The altruist administrator

You always do not need the same kind of person to inspire you. Isn’t it? Different types of people can inspire or leave an imprint in your minds at different stages of your life. It can be a writer, an activist, a teacher, an administrator etc. We had a session today under the aegis of MIST (Management Insight to social transformation), a DoMS initiative, by Mr. Gagandeep Singh Bedi who was a collector of Cuddalore district during the Tsunami. Not an inspirational personality if you go by what he spoke as other greats can do but if you carefully observe what he did and how he did during those horrific Tsunami days, you will realize, it requires a great soul to achieve that.

You take an area and there was something to learn from him whether it be people management, material management or funds management. As Robin Sharma says – “Every person you meet in your life has a story to tell and a lesson to teach”. Few fantastic lessons for the jargon infested MBAs like me and others are….1.Always have a dynamic or an open mind while handling any kind of situation 2. There can be better solutions suggested by people whom you think aren’t capable of. 3. People will always be willing to help you, no matter how much politicized or unsupporting the culture is.

There was one striking learning from his Tsunami experience. The way in which he went ahead deciding on the type of temporary settlements to be built for the affected by keeping all the stakeholders into the decision making process was noteworthy. The diligence with which the feedbacks from the residents were taken to improve their living conditions shows how people-centric he was in his entire functioning. This reminds me of a famous Ogilvy quote – “The customer isn’t stupid. She is your wife”.

Amidst this entire effort of Mr. Bedi in rehabilitating the affected, the immediate measures, the interim measures and the long term measures he took, there was a certain element of simplicity in thoughts that was conveyed. We as MBAs or engineers are always taught or brought up to think in the most sophisticated manner. I think to some extent our educational system also has a role to play here. Simplicity is often, rather most of the times not given adequate importance. By looking at the approach of Bedi, I feel its time, we not just change our approach but dwell over whatever Da Vinci said long time back – “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Blogger's Park

Some days back we had an interesting debate on “morality”, amongst the classmates when one of our esteemed Profs warned of canceling all the classes for our batch if the strength continues to remain at such abysmally low levels. I am not trying to analyze the same discussion again but after that discussion got over, Sath bhai, our dear placement coordinator started a discussion in his blog for the so called debating enthusiasts. Only then I realized that once upon a time I used to have my own space in the web and I had abandoned it for a long long time.

Blogging, as some bloggers point out provides a platform for anyone and everyone to yell out their anger, sadness, euphoria, opinions and what not….And yes, as the society is increasingly becoming individualistic it has its own significance…Whether it’s a software engineer overloaded by work in the weekdays, a person who thinks he can make a difference by voicing out his opinions or a frustrated soul who feels blog is his only last resort…..all have some emotional needs which get satisfied by this lovely innovation.

There are many finer aspects of this culture or so to say a movement…It provides an individual a space to experiment with what he/she always passionately wanted to do but landed up wrongly somewhere else….Why do u see so many blogs solely for movie reviews, book reviews, photography, issues like poverty, globalization etc etc….??? I feel it just gives one a satisfaction that he is somewhere near to that dream destination. For some moments it gives us a feeling that there is some place where our inner voice or talent will be heard….That is one thing that makes the bloggers believe in dreams and fantasies. It fits perfectly into the unconventional domain of the Homo sapiens.

Being in IIT and closely interacting with the students of the so called elite institutes (including IIMs), I feel this blogging virus is going to rapidly replicate itself. These are the institutes where I feel are a lot of souls who have landed not by their own interest but because of the push and pull of the system or society (lets call it destiny). Someone might have wanted to become a dancer or an artist or a singer or even a journalist but couldn’t…..And being a tech-savvy individual there can’t be any better place to pour out ideas, feelings than the blog.

And yes, finally even I have managed to do that after a long lull….At this time probably I should have studied marketing/Legal aspects of business for the exam day after tomorrow or at best could have slept. But who cares…??? Let my web space rock……….!!!!