Our class profile brochure is alive and kicking at:
It can be accessed from the XLRI website in following ways:
Home >> Placement>> One Year Full time GMP batch >> Click here for Individual Profiles of GMP 2011
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Our guys had been working on this for quite sometime, amidst all the quizzes and “9 hours a day” class schedules. Kudos to them for the great work!
“The future of HR is all about strategy. Ten years down the line, the foremost concern of HR managers would be harmonious alignment of organizational goals and strategy, capability building and talent sustainability. And the biggest challenge then will be managing distinctive aspirations of a diverse set of people,” said Mr Krish Shankar, Executive Director, HR at Airtel. He was delivering a talk on ‘The past, present and future of HR’ to management students at XLRI Jamshedpur on Friday.
Shankar, an alumnus of the 1984 batch of the institute, joined Airtel in 2007 after 21 years at Hindustan Unilever Limited.
Describing the strategy of top Silicon Valley companies like Facebook and Apple, Shankar said, “They just do not let the best minds leave. If an employee is the cornerstone of your firm, there is a need to recognize that fact and do everything possible to retain him.”
Of all the changes taking place in businesses across India, he identified three major fields of opportunity. The first is technology, which is now “completely out of this world” and even the most incredulous of ideas cannot be discounted without due thought. This advance has resulted in an accelerated cycle of changes and transformed business dynamics, which form the second field of opportunity. “There are new winners, new losers every 5 years. Nokia, which was earlier the undisputed King of Mobiles, is still wondering what went wrong after the iPhones and RIM took away their share of the pie. The lesson is that you have to be on your toes to keep ahead of the market,” he explained.
Talking about the youth, whom he termed as Gen I owing to their impatient, indulged and individualistic attitude, Shankar said they would spur faster growth. “None will be content with waiting 25 years to be CEO. Also, talent is coming from Tier II cities and that is what corporates should look for,” he added.
Leaving students with a final nugget of advice, Shanker said: “We are about to embark on the age of entrepreneurship and widening choices. As managers, always understand the big picture.”
“Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnnng!”
I half-opened my eyes.
“Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnnng!”
“Thud”. I found myself wide awake and on the floor. The jazziest and noisiest calling bells of XLRI GMP hostels can do just that to you! The alarm clock at my bedside table said 7:30 am. Who else but the dhobi to give you a warm wake up call at 7:30 am in the morning!
After collecting the clothes from the dhobi (and making sure none of them had casualties), I got down to the tasks for the day - boot up my laptop and check out the time-table for the day. Classes at 9:00, 11:30 and 2:30 - one of those rare days when they don’t stretch till 9:15 pm. However, 2:30 classes meant no time for an after-lunch power nap!
Dumped the required notebooks and handouts into the bag and proceeded to get ready for classes. By the time I got ready, it was 8:45. A quick rush down the stairs barging straight into the canteen! Grabbed a couple of slices of bread and a cup of coffee and rushed the five minute distance to the learning centre.
So begins a typical day in XLRI! One would presume that all the caffeine and the rush to reach the class would have jolted me into full consciousness, but no – as soon as the class warms up, my brain hibernates! On some days, I would brave the storms of sleep for the first one and a half hours, but the second battle is almost always lost!
Daddu’s chai shop round the corner serves as a beacon as the clock inches towards 10:30 and sometimes becomes the only pleasing thought that my mind hangs on to, to escape getting caught dozing.
Daddu’s is not just a chai shop – it is an experience. Its own story is heavily intertwined with the history of XLRI and it has been around ever since the institute was just the admin building and the learning centre. Daddu’s has marvellously integrated with the culture of the institute and has found its way into the numerous marketing, operations and even quant examples that Professors discuss in class!!! All important conversations happen in front of Daddu’s and all notices are pasted in front of Daddu’s.
Come 12:30 and there is a stampede down the stairs to reach canteen. Lunch hour often witnesses us gobbling up food and retreating into our rooms to catch a quick nap before the afternoon grind begins.
It is always a Herculean effort to pull myself out of bed at 2 and walk back towards the learning centre. The hot and humid weather does little to help the cause! Somehow all 120 of us manage to get into the cool air-conditioned recesses of our classes, with sighs of relief!
