In thirty minutes or more precisely at 14:00 hrs on 19 Dec 2008, the third batch of ESMT students will pass through the school to become full fledged MBAs.

The time and celebration does not permit a long reflection but I reflect with joy on the past year and look forward to the years ahead. We are definitely not the same as we were when we entered the school on 14 Jan but are wiser and smarter and are ready to face the challenging times.

Three Cheers to a wonderful School

Question: How many MBAs do you need to change a light bulb?
Answer: 10 and you still cannot change the light bulb, unless you hire an electrician.

Question: How many years does it take for a school to decide whether you get a coffee machine on the weekend?
Answer: So far 2 years….

If you are reading this post in 2011 and still understand what I am writing about … post a response to this post with “Amen”

Stefanie is a proud mother - her 4 year old son, Linus scored a goal during our Saturday cook out plus soccer. She repeated to everyone who would hear that her son came to her and told her that he scored a goal. This was till Flavius told her “Enjoy it when it happens … In 16 years time, your son is not going to tell you when he scores….”

ha ha ha …..

If you hear “Ceeeee Yah!!!!” more often on our corridors, here is the story. That is a term now added permanently into our classes’ lexicon.

Ron Panese, our Operations Management Professor from Module 2, used it to set us free from our classes at the end of the allotted time. He had Francisco keep time for him and promised to drop whatever he was saying and would stop sharp on time. So, Francisco, the assigned time keeper printed out a “STOP” traffic sign, that he held up at the end and Ron would stop whatever he was saying, stretch his hands out to his sides like an airplane, swirl on his right heel while he yelled “Ceeeeee Yah” and Ron was 70. He looked amazingly young for his age and could give us “youngsters” a run for our money with his energy.

Ron is a visiting faculty – past retirement and if you add up all his stated years of experience, he should be atleast 3425 years old :) He had some 63 Ron Panesi’s laws and he livened up the class by dropping them once in a while. It was a sight to see him encourage Vlad with some comments like “Vlad, Baby, You are Hot” ( as in …. You are on track – keep going…) while Vlad seemed to apparently take offense, drawing his eyes in, squaring up the eyebrows and cheeks flushing red. That was the first class and then we got used to this and it was fun, atleast for me. It is difficult to cover the whole subject of Operations Management in just 20 sessions. I loved the final exams – One Case Study that took about 1 hour to read and then to describe an Operations strategy for the company in the case. I do not know what will be my grade, but I loved the final exam, nevertheless.

Of course, he also taught us the great Italian Sign Language – the flick under the chin, for those who know what I mean ;)

Three days into Module 3, I sit up and wonder what happened to Module 2. All the boredom of Module 2 is replaced with hours of pre reads and exercises for Corporate Finance and Industry and Competition Analysis. Yesterday, I had to sit up till 1.30 am to do the pre class exercises for Corporate Finance and the next two days do not look any better - The Crown Case for I&C Analysis, Macroeconomics preread, the Corporate Finance exercises and the Managerial Accounting Individual Exercises. I think this will be my story for the whole module.

In the middle of this, today evening, we had our first Master Class – Ulrich Wilhelm, spokesperson of the German Chancellor. Many were not keen to attend, How is a politician going to add value? But I must say, I came away being very impressed. He was frank, candid and genuine. His matter of fact statement on the Work Life balance being non-existent was so real and immediately, he had opened up enough of him to become, just another You-and-Me doing a top job. The Drinks that followed the meeting was short as I wanted to get back to doing the assignments.

As I packed my stuff to leave, I saw a few die hard football fans cueing in on the Champions League Semis between Barcelona and Manchester United. I joined them as “Tiger” Satya had connected his laptop to the TV and Stefano, Adrian and Santiago rooted for their favorite team (only of the two, not otherwise…) – Barcelona. Casey joined us soon and we did some Canadian football analysis. We watched this goalless draw over a few beers and headed home.

