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Getting back into matters that matter most
This past month my evenings and weekends have been taken up with organizing an event for a non-profit organization called Akshayapatra. This organization provides nutritious noon-time meals to underprivileged kids in India, thereby ensuring both nutrition and education for these kids. The reason I decided to volunteer my time to this organization was the amazingly low operational costs and overheads it has. Only $28 provides a midday meal to a child for an entire school year!
Given there are so many non-profits competing for philanthropic dollars I thought a good way to raise awareness and funds would be to have a cultural show, and sell tickets for the show. With this in mind I contacted a person I know who organized Bollywood music shows, and gave the proceeds to a cause he believed in. This person, Mohan Somasundaram, is a physician by profession, and uses all his spare time for cause-related activities. He put together a great show with phenomenal local talent to an auditorium of over 200 attendees on May 20. Personally, this was a very gratifying event and increased my resolve to make sure to stay involved and be part of the community-related transformation that needs to take place.
On another non-work related front, I am helping out with the organization of TiECON 2007. This is the annual conference of a group I am associated with, called The Indus Entrepreneurs. I am a charter member of this organization, and this year I am producing a panel called “Using Analytics to Improve The Bottom Line.” The moderator for my panel is Tom Davenport, the undisputed guru of analytics. The panelists, Chris Ahlberg (founder, Spotfire), Rama Ramakrishnan (Chief Analytics Officer, Oracle Retail), Prof. Ananth Raman (HBS), Brij Masand (Data-Miners), and Steve Smith (founder, Optus) are all experts in the field. The conference will be held on June 14 and 15, so more on the conference in my next journal entry. Now it is time for me to pack for my business trip to Dallas, TX.
Recruiting at MIT Sloan and learning management techniques
I spent a couple of days in January at MIT Sloan as a recruiter! It was so much fun to do coffee chats with students and hear about their January adventures. I also got to interview some of the students. The only problem with interviewing at a school like MIT Sloan is that I want to get all of them to join the bank. If the first round was difficult, the second round of interviews was just plain impossible. All of the candidates were beyond excellent. Hearing about all the new courses being offered at the School makes me want to go back and get my MBA all over again. I'd love to take the course with Jack Welch where students actually get to chat with him about management, strategy, careers, and life in general!
Last week my teammate from MIT Sloan came to visit me at the bank. I took him to the cafeteria where he made fun of all of us bankers in our suits. We chatted about our respective jobs and he told me about his job at a nonprofit. I was giving him unsolicited advice on how he should introduce private sector best practices into his nonprofit and he was giving me ideas on how bankers could contribute to the community. We argued and debated about whether global warming was real until it was time for me to get back to work. And that is what the MIT Sloan friendships are all about — sharing information, debating about everything under the sun, and having great fun doing all of this.
As far as my job goes, I am now working on the off-shoring strategy for Wealth and Investment Management technology. My manager is a very experienced person and is teaching me a lot of management techniques employed by large organizations. My key learning in the month of February is to put management routines into place so the expected tasks run smoothly and it is the unexpected that you manage. Management by exception sounds like it would not take too much time, but in a large organization it is amazing how many surprises one faces every day. As time goes by I am reaching a state where the surprises are decreasing but I still have a long way to go.
Life After MIT Sloan
It has been six months since I graduated from MIT Sloan. In the beginning I used to get ready to get off the T at the Kendall Square stop, but now I just look on enviously at the students who get off at MIT. The other morning I saw a student with her MIT Sloan bag and I promptly grabbed the seat next to her and asked her if she was from there. The answer was an enthusiastic yes and what followed was 20 minutes of animated conversation about the courses in core, the Indian C-function, Professor Rigobon, the Organizational Processes (OP) project etc. I just could not help giving the poor girl a lot of unsolicited advice ranging from which classes to take next semester, to how to tackle the OP project, to how to prepare for summer internships — the list was endless. When she got off the T, it seemed very quiet and I am not sure if I imagined it but people were giving me strange looks. I guess we were talking a little louder than we thought and maybe all of that information was not really necessary, given she was only in her first semester at MIT Sloan!
Being out in the real world is both exciting and intimidating. Exciting because finally I have a chance to put my learning into action and intimidating because now I am responsible for seeing the plans implemented and making sure they are successful. When I turned in the financial forecast for my group for next year, I said a silent prayer hoping I was not too far off in my estimates. The feeling was not very different from when I turned in final reports at school. The only difference is at MIT Sloan it was a matter of an A or a B, at the job it is a matter of bonus or no bonus!
A lot of my school friends are still in the area and we do meet every once in a while, although we now behave like corporate citizens as opposed to partying students.
At work I am experiencing what it is to go through an acquisition. Bank of America recently acquired U.S. Trust, which means all of us at Wealth and Investment Management have some exciting times ahead of us.
© 2009 MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT