he started looking at HR in a new light. HR management is basically discovering, recognizing, strengthening, refining and finally acquiring human talent, skills and power. He also stated the importance and value of the HR domain in every enterprise. Though the main HR techniques and practices depend upon the traditional management theories; however in the present era the current issues and dilemmas have proved to be much more complex and dynamic than before. Hence, there requires a cry for change in basic HR methods, both theoretically and practically.

Dr. Karthikeyan also spoke about Psychometric testing, a useful recruitment tool that is used to assess a person's knowledge, abilities, priorities, attitudes and personality traits. But the sad fact is that many HR professionals themselves aren't aware of the basic skills to handle crisis situations. At this point he threw light on the 5 W and 1 H, that is who, why, what, where, when and how.

Some of the other interesting anecdotes he shared with us were the various challenges he encountered during his career growth. One of them that he talked about was the one where he had to eliminate 1500 employees from work. The amount of thought process he had to go through and the homework he had done was tremendous. He used the help of role plays and mock exit interviews. The second challenge he faced, was when he had to recruit 1200 in 9 months. For that, he had organized a walk-in for the ITI's at the Montford Grounds. But unfortunately things fouled up when there was an unexpected turnout of people overcrowding the grounds that even traffic came to a standstill. And in this turbulence of things, there was a lot of loss and damage caused to the institute's property. He concluded by accepting that he hadn't foreseen the change of events and he should have planned the event in a much more efficient way.

The lecture ended with him inculcating in us a different outlook about HR altogether. HR today has transformed from being only performance oriented to people oriented. And after this lecture, I feel that the changes brought within the HR wing would bring about changes to the entire organization.

Contributed by Vikram Mohan, HR Varsity, CBS Batch 4 (2009-10)

Experience speaks!

When one speaks with heart there tends to be a lot of acceptance and appreciation. It’s more to do with the words untold and also those “read in between lines”. For someone who is as seasoned as Mr. Karthikeyan, it was more of spontaneity and instincts taking the lead. A Trained Psychologist and consultant, he spoke the’ HR language’ with a lot of depth and conviction. Stories of his own failures and hard lessons broke the shackles one could have on learning by failing in life.

“Is it feasible for assessment centers in the private sectors?” I asked. Karthikeyan had actually done it in his previous assignments as consultant. He went over the process in his earlier stints with fine tooth comb. Neatly presenting the story, he posed questions on HR concepts that had the students gripped completely, not to forget those moments shared to mull over certain serious lapses that occur in recruitment.

Couple of anecdotes on strategies is worth mentioning. Karthikeyan had emphasized on absorbing ITI students outside Chennai to fill in for as large as 1500 technicians for a top automotive player. The underlying motive was to retain people for a considerable time. Additionally, the pay offered was too less for a worker from within the city. This turned out to be a huge trump card in success of the recruitment process with the automotive giant.

Life comes 360 degrees. Yes, he had his failures too, when a mass recruitment drive went berserk. This was one such incident where Karthikeyan had to recruit for front office executives. There was huge turn around with police getting involved to control the ‘mob’. Eventually, people were asked to drop in their resumes. And guess what, there were torn resumes deposited all over, an indication of torn hearts due to improper communication. It was a clear illustration of a poorly written “Job Description”.

Importance of observation was stressed on as a HR professional. Empathy to sit through the allotted time with an interviewee was discussed further. Never ‘Test’ an individual and ‘Dump’. It’s extremely important to provide a candid feedback to ensure he/she works on the shortcomings. Karthikeyan was particular on such ‘humane’ dimensions that complete a HR as a person and also the role per se.

No presentation in power point, nothing ‘flash’y, yet clear and profound way of reaching out to the student community with relevance to one’s hardships in life. The session would stay in our mind, as a definite reminiscence of the gentleman and his methodology of teaching.

Contributed by Balaji MS, HR Varsity, CBS Batch-4 (2009-10)

Innovative HR Practices

I missed the window pane by inches. It would have been yet another hit on my forehead, which had already been sculpted with historic marks besides my either eyebrows. We ran, huffed & puffed, shouted and gasped for breath. Eventually we managed to be back alive, with limbs in appropriate places. Well, it was one such exercise as a part of team building to foster trust and test leadership in an individual.

Johari window made me peep into my own territories of strength and weakness. It also presented an opportunity for others to have a ‘go’ at my shortcomings, of course in a positive and constructive manner. “Who is the Murderer”, a situation maze, brought-out the “Sherlock Holmes” in each of us, and at the same time taught us wonderfully on team spirit and working together for a common cause.

Managing Competencies and Performance requires clear demarcation. Aren’t organizations muddling things up? To an extent true, but I learnt how to deal with this important ‘Duality’ of HR, keeping them separate and gauging individually. The Left brain was challenged with logic, predominantly testing the analytical knowhow. We also strategized, instructed and created structures in similar lines to collage. Communication was questioned, coordination was pushed to limits, and yes- leaders emerged too, some ripe and others slightly infant.

It is a great learning thus far. Innovative HR practices have not only been food for thought academically, but also a real time application in understanding oneself and also fellow HR brains at CBS.

Many thanks to Prof Kashinath and his inspiring pedagogy.

Contributed by Balaji MS, HR Varsity, CBS Batch-4 (2009-10)

‘Live wire’ in campus

Being a generalist HR at TAFE, with end to end responsibilities, Kamala Manohari brimmed with knowledge and energy. She deals with as wide a bandwidth as Recruitment, Learning & Development, Employee relations and MIS. Life is so easy when we have a single shop housing all that we need. Likewise, she was one such ‘go-to’ personality to address the HR varsity students. The interaction kicked-off focusing on training that included technical and behavioral parameters.