Our feeble effort at managing a work-life balance

St.Hedwig’s Catholic Kirche in Berlin Mitte is located behind the Opera house and across from Humbolt University. It is also just a few minutes walk from ESMT. The Church is the seat of the Berlin Archbishop. I would have expected such a church to be multilingual. However, they have Eucharistic celebration only in Deutsch. My wife and I are particular to attend a Sunday service where ever we are. So, we continue to attend this church though we do not understand the sermons by the priest. But the beauty of the Catholic church is that the rituals are the same in any part of the world and that makes it easy for us to follow the priest as he says his prayers and we say our response in English as we are used to.

So, last Sunday, we attended the 10 am service and when we stepped out, I remembered that it was also the date for the Berlin Half Marathon. We walked over to the start point of the half marathon at the Berliner Dome, just across the street from ESMT. The race had already started much before the time we reached there and the city staff was clearing out the road blocks, etc. So, we spent some time looking at the Flea Market along the spree – checking out some paintings and some nice small leather pouches shaped like sea shells, etc. The day was a cruel one for running – it was bitterly cold and felt like below Zero. As we walked to the end point – the Rathaus, on the opposite side of the Dome, We could see people lining the street and the excitement building. We could hear clapping and general noise levels rising as the winner of the woman’s marathon - Peninah Arusei crossed the finish line. The Kenyan clocked 68:22, which is the third fastest time this year so far.

Stefano and Martin from ESMT were also running the half Marathon. So, we decided to see if we could find them among the runners reaching the end point. We found a place just opposite the cheering band and the cheer girls doing the routine. The trickle of runners reaching the finish line began to increase in momentum – one followed by another, then soon groups of 5 runners running together, then, 6, then 7, then 10, steadily increasing till all we could see were a torrent of bobbing heads into the distance. A record number of 20,660 runners from 86 nations had entered Germany’s biggest and best quality half marathon. 17,733 runners finished the race.

Looking out for Stefano and Martin in this flow of runners became very difficult. There were a few false alarms. People looking like Stefano came in all shapes and sizes. I must have waved at many of them. They would have thought I was just cheering them on. I was only one of the 150,000 spectators who had lined to see the marathon.

Martin is the class manager of our batch. He is quiet, unassuming and sponsored by the MAN group. He is also the German junior canoeing champion. With this kind of sports background, he had gone onto the marathon without much practice. His past experience with running a marathon was the Berlin Half Marathon about 4 years back. Stefano was better prepared – running atleast twice during the week preparing for this half marathon … He, of course, has other reasons to keep himself fit - to run away from girls (or someone in particular?) who were chasing him J. He is this popular Italian whom the girls cannot seem to have enough of. He had done a marathon about 2 years back.

With passing time, I began to lose hope of being able to identify my friends among the runners. If there is one lesson I learnt from this marathon, it is that, never run alongside a beautiful woman runner. If you do, no one ever notices you. Maybe I did miss them!!! I was also looking out for Santiago, he was to join Martin and Stefano from Potsdamer Platz to run the last 4 Kms to motivate them through the last leg. As the stream of runners continued to flow, I could see women runners and then children. I was sure that they were definitely faster than letting kids overtake them. I later got to know that it took them over 3 minutes to move from their position to the start line after the start of the half marathon – so packed was the race. Soon the crowd of runners became very tired looking men. I must have definitely missed them.

While I was discussing with my wife whether to stop this futile search and return home, like a slow motion scene from a Hollywood movie played to the background of the Final Countdown, In the midst of the white sea of people, I see this black stallion – running proudly with the head held up high. The contrast was stark – drooping tired white shoulders all around and this steady head with a sparkling smile and black mane – the head of the Argentinean, Santiago. Following him closely were Martin and Stefano. Santiago was leading the heroes home. The cheering band drowned out our calling out of names. So, we made our way back to the finish line to meet our proud runners. There we saw Elka and Ritesh who had also come to cheer them. We hung around for a while as Martin and Stefano posed for a few pictures along with their chief motivator – the black stallion, before stopping at the stands for their quota of energy drink – a nice cold beer!!!

