A group discussion on MBA

I, V, M. Wait, I see it doesn't start here. We just recorded the exact segment all while back. And we forgot to and we forgot to hit record, so we had to do the whole thing again, and it generally felt like one of those what is that game show calling?

Mokarivara. Yeah, it felt like one of those things where you have to watch sketch and then re-enact it. Yeah, I felt like one of those. My laugh right now making me feel very much like situ, which is actually pretty visorally considered the current events.

For sure. Yeah, there are so many event events right now, especially featuring sitos, in the interest of continuing that excellent opening, I think we must introduce ourselves to that one unfortunate new listener. And so Chuck, take it away. We can maybe do that with also describing each of us as a unique current ailment going on.

So I think we can do this introduction by also introducing that unique ailment that leaks us. Absolutely. So I am Chuck and my arm is currently in a sling owing to a barbell and displaced confidence. Yeah, excellent.

Hi, I'm Srikay. I am currently ailing from a city that hates me like called Bangalore, which has given me, which has consistently over the years, over the past 15 years, given me allergies every time I stepped foot in it. And I am there for you. Oh, so this is not new.

No, no. Every time I come to Bangalore, I get allergies. So is it OK? So I mean, we can empirically test this, right?

So is it only when you enter the city like the border limits or is it like when you fly in or like like, I mean, have you studied this on? Only thing I've noticed is I start sneezing and it reaches all over. Yeah. Yeah.

No, the point is like, OK, does it happen only when you fly in or like suppose like whatever district is in the outskirts of Bangalore, like when you step over, like when you like walk, say, yeah, welcome to simplify the differential diagnosis. But also in the case, in the elements of the state. Yeah. And allergies are nothing to sneeze at.

Yes. I definitely noticed this will happen. You're definitely in your element. Anyway, go ahead.

So myself, Naryindra, Shanoy list of elements very long episode, very short to short, but primarily I suffer from whatever pain in the knee part, many things. No, no, right now. Right now, right now. I cough.

Yeah, I cough mostly sympathetically with this like yawning. Right. So people yawn and then other people yawn when they see other people yawning. So how far you can stretch the sympathetic thing, you know, like go and bang your head against a wall and then see how many people will do it.

That's also a, you know, it works in elections. Oh, but I am Tony. I currently don't have an element except this is actually what my face looks like. So Tony's has a 18 is face.

Also, he's an element of the three fellow co-hosts. Wonderful. Gentlemen, it's been a while since we had a profanity on our podcast. That's also because let's face it.

There's a severe scarcity of it going to the supply chain crisis. What's that for? So we have to, however, so one of our old friends who goes by the Twitter handle at Yabbasust, whatever that means has put out noting who all is speaking on podcast these days and understanding who used to speak during GD 10, 15 years ago. What a brilliant idea.

It's really brilliant. I know best part about this is a all podcast host felt offended by this. Like this is there. But it is also, it is particularly true of us because I think every single one of us has been in a GD.

I have been in GD. I was terrible doing GD. So you guys do it. And maybe you have simplified listeners.

Yeah. So I won by default because there are two alpha males in my GD and they killed each other by the case. Oh, oh, oh. I was a rightful left for one.

I think I think I'd be able to sketch about GDs at one point of time. I think they had talked about this thing about those alpha males killing each other. There is this one fellow who's trying to score points by constantly saying, oh, let that person speak. Go let that person speak.

So yeah, I was distinct. I was a I was in a true spherical asshole space at the time and I gave my GD. So I was one of the alpha males, but there was no other person. So I ate everyone up.

Oh, wow. Speaking of this, which do you think is the most moronic aspect of an MBA process entire from admission to graduation? I think GD is the worst thing of anything else. I mean, I think certain questions that are standard.

Like, like for example, one of the most moronic questions in my particular process, like there was this professor who was like probably like alphabetically, my name is down the order. So by the time she got to me, it was like a while since she was doing this. And she just had was by default was asking why slash any question that could come to her mind. Right.

So at one point of time, she asked why MBA and then I gave some answer and then she asked why Puna. I was like, because the college is here. What is the kind of what do I do? Why do I like this?

I like the first time. Why do I want to go to Puna? Yeah, so that personally was the most moronic question during my MBA. I want to say the most moronic thing to happen during an MBA is something called class participation points.