Come evening, all the pent-up energy of the batch comes out! People can be seen milling about, armed with tennis or badminton racquets. Shouts of victory or disgust can be heard from the C-block TT room. It is a different set of people that you come across in the evenings. And beware of fast-flying footballs if you feel like taking a stroll in the park!
As the sun sets, so does the adrenaline rush. Suddenly the topics change into the assignments that need to be completed by the following day. Groups can be seen huddled together, engaged in animated conversation over laptops.
The dhaba adjacent to the canteen becomes active and several rounds of tea find their way into sleepy hands. After dinner and a quick smoke, everyone take their way back into the respective dens or to the library for some study or handout-reading. By about 2 am, traffic resurges. People emerge from the hostel and the library to meet for tea at the all-night canteen. There is no dearth of food for the hungry at night! The aloo-parathas and cheese-maggi at the all-night canteen are among the tastiest ones in the world! The badminton court adjacent to this canteen is filled even at this time! Finally by about 4 am activity comes to a halt and the night is at last serene – awaiting the commotions of the next day!
- Written by my colleague Radha.
“The average experience level in GMP is about 6.5 years which is neither too high nor too low for executive education. We have noticed that at this experience level, a working professional has gathered useful industry knowledge and more importantly has a clearer sense of direction. This makes it easy for them to get back to school and learn fast for the long haul. “
“GMP was launched in 1996 when no one had heard of a 1 year full time MBA program for executives. It was initially available only for executives of Tata group of companies, but we opened it to public in 2002 when requests from industry for such students started piling up. I can say that the industry wanted to build a strong middle management layer in their organizations and we responded with GMP.”
Here is the full interview : http://www.coolavenues.com/mba-aspirant/dean-talk/colloquy-dr-pranabesh-ray-dean-academics-xlri
It is tough to be a CXO in today’s interconnected world. You have to be ultra careful in each decision you take and that makes the job much more difficult. The solution is to define your core values and be true to them whatever you do. This was only one of the personal insights shared by Ms Rekha Menon, COO of Accenture India and an XLRI alumnus, while she was talking to the current students of General Management Program(GMP) at XLRI, Jamshedpur.
Ms Rekha Menon, the gold medalist from 1981 batch of XLRI, graduated at the time when women were seldom seen outside their homes after 6 pm and the top recruiters of those times refused to hire women for business management functions. How she got successful by fighting such a discriminating system and still managing to retain her core values was an insightful learning for the current students, especially the numerous female students of XLRI.
The audience was particularly enriched by Ms Menon’s ideas on leadership qualities needed for a top leader in today’s corporate environment. She said – “Since the industry is changing at a phenomenal pace, ambidexterity and adaptive capacity of a leader is absolutely essential today.” She also cited “ability to learn from the crucible and challenging events in one’s life” as one of the differentiating factors between great leaders and the rest. However the most fundamental and defining quality of all is one’s integrity and a set of other core values which one needn’t “wear on the sleeve” but withhold supremely in all one’s actions.
This last quality is especially relevant in today’s context when in addition to imparting quality management education; it is increasingly becoming important for Bschools to teach about the value systems. And that’s exactly what got reinforced by Ms Menon today. “Look at the mirror hard”, “Think what you will be remembered for” were some of the expressions which threw the budding managers in introspection.
In the ensuing question and answer session, the students also sought Ms Menon’s insights increasingly relevant areas of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, scarcity of successful entrepreneurial ventures in India and the threat to Indian IT industry from China and Latin American countries.
Ms Rekha Menon is an XLRI alumnus, and the gold medalist from 1981 batch. Starting her career on the shopfloor of Eicher Goodearth, and then moving to Ashok Leyland, she has also served as the General Manager (Human Resources) with Aditi Technologies. She co-founded of India's first CRM company, Talisma, in 2000, before joining Accenture in 2004. During her tenure, Accenture India has shown a multi-fold growth from a 3000-people company to now more than 57,000-strong company (and the largest Accenture operation globally).