As they relaxed after a morning well spent, my wife and I returned home as I had to get back to school for a group meeting for Marketing. My group was writing a paper on the marketing strategy of facebook.

I am proud of Stefano and Martin who ran the Half Marathon and not to forget Santiago for his boundless enthusiasm. Hopefully they will also run the Full Marathon in September.

Pictures: Stefano gesturing to Santiago and Martin to join for the picture …. The runners - Stefano and Martin …. the runners joined by the Stallion :)

What is the difference between a beer and a pee?
Answer: Thirty Minutes

This is the joke from Santiago as a penalty for coming late to a Managerial accounting class by Mario Resse.

Many professors have their own mechanisms to ensure that people are on time for classes. Our class has been fairly very good so far – mostly on time, except for Vlad who goes to bed at 6 am when the classes begin at 9 am. Well, Vlad is an exception; his body is yet to decide when it should go to sleep and when it should awake. He says he slept for 4 hours totally in 4 days during this week and I believe him – he has managed to read up all the material he could on Sovereign Wealth Funds for the Kansleramt Visit and also do his part for the Operations presentation and also write the first draft for the Marketing paper.

During the first module, Konstantin (OB) had a rule – if you were late, you buy a bottle of wine for the Bergfest (our weekly(?) get together) and we collected about 12 bottles. Of course, this includes when you were late even by a minute. So, that is a fairly low number. Eric (Marketing) had us contribute 10 Euros to a charity to be selected by the class and he was kind enough to promise to give a matching contribution to the charity. Now, that is asking for trouble. So, the last day, all of us decided to be late by 2 minutes and we all chipped in 10 Euros each, or 310 Euros for the 31 of us and Poor Eric had to shell out 310 Euros. Eric is definitely a good sport. I am sure that if this message got out, none of the professors would ever offer to match our contribution for coming late.

Francis (Decision Making) was more direct. He said that coming late would affect the class participation scores automatically. I do not know if he went through with his threat but this unknown element was enough to ensure that we were on time. Of course, with Francis, he has this twinkle in his eyes when he says something that we are not sure if he was joking or if he was being a cool assassin with a smiling exterior. Michal (Economics) and Zimmerman (Intro to Accounting) were very nice on this front. – no threats, no penalties… but by now, we were Pavlov dogs and automatically thought there was a loss if we were late.

Second module – there were no threats and there were some signs of the Pavlovian behavior wearing off when Mario Resse decided to put an end to this by saying that anyone who is late had to tell a joke to the class and hence the joke from Santiago. This is counterproductive, as telling jokes took away some of the time of the class. Being an accountancy professor, Mario realized his mistake pretty quickly and has proposed some pretty unique suggestions including having a quiz with the number of questions matching the number of minutes of being late. He may eventually go back to having us buying a bottle of wine but of a brand of his suggestion.

Just a few minutes after the joke, Mario got back at Santiago. When Santiago answered a question from Mario wrong, Mario made the gesture of an imaginary gun and asked what is the difference between the answer from Santiago and pointed the imaginary gun at Santiago and said “pop” – The answer: 2 Seconds!!! The class rolled up in laughter at the quick comeback by Mario. Mario 1, Santiago 0.

Making phone calls to spread some rumors or wishing someone happy birthdays are some ways with which we “celebrate” April Fools Day. The uncreative media always writes some article making it appear that something catastrophic has occurred or something long rumored is true. It was funny the first time but its repeated usage, every year is ample evidence to the fact that creativity is almost dead in Media – maybe search for advertisement revenues makes them regurgitate old formulas as if it were Hollywood re-runs.