So I'll tell you a few tales from my guy by the way, guys, by the way, and this is off the recording record. Do you want to just turn this episode into talking about an improper discussion about how it means? Why is this off recording? Yes, what do we do?

Let me do that. Let's do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Wow. We pivoted mid episode. Yeah, this is amazing. Like, now you're in peak bengalu.

And pivot. Oh, man, excellent. Yeah. For those of you who have chosen, you know, actual education are not very clear about what class participation is.

For some subjects, there is a certain number of points allocated to how active you're in class and how often you give relevant points that aid the discussion, et cetera. Now that theoretically sounds good, apart from the fact that classrooms are usually more than 50 students and the instructors couldn't get less and can it becomes difficult to keep a tab. We had one such professor and she did, you know who I'm talking about. Yes, I'm saying my name is.

Oh, no, no, no. Name's doing it again. It would be extremely assiduous. Like, yes, that was a great point.

And then he would take out the attendance sheet and mark against it. And that would cause like, it was like putting like a drop of blood in a short time. Yeah, absolutely. So now, yeah, so here's the other thing that has as a result of this class participation points thing, it led to something at least in my car where I went to do my MBA.

It was called DCP DCP stands for desperate class participation. I'm sure every school has some variant of this. How DCP works is everybody just feels the need to participate to get their five seconds of fame and three marks on the paper. But what ends up happening and this can be very interesting and usually happens in around the fourth prime minister when people give up on the ideal of an MBA is that it's at my car.

We used to have themed DCP. So we'd have a discussion beforehand and say, okay, this is the theme for this particular. So the theme can so one of the themes I remember was alphabets. Wow.

So the DCP happened in such a way that the first person was untouchly do the first person starting with a and then another person be and then that exhausted after a while. And then people are trying all kinds of things. And so suppose a company which has multiple problems, alpha, beta, gamma. So he went off and took alphabets to a different language itself.

We had fun doing this. Yeah. We used to call this a CP challenge actually. And by the time we were in the sixth prime minister.

So what's up was the thing? Right. So this is the first thing that was used for. And we used to have stuff like, you know, you have to include random phrases while making a series point like you have to say, she lucky Giovanni, but it is in reference to the ethics class or something.

They actually connected it to Sheila, the big ship in Delhi and so much corruption and all. But during her youth, she was different. She lucky Giovanni was a different feel. So the challenge is to actually bring it into like normal consciousness.

This actually goes beautifully to the other B school specific game, which was which is in some circles known as power called Calioke, which is basically it was a challenge where students have to stand in front of the class and present a deck which they have no idea of what's coming in the next slide. All right. So they have. So then recreationally and non-default.

So basically this what they would do is like, I mean the slides would not even it's not like it's a deck that they just don't know. It is a deck that has no logical flow. It is a jumbled deck which has like randomly one slide full of data and the next slide has a picture of a pumpkin. All right.

So there is this was what the overall thing was it. I think we had some of the finest pieces of literature that was generated from these particular classes where if anyone took the transcripts of it, it would be a book. It could have been a two-one to an episode podcast. Hopefully that doesn't exist.

Starpoint, Calioke could also be a tag-lide. Who would like to see the simplified hosts do a PowerPoint, Calioke to write in and let us know and we will see what we can do. Wait, has the episode started? I mean, were these games a thing in your time?

I think we should just get a credentials on the table and which years we sort of graduated. So I did my car from 2007 to 2009. I was assigned to the 2012 batch in 2010. Yeah, I was an MK 2012.

1988 SP. Oh, this reminds me of the movie called a Venn. I was born. But the thing is, this reminds me of the movie called a Wednesday or something.

In that, there are all these, in the end, they get all these terabits out. They are all like, while they are talking about 1992 Mumbai, Garve. It's just saying for number and it's like, we are all up to 2012. For a good translation is I'm proud.

I know this much. You know what? It occurs to me that we might have made just as much sense if you had had this podcast in 1988 also. That's a good time list.

But you were saying, you were saying, you were saying, it came from 1988 batch. So we had presentations using something called an overhead project. So you had little pieces of transparency paper, you wrote stuff on that and then it went on to an overhead project. So that was one.

Then people being people would try to economize on the overhead project by wiping it clean and reusing that thing. Wow. So that was the thing. And so, you know, if you've used it three or four times, it's pretty much illegible.