Unlike the general notion that the gap between academics and industry is quite large, Kamala urged us in getting the basics right- from books. For instance, “Iceberg” model emphasizes on understanding the behavior that are explicitly not visible. This will need to be imbibed well within to appreciate and implement any form of Performance Management. It thus becomes imperative to learn all that comes in through the academic route, which can ultimately be customized per rigors of life and business.

Ratios and SLAs are so integral to organizations. “Job Change Index” was one such ratio we came across, providing an absolute check on the stability in one’s career. To be precise:

Job Change Index (JCI) = No of Job Changes/No of Professional years of experience

It goes without saying that this needs to be minimal while gauging an individual’s resume for recruitment. ‘Cycle Time’ was yet another SLA Kamala dwelt on. Negative Cycle time was one surprising element highlighted, bringing out the intuition element of HR, the Predictive Recruitment.

And the critical paradigm in HR is to handle misfits and related disorders. She brought out the implications and ways of handling such situations with her own experiences.

Sourcing, Competency mapping, Reports on recruitment and manpower, open house/get together and fun at work…the list seemed to be mindboggling, yet what a challenge for a young professional to take on! Kamala’s session reaffirmed the pride of being a HR and handling the intangible elements in a workplace.

Contributed by Balaji MS, HR Varsity, CBS Batch-4 (2009-10)

She came like thunder, went like lightning. And yes, we did get drenched with all those vital industrial awareness.

“Innovativeness” is the key – Nippon Paints

It was an inspiring lecture delivered by Mr. Mahesh Anand from Nippon Paints on April 3rd and 4th 2010 at Chennai Business School. Mr. Mahesh is the zonal head of Southern India for Nippon Paints- and he comes with a 20 yrs work experience. He talked with abundant information about the paint industry in India and how Nippon paints carved its way in the Indian paint industry.

Decorative paints are made available with different colors and patterns and it covers around 70% of the Indian market. The paint industry in India is mostly dominated by the Asian Paints company, a veteran paint giant with market share of 56% and having more than 25000 dealers across the country.

Nippon paints – the 129 year old international paint major, headquartered in Japan penetrated into the Indian market showcasing its innovative property of elasticity, odorless and environment friendly paints developed from its numerous research and development centers established using Japanese technology.

The company has maintained a robust supply chain management. Having learnt that shipping duty is more than the cost of the product, it has setup two distinctive manufacturing units in India, one at Chennai and the other at Gurgaon. It has capacious warehouses that enable to store bulk amount of products as per the specific requirements of the clients. This made the cost effective supply of paint products across the country through only specific and experienced paint dealers. It targeted Asian paint dealers who had relevant experience and exposure with the Indian market scenario.

Nippon is the first company to setup an exclusive specialty retail outlet for paints- this helped various consumers like building contractors, builders, painters and even common people by exhibiting its various products with distinctive features and quality. It has helped the consumers to feel the product and realize Nippon’s USP. These exclusive stores will provide professional help and consultancy service apart from providing a retail experience that will be exciting, customer friendly and product centric.

Contributed by Leela Vijay Kumar, Retail Varsity, CBS Batch-4 (2009-10)

Bowled Over

“Oh, that’s a beautiful delivery. That’s the flipper, and he is gone right through Andy Flower”. It was 2003 Cricket World cup when one of the greatest players of spin bowling was bamboozled by this ‘china man’ bowler. A typical tough Aussie, known to take on battle on the field was up for it this time, on a completely different play area. Brad Hogg, the cricketer and an alumni of Curtin University, Perth spun his enriching web on strategy, leadership and attitudinal facets an individual should possess, and the secret of touching heights in one’s life.

“Pup (Clarke) has been through troubled times of late” remarked Hogg, answering to my question on succession planning. He pointed to the importance of building second string leadership and backed Clarke as an able leader in the making. Half the battle is won in minds and very little involves the actual skills and technical shortcomings. This was the strategy that Mc Grath used to destabilize Sachin with his in-swingers. Killer-Instinct was an integral part of the game plan Aussies had. This often enabled them to play with a lot more intensity, pressurizing the opponents with a ‘never die’ spirit.

Waiting under the wings of Warne ensured Clarke learnt the lessons of ‘deserving’ to play only through performance and appropriate results. It brought out the importance of being ‘mentored’ thereby understanding intricacies in the art of bowling (of business). “ I would n’t mind taking Sachin or Lara giving away 200 odd runs, instead of running through the lower order” opined Hogg, hinting at the fact that efforts needs to be channelized in targeting and winning the best in business, and not just the stand alone records in the form of numbers.

While Waugh used to deal with players upfront, Ponting in comparison was relatively quiet. This shows how leaders use different styles and strategies to tackle situations and team members. Mental disintegration (Sledging) was yet again such a vital tool, to get to the nerve of the opposition, as long as it never crossed the line. Sportsman spirit, camaraderie is fine, beyond these was ‘Uncle Sam’ (referee) watching to axe the ones with suspensions, who get a little too carried away. Need for controlled aggression was put forth in typical cricket’s ‘Mouthful’ language!

Apart from the synergies that management and cricket shared, there was a competitive round of questions asked. Hogg presented self autographed bats to students. Hogging the limelight, the magician from West Australia spoke on Injury- “When one enjoys what he does, he neither feels the pain nor complains”. Drawing analogy to organizations, when someone works with passion, he looks at the larger picture of success than the trivial issues.

Thanks Hoggy, you have left your “rough” marks to make the most out of. We will exploit it and spin our way to glory in the times ahead!

Contributed by Balaji MS, HR Varsity, CBS Batch-4 (2009-10)