With an exam on April 1 in Operations, we were not exactly in the mood for being creative. But after the exam was behind us in the morning, we were more relaxed to try a joke on Luc (Advanced Marketing) during the afternoon class. We have long wondered whether professors really knew our names or only called us from the name boards that were in front of us. So, when Stefano came into our rooms and said that we mix up our seating so that we did not sit along with our name boards, we were game! The unfolding drama was unscripted and absolutely hilarious.

I walked into class and sat before Satya’s name board. Other also walked in and picked up their preferred seating. It was completely natural and there was no chaos or unnecessary noise. Luc realized that something was happening but tried to keep a straight face. At 2 pm, he took the floor. He introduced the case study and spoke for about 5 minutes to build the case. Then he opened the floor for discussions. I waited with bated breath to see what would Luc do now. Felix who was now sitting before Shyla’s name board, put up his hand to answer the question. Luc pointed at Felix and said with a straight face, “Okay Shyla, what do you say?”. The class burst out into laughter – Luc knew Felix’s name – well, who did not know Felix? He was the person who spoke the most in class after the professor and if the professor is not careful, could speak even more than the professor!!!. After the answer, Luc turned to the rest of the class and said – “so, who agrees to what she said”. Luc was playing along and more importantly, he was also getting the gender right with the name board, rather than the actual person who was sitting at the seat.

By this time, the class had warmed up. So, when Luc called Maria – Adrian who was sitting at Maria’s place, started to speak as if he were Maria – making the “swinging” gesture that Maria normally makes. Casey who was sitting at Dorothea’s seat, tried to speak like a girl. Aditya tried to speak like Stefano and Shyla, sitting at Yury’s place was trying to attract Luc’s attention using Yury’s trademark left hand under raised right elbow sign. But the person who took the cake and broke the semblance of order that people were desperately trying to keep up, without bursting into laughter, was Dorothea who was sitting at Sachin’s seat. So, when Luc called Sachin. Dorothea started off in classic Sachin style saying “In my previous company…..” and that was too much for the class to take and burst out into laughter and clapping. Dorothea kept a stern face through all this and continued ….”… we did moleculargastronomical study … blah..blah…blah…” Oh! That was hilarious … I was bursting my sides… We could not take this no more …. Luc was laughing – people tried hard not to fall off their chairs. After a few minutes, All of us composed ourselves and went back into our role mode for the whole session of an hour and quarter. This was the best one hour unscripted role play by 32 people (31 students and 1 prof) I have ever seen.

I later heard a comment - perhaps the only person who could have managed all the chaos was luc who had 10 kids – No wonder, he was able to keep a straight face through all this!!!

Now, that is something new for April 1.

The last night into my Easter break, I realize that I had a book – “The No Asshole Rule” by Robert Sutton due for return to the library. Not wanting to return yet another book unread to the library, I put in two hours of effort to read this delightfully easy to read book.

Bob Sutton deserves all credit in propping up a word confined to the dark unspoken business world, in fine professorial scientific finery. This book and Bob’s earlier article in HBR with the same title is path breaking in bringing into the common business lexicon – ASSHOLE. After being driven to the state of numbness by the repeated usage of the word, I, despite my catholic upbringing, see the power of the word that the author brings out of the closet.

Bob lists a “dirty dozen” list of common actions that assholes use, including personal insults, sarcastic jokes, dirty looks and treating people as invisible. It is important to realize that all of us can be temporary assholes so the key is to identify the certified assholes. They more often than not, stand out in their ability to consistently make their “targets” feeling belittled, put down, humiliated, disrespected, oppressed, de-energized and generally worse about themselves. The cost of such individuals to an organization is evaluated through the calculation of the Total Cost of Asshole (TCA). TCA includes the attrition costs, legal lawsuits, counseling time, loss of productivity, stress levels, etc. Many assholes succeed in remaining in an organization as they also sometimes are high achievers. In one instance, the TCA was computed and discussed with one such individual and a percentage of these costs was threatened to be taken from the bonus of the individual.