Then when you know that your presentation sucks, you plant questions in the, like, so everyone asks you a very pertinent question, then you talk and you try to. So that kind of stuff. But I don't have any good eye. I really didn't.

It's only now that I'm seeing basically what the benefits of management education are. And even that is like very iffy. Back in the day, I didn't see any relevance at all. Post-hoc rationalization.

So all the things, everyone would present a case study and rationalize like the assholes and fire. I mean, just, I didn't, I never found anything logical, anything sensible. Absolutely the worst red bunch of people I've come across in my life. Never read a book in their life.

Don't know anything. And just pontificating like him. And that was the introduction to the hosts of simplified. Oh man.

Yeah. It was pretty like a little rant. Yeah. This was, yeah, this actually, you know, I mean, what you said, I didn't continue to at least in my case also continue to be too for a solid like majority.

I mean, I'd say about 85% of the batch that was there. But what would always shock me was that there was this, I mean, the 15% were decent, but there was like this 5% of the batch about like 57 people who are genuinely well read, who have great academic background, who have incredible work experience and all that stuff. And I'm just looking at, I'm like in some. Yeah.

They all bought some cool it. Some fellow gave them some bad advice. They were like, this MBA is going to really add value. I'm going to take my skills and elevate them to the next level.

It was always like it was a procession of two years. Like one of my friends was one of these people. It was a procession of two years of watching him be disappointed every day, you know, like turn up to class and he's like, he's killing a manager. This is what I have to tell you how I got into MBA.

Right. So back in the day in 1986 when I joined MBA, it wasn't a thing at all. I want a job in companies like LNT or Siemens or things of that. And I didn't get into any of those.

They're very, very competitive. Like they had like 10 openings and like 10,000 applicants. So very difficult to get him. And my roommate at that time, he bought, you know, he bought a farm, an entrance exam farm and for a princely sum of 100 rupees and he got into one of these guy, he got into Siemens and so now he didn't need that.

So he like nobody in the right mind would get into Siemens and then wanted to do an MBA. So he sold me that farm for 50 rupees. So he said like, wow, yeah. So I bought that farm and then it was then I packed it into my bag.

I came home and out of the last I thought about it unpacked the bag. My mom saw the farm and she says, what is this? I told her that this is an entrance exam form cause 100 rupees or I got it for a clever. So my mom's like she said, how 50 rupees are astronomical?

How can you not feel it and sort of, you know, submit it? So I see she hounded me. I went and it so happens that one of my superpowers is cracking exams. I'm really good at cracking into that.

I cracked this one also. And before I knew what was happening, the world famous group discussion was happening. Right. What do you try to do?

Yeah, it was something. I can remember this is this is like you say that form dictates content. So wow. Amazing.

Yes. Sorry. So it was some random thing about international relations something. But back in the day it was US versus USSR.

And two guys in the group happened to be like, you know, on the opposite one guy was a die hard communist and one guy was a die hard capitalist. They were like, they started, you know, they started and they were really like alpha. So they wouldn't let anyone else talk. And it was me and a bunch of other two or three guys were completely intimidated by the occasion.

So they were like looking like dying ducks at that time. And these two alphas were basically just butting heads and then they started abusing each other. Oh, it's dead. So it started, you know, ad hominem and all that stuff.

And though the this guy called it, the moderator, that's what they call them. So the moderator said he stopped it. He wound up the group discussion and I said, cool. I mean, that was it.

I went back and they're going to put the results later in that. It was something and I find myself nominated. Absolutely. No reason.

Yeah. Well done by furthering the non-aligned movement. Yeah. You were telling me that.

You were doing well done. That's how I got into the interview. Didn't they? Yeah.

I mean, didn't they ask you during the interview? Like, they always ask, no, why? Why? So they asked the guy who was taking the interview and also mechanical engineering.

And he asked me a lot of mechanical engineering questions. I was all full out of, you know, fresh out of mechanical engineering. So I was able to answer, put many of them. So on the basis of you knowing Bernali's serum, you got into a B school.

Absolutely. You know, what is serum was one of the things I got asked? I mean, wow. I don't think that.

Yeah. Now we have only Bernal's serum. But you guys remember any of your GD topics? So in Mica, they don't do a, because Mica's writing hipster, they don't do a group discussion.

They do something about a group exercise. Exercise. Yeah. So they give everybody, at least during my time, they used to give people sort of common task and you all have to come out with a solution together.

So these days it's taken to another level where they're given arts and crafts paper and they need to draw posters and things like that. So Mica always takes it to another level like that. It's quite fun, actually. Yeah.

So I remember we had a very peaceful discussion. Before the GD or GE as they call it started itself, we all decided before hand, listen, let's all be civil. If there's any fighting, then nobody who gets selected, let's all be calm. So that at least somebody sends a chance.

I got lucky that way. I didn't make it through my first time. I was very keen on getting through to the place because I somehow developed this fascination for advertising sometime through my, some to half way through my engineering. So I was very keen on getting through, especially to Mica.

That made things very easy for me from a cat prep point of view because everyone else was gunning for the 99, 99, 10 percent. I was like, yeah, like 98, 98, 95 is just good enough for me. So it was very liberating. And they'd be teaching some very complex, trigonometric concept.

And you can see all these guys who are dreaming of getting into IMs and all, you're going to get into IMs, we need to crack them. I'm like, I don't know. It's just no idea. I know enough from the others to get 95.

It was really liberating for me that way. But I didn't get through my first time. So that was what happened in the GE. I forget what exactly the challenge was, but I do believe a village was involved at some point.

Village something. What about you today? I actually don't remember my GD topic at all, but you had like a proper GD. Yeah, of course, of course.

But my interview thing was funny because I went in there and these guys were like, oh, you did metallurgical engineering and then you worked for two years in software. Now you want to do MBA. Like what's wrong with you? And the other problem is like he never sticks to what he does.

And I was like, okay, how are you so perceptive? And so it was an interesting experience. But GDA, I don't remember. How do you get yourself out of that hole?

You always have the standard YMB question. Analytical skills. However, whatever the first question is your first answer has to be YMB. So this was actually, I mean, for me, it was actually a very weird.

So from a GD perspective, I honestly, I do remember the exact topic that was there. I mean, I was vocal about whatever, but I think one thing that kind of like, there was this other dude in the group in my own GD group who was, I think it was something about India and he made one statement that was just patiently ridiculous, like something either crazy sexist or just absolutely crazy in some way. And like, it was so bad that he was sitting like on the opposite side of the table and he was arguing with me. So because he made like crazy statement, everybody else went silent.

So the product I think perceived that I was opposition to him. He made like crazy statement and everybody else seemed to support him or something. So they hit me, but sank the whole other group except for me. So it was like one arbitrary thing.

And then my interview with the wife, who not question happened, but largely, I mean, from my perspective, it was actually a bit of a cake work because like you just, I mean, I had a very clear idea of getting into advertising. And I was one of the few people who had actually done an internship in advertising before in my undergrad. So I could like go and say that I would return to the GILV and they were all like, oh my God, this guy is all good. So that itself like made a huge thing.

That part was easy. The difficult part was actually for me the test itself. So I mean, I do wanted to get into my car, but I was in the glitch cat here, the cat here cat was transitioning to computers. So that because of that, my, I was there like all the data interpretation questions were all like the graphs for all of them.

They were all like those boxes with the small X on the top, no image found. So you can't even like you can the image graph is not there only to answer it. So I was just like, what do I answer to this? And then that the moderate consensus see you can do one thing.

You can leave this test right now and you can say that test is glitched or whatever. And we will you may get a chance to sit at it again or otherwise you complete the test and don't raise a protest. What kind of choices is this? Actually, you may get a chance.

And I was like, I finished. See, I already knew that I needed to score well on verbal and verbal and stayed out beautifully. So I was like, yeah, my verbal very well. So final result cat results came and that was like I got 99.6 percentile in verbal, some 70 percentile in the court and like some 30 percentile in D.

So I like fully screwed it up because there was no idea answer anything there. So at the end of it, but my car anyway had its own my cat thing, which I was allowed to sit for, which also for some reason I didn't get through. So then my car did have a snap was a piece of kick. I was like, you know, so so popular that I went there and like, there are like zero names of words with multiple choices.

And I'm like, yeah, it's just like, it's like a instant test. Oh, they were asking for the symbiosis between words basically. But okay, so I think you might have just bored our listeners. Talking about our personal experience.

So now that all of us are older, wiser and have deep the benefits of a world-class MBA education. Don't you to mute yourself when you have a coffee room? But in all cities, how would we? Okay, suppose the four of us were asked to redo the MBA admissions process.

First, we wouldn't love. How would we go about doing it? Like, what do you think the we know what the skills needed, not just for an MBA, but to work in business these days is so how do you think you go about doing it? Was that to a headier question?

Yeah, I am happy to admit that I'm absolutely not going to what makes a good manager. I've seen far too many completely unlettered and un-tutored people doing excellent business decisions and too many really qualified MBAs doing stupid ones. So what did it take to get the former into a B-school? It's very difficult because unless you, so many people, one or two people I know can really well in business who started very humbly and built big companies have basically stumbled from failure to failure and somehow managed to stay on their feet.

Oftentimes it takes a blind belief in your own opinion, not by yourself, but by other people. So somebody has to fund you, somebody has to urge you on, somebody has to support you and things like that. So there is that part which is luck and sometimes it's people finding their niche. So some people are really good maybe at selling stuff and all their life they're just involved in manufacturing it and they're somehow stumbled into the selling field and they do well and sometimes it's the other way around.

Do you think, Naray, it's, so like one criticism that I've often heard about the MBA selection process in general is that they try to check off a box rather than thinking about what value this person could possibly add to the classroom or what value an MBA education could have for this person. Do you think the answer is somewhere over there because it looks like the traditional MBA selection process is more about saying, okay, does this guy fit in with these kinds of criteria? Whereas somebody who's actually may not be from the most sophisticated background but has gone through five failures in life would arguably be a better choice for classroom in some sense and we are better. And then figure out in the class itself, how they could have been a better manager or something.

Does that make sense? I think what you're broadly pointing to when what I was real beneficiary of is two things. Mine was the year when I actually took a really great decision in my opinion to not just rely on cats goods but also sort of look at other things with sort of actually a state of aim to increase the diversity of the batch. So they basically made sure that at least 30% of the class was women.

And I think when you talk about the admissions and someone with five life figures or whatever essentially you're talking about a diversity. So that was great because I remember that we were watching Kill Bill altogether friends and basically lots of us are focused on the insane action that's going on. And there was a woman friend of mine who suddenly said, hey, isn't her skirt really cute to which another sort of woman agreed. And then we all suddenly took notice of the fact that there was a cool skirt in this particular thing, which would never have happened in, let's say, an engineering culture, whatever combined with that.

But what exists across B-scos I think is the first time it is that you're treated as adults and you're basically put in charge of the destiny of your placement through place, or there is a cultural committee which is to raise its own funds to conduct a festival and stuff like that. And then we talked about at the perfect time because after that, obviously this when you put in diversity in terms of gender, what eventually happens is that they end up shutting down or making, you know, female and male hostels and then putting a Chinese wall in between and basically losing the original point, why you set it up anyway. But yeah, I think diversity is something that should definitely be targeted in these school admissions. Yeah, I think so just to describe also I have actually been fortunate to be on the mic up and itself a few times.

And I've been completely blown away by the admission criteria in some sense. I was in the first time I got to see that first time myself, like they were always very clear about we are selecting and not rejecting. We want to see how each person can possibly add value to the batch and the discussion rather than, you know, rather than fitting a few criteria. Like for example, during the first year when I did it, I was interviewing, we were all interviewing somebody, this one alumni, one current faculty and one architect industry expert.

And I was blown away by one of the candidates that I spoke like, oh, this guy's a show show and he fits all the MBA material and all the reasons for which I wanted to select this guy, the professor next to me said no, he won't fit into this because he's a perfect MBA material because he's going to choose some other typical MBA school in any case because he's looking for a general MBA. He doesn't need what we offer, neither will be able to offer what he is looking for. And that was fascinating. Like they really kept an eye out for people who did not know very, did not speak English very well or had distinct failures in their life.

Which I thought was pretty interesting and just made me gain a little more respect for my alma mater. The thing is right now what's what was I mean, I don't know how the process is a reward right now and I've not been part of the process since my last one decade ago. But what always do me away was and we've done this a lot with like current interns when I talk to like when I'm trying to interview interns. I'm like, since samples have worked out, you're most proud of right.

And the thing is there they try to make you fit into a mold of asking you a certain type of question or asking you to do a certain type of exercise, which may or may not be your forte. Like for example, I was just thinking if I got to the discussion or group exercise phase of my kind, somewhere there was an arts and craft kind of task, I would have just like it bloated right there. And tomorrow as they had and similarly, they had like an eliquition kind of task, some other candidate may implode right there. So individually, I mean, it would be there would be so much there would be such an interesting, it would be more cumbersome, but also would be so interesting if they were to actually ask the candidates.