Hiring and Firing policies of companies has an impact on the prevalence of assholes in organizations. Harvard professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter calls the process of hiring similar personalities as “homosocial reproduction”. So left to themselves, assholes hire assholes. The solution to this is not to hire spineless wimps. Instead, as Cisco practices, “Constructive confrontation” teaches people how to fight and when to fight. Robert Cialdini’s research on paper pilfering advances a “One Asshole rule”. Under this rule, it is necessary to have one asshole for the rest to know how not to behave. Such an individual tends to have a more positive impact on the rest of the group. It is important under this rule that the asshole is not seen to receive any benefits by being an asshole. Of course, this will be a nightmare for HR to be able to find the right asshole for a team. Instead Bob suggests that it is not necessary to look for an asshole – looking for perfect individuals will anyways result in one or two assholes slipping in through the cracks – and they should be just fine. Before we go trigger happy and start branding people as assholes, pipe down and be slow in branding people as assholes.

So, how does one avoid being the asshole? Apply the same test for an asshole upon yourself (target feeling belittled… etc). The crux of this test is not what you think about yourself but what others think. As successful assholes tend to have strong influence, you need to avoid “Asshole poisoning”. If you know that you are entering into the presence of assholes, it is more prudent to avoid. As Leonardo Da Vinci said, “it is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end”

Of course there are virtues in being an asshole. More often than not, Type A people are characterized as assholes. They tend to gain personal power and stature, intimidate and vanquish rivals, motivate fear driven performance and perfectionism, bring unfair, clueless and lazy people to their senses.

So will there be a new definition for “A” in MBAs?

This is the first real break we have had since we started the MBA program - 4 days for the Easter, including the Monday. This will provide the time for a reflection on the days past.

The MBA program started on 14th Jan. On the 16 and 17th, we went on a two day outdoor trip for team building at the Schloss Kröchlendorff ( http://www.schlosskroechlendorff.de/ ) - 29 of us. There was still a suspense whether Elka and Aysenur would join our class and they did, a week later after sorting out their Visa issues. This was sheer fun - 29 individuals assembled together to be moulded into a team. Circumspection gave way to trust as we crossed the “river” with 7 logs, hiked our way across fields using maps made by someone else and then climbed rope obstacles.

Some did it the hard way and the others found fun ways to do the tasks. These two pictures reminded me of how software is developed in different parts of the world. The picture on the left is the one, where I would imagine is done in, say, IBM US - following processes and doing it the right way, the one on the right is the Indian way of doing this - fewer resources but more man power - one on top of the other - eventually the tasks gets done and these guys also have the most fun - See the smiles :)

Felix, Adrian and Stefano are seen looking at the map - a perfectly done map - but incorrectly read and I wonder what they are doing on the watch tower looking out with head lamps into the darkness, maybe they should have used the walkie talkie and called the rest of the group who were already in the pub having beer. Trust a man to never stop and say that he is lost- and when you get a few men together - guess what!!!!

The classes started in right earnest - all the group work taught us more than what we learnt in class. Decision Analysis was a revelation - Francis was in his elements and taught us a trick or two and we are smarter for that. Konstantin was his usual business self - aced through the class and opened a new way to look at Organizational Behavior. The course I found most satisfying was Economics - I proved to myself that I had it in me to understand Economics and I am grateful to Michal for that. Eric can never be faulted for not trying hard in Marketing. I do not know if I will ever be a marketing guy but the whole Marketing Case was a revelation of Team work. Accounting with Zimmermann laid the foundation for hopefully a future for me with numbers. By the time the module was over, we were tired, yet happy.

Module 2 relatively seems to be a walk in the park. We are done with HR by Jean-Marie Hiltrop and Intro to Finance with Jeorg Rochell will be done with early next week. We will still have Marketing with Luc Wathieu and two new new courses starting next week - Operations and Advanced Accounting. The tide may shift and we may have to spend more hours in the study rooms but let me enjoy when I am able to…