How do you want to tell us that you are a good candidate for my for this particular course and how can you express it in your way, you're most comfortable in it. Like whether you want to do it as an assignment, whether you want to do it as a speech or take part in a discussion, then we get all the students who want to take part in a discussion together and then have that discussion. And it would really give you a perspective like it allows the student to really put their best foot forward. It would really allow them to show their best class, rather than be forced to participate in a particular, in a small window of performance where they may not be able to do that.

And speaking of performances, this is a B school form that most schools inevitably ask for which have the same standard questions. We have an SOP, we have strengths, weakness, tell us something about it. Which usually becomes extremely templatized after a point, like the answers. I mean, like very often when I was scanning through the form set to look for whether this looked like a copy of the internet or you know, that same story will be there.

And essentially will be I was growing up. So I won some execution contest. I knew I was creative from there. My love for brands advertising whatever this college will help me achieve my dream school.

The number of times, the number of times even in advertising interviews you've heard that I have always been the person who is instead of watching the shows will watch the ads. I've heard this line at least like 10 times. This is a brand new for Octan Nashboian. Beneath this stone is John Brown's stone.

He watched the ads and not the road. I was on, have you been holding that? Actually, I sort of disagree. I don't think there's an issue with like the people that are selecting the school apart from obviously the privilege that shines through, which I would say we are all beneficiaries of.

So a true sort of admission would be statistically representative of the population in most cases, which I think is tough to achieve, but the more drive there is towards diversity, it's fine. But also you're getting people into a B school, right? The ideas are in two years, you can sort of teach them something that they already don't know and can develop into sort of well-rounded managers as opposed to subject matter experts. So I think in my view, it is unfair to sort of judge B school for its curriculum or wake courses or thought or the sheer fact that you don't really need to go through 40 to 48 courses over a two-year period.

So I think the softer elements in terms of what that helps you learn how to prioritize, like I mentioned, you're an adult on campus for the first time. Do you just stick to books or what you do when you're out there? How do you prioritize your time? How do you do a basic presentation?

How do you work in a group? All of that actually adds a lot of- I would say in fact that I go step further and say, actually that's more important. I personally think that I learn more outside the classroom rather than in the classroom. I think that's true for a lot of us.

So that means in some sense, all the subjects and all that are just set up for the actual education. Which makes me think that if you were to imagine that you're actually doing the reimagining and you were to start with the premise that 90% of the classes are garbage, then what would you really do? I think one of the most useful exercises that we used to have was the board gaming that we used to do. I would like legit make board gaming a regular course where you actually over a course of your- You kind of put people through different scenarios of a war game and kind of get them to get that experience.

That seems like a most practical, realistic approach of doing. You'll at least get them tested in different ways. Because right now, MBA is the way, the biggest benefit you are getting is you are basically trapped on a campus for two years with future peers. That is the network that you built out of the Stockholm sit-down that you had with your fellow peers is what you're using as your career.

The point is that what you're taking out of the MBA curriculum is actually the literal sort of example of you're watching something for the ads, not the actual kids. That's really interesting. If you were to imagine it would be about creating situations where it's not the end outcome that's necessary as much as the process in some sense. I remember for example one of our retail classes, retail management or something like that, retail marketing or something where we actually had to create little retail stores of our own.

That is pretty interesting. You had to set up things on campus. Apart from the marketing side, everyone is able to create a campaign for their store and all that. What is the ability to do a lot of us was things like where are we going to set this thing up?

Where are we going to get all the supplies from? What is customer interaction inside the store going to be like? That opened up our eyes for me. What also came across was the classic Indian approach is that you get evaluated against a text book.

It's very easy to game results in that it's a person who is trying to evaluate to that particular end. The specific examples that you were talking about, we had a particular work in scenario where it was basically a client, five agencies pitching to a client. That particular thing was at the end of the day based on the merit of the clients were also budget students who were going to get evaluated on the basis of the reasons they gave for selecting the agency that they did. The thing was everybody was evaluating each other because their own survival was dependent on it.

That was the fairest. We won that particular exercise and I felt like elated because I was like this is the first meritorious thing I've ever seen. It was like among peers recognizing that what you did was good. That kind of evaluation system really would create systems of that kind of evaluation also would really help the entire process along.

Do you think that in its current format that MBA doesn't teach students how to mess up the world actually is or how business actually is? Do you feel like that part is under emphasized? I don't think that's the intent of the course. What you can describe for instance happens in all of your school competitions or on set companies.

I don't think it's the intent for the school to even from a sort of curriculum perspective to teach you the realities. It's to sort of teach you maybe theories and give you frameworks which you're free to reject or use it as a shortcut to evaluate management decisions. I think to me although I never figured it out then but having theories followed up with case studies is actually a very robust model from a pedagogy perspective. I don't know if people figured it out later.

For all that I heap score on the MBA education. What I like is that because of this because of the case study method and because of everything. So let us say you enter a company which has been in existence for a few decades and it's what stable business, it has products, it sells itself, you have to make sure you place a few ads. Your marketing function is basically a little bit of advertising, a little bit of hobnobbing with distributors making sure you get 5% extra every year.

Then you get a young guy or a bunch of people who think about radically new ways of modeling and it forces everyone to think. So 9 times out of 10 the radical new idea is going to be rubbish but one time in 10 they're probably going to be revolutionary. People ignore their own peril. You see so many good stable companies declining and finally going into extinction because of complacence.

Part of the new MBA or an MBA is a brief is to shake things up and it helps that you have young enthusiastic want to be sort of an MBA is too good part of the case. Do you think then that like let's say the events of the last couple of years so I actually wish there was somebody over here who did I mean the most recent MBA is Tony. They are in both Tony and she gets from exactly a decade ago. Do any of the events of like the last two years for instance would I mean you can do any entire MBA course on just the last two years from marketing perspective and national perspective management.

All that is now I don't expect MBA in that sense to hear people up for something like this but do you think a lot of this would have made it to an MBA classroom like do you think the batch of 2023 for instance will be part of the education also be about how companies transform then so on and not just that but like all the other changes that are happening like crypto for instance what that means for the world of finance or whatever it is like. I feel the one thing that's working in the favor of the MBA it was there a decade ago as well and more also is the real rise of a desire to get industry specialist. And I feel yes industry industry experts bring in the industry point of view and all that and I take Tony's point on like okay I mean there is a lot of pedagogy also involved but what the industry specialist also brings is a recency in the content like I mean Chuck you and I have been like in the process of teaching a bunch of people in developing some content in that space and I was just evaluating that and the one thing that actually a student stake away a lot from these sessions is that I still remember being infuriated when I was doing my MBA in 2011 at one point seeing my prof slides and finding out that slide and like seeing the water water and finding out that slide is made in two thousand feet. And I'm like yeah these profs are just recurgitating the same thing year on year and just continuing with that and at the very minimum removing at the most removing just like stuff that is truly outdated that's the max they will do.

But what we do with industry experts is because they are dealing with situations on a day to day basis I don't think any marketing expert or any advertising expert would be able to take a lecture at least next year without truly addressing how to do marketing in the covid era in some extent. So this brings me to an interesting point I had a feeling that you would say that and okay so here's an experience that I had at my car which I'm thinking is going to be the same for you and perhaps for Tony as well. Can't say for nothing is that many when I look back now and it's been a good 15 years while since I graduated many of the classes or lessons that I still remember right as being the most memorable were all taken by guest faculty and that could be because of the novelty of the session or just because of the recency thing like you said or it could be because this is a topic that was just you know interesting and finished in two sessions rather than being dragged on for 20 or 30 or something like that. What is the role of a B school really is a B school self access a curator of sorts right getting together the best speakers or something like that so what then just does differentiate one from the other in the case of a science you're a mic I become slightly simpler because of the focus on the education itself.

But what other be schools and what's going to differentiate say an IMK from an IMB or something else when they are all essentially offering the same course but let's say with one of the prettier campus. I think any made the like sort of hierarchy or of IMs have been or B schools have been predefined by the kind of packages that people get right in by and large except for let's say my car or something like that but basically the packing order is already defined by external factors. I don't think that people even consider a campus as a differentiator when you take up a role which is why I sort of B school needs to find its sort of purpose in some sense. I think I think I am he has sort of gone from increasing the diversity agenda.

So they also launch like a liberal arts plus a kind of course and are looking at in terms of diversity beyond just gender. So it depends on which also led to the fact that sort of more companies started coming in because of this differentiated factor. And then it got reinforced because obviously diversity helps in even companies. They found out that it actually makes sense to come to this campus because we get a probably a diverse kind of match.

That's pretty interesting. So that's one way to differentiate. So the one point that I feel is the I mean I was just looking at it like just going back to the core of the question that you asked which was about the whole that the guest faculty lectures are the best and the MBA colleges are the curators. I almost feel that the way MBAs are structured right now are for those guests faculties but except for the fact that they still have to exist within this Indian education system.

Right. And this Indian education system needs needs to deliver the meat and potatoes. All right. Without the meat and potatoes.

This there is no degree or any kind of accredited whatever that you can get. So to truly like and like Tony was saying there are some that are now migrating to that liberal arts plus MBA kind of angle of things where it's something like a flame university what flame is trying to do or whatever that kind of stuff. But those are all niche experiments for any kind of mainstream college. They will have to have a guy who's called professor and was truly earned the title of professor by education to sit and deliver that meat and potatoes lectures and and you truly have to wait for like those are the meat and potatoes.

So that's the veggies that you have to eat and then you have to wait for the putting later. Right. So the putting the stuff that you will actually remember and be memorable will all come later when the along with that whole thing. But you have to pass those exams so that you can get that degree so that you can get again.

You could you could just have if you have an experiment of a college started which they just decided to get a whole bunch of guest lecturers in and just take a bunch of sessions. Then basically it's basically a Z-MELT conference. No, it's a Z-MELT conference. And what that does is at the end of the day nobody's going to give you a job based on a Z-MELT.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the other thing. So that's what I get from this that it's the MBA colleges trying to exist in an Indian education system.

Or any education. So I think what you said right now doesn't just make sense for India. I think it's something that would make sense for any other geography as well. You need to go through the certain academic rigor and all that and then have the, you know, once the spikes as it was once.

Okay guys, tell me which is the most pointless subject you had in the world. You think on this subject. We did have a bunch of faculty that tried very hard to teach a bunch of migrants how to do finance. Which was a okay, the attempt was there, but I don't think the other way it.

Okay. I mean, none of us at the end of the day figured out how to use a PNL sheet. So I think it might have been contextual. That's a wrong answer to your question.

Yeah. No, because I wouldn't say that was useless as much as you were not. Yeah. Exactly.

So we had a subject called organizational behavior. I had a feeling in my terms of the. I love Adobe. Yeah.

So it was completely pointless because I mean, we had people who just came and pontificated and just walked off and really didn't understand what because I was 20. Yeah, exactly. I had no clue what the hell an organization was. And here there are people who are talking about how to back in the day it was searching for excellence and excellence and hiding under the chair.

You catch the excellence, bring it out. That kind of shit. And that was strategy. That was the second stupid thing.

The organization would be able to do the stupidest one. I think it was completely rubbish. Yeah. There was master hierarchy in the.

Yeah. Because like pretty much 97% of what people understood. The rest of it was rubbish. Yeah.

My guess is a lot of us would have gained respect for things like organizational behavior, career, career, career. I agree. Here's one suggestion I have for MBA in general. I think there are some things that you can't teach in classrooms and become a parent only later.

I think when every student graduates, they should get like an envelope or something that says open in 10 years time and then start making sense a little later. Maybe one way of thinking about an MBA and this might be a sort of radical way of thinking about it. I don't think the education is to stop at two years. Now think about a B school where every year you have to attend three days of updates or you know, what you are describing Chuck is a BA.

Is a? Is a? No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, BMB is still going to happen for a certain timeframe.

Yeah. For four years, five years, whatever. I'm saying like, even now, like even now, I should be taking classes from MITRE where you have some experts on say blockchain or something, you know, dating my knowledge. Now, maybe I pay a lump sum for that in the beginning or maybe I pay a subscription you're on your, I think something like that might be a question.

Yeah. You're basically suggesting a rondil. Yeah, not a rondil as much as a subscription in some sense. Yeah.

I take that aspect of it, but then again, what I won't trust a B-School to do is deliver relevant information to me over the years. See, once I'm working for say 10 years, honestly, at least from my own B-School, I don't trust a curriculum they will set for me, any kind of curriculum. I need to be able to pick and choose, say that you tell me which prof is going to teach it. I want the credentials of that prof.

Tell me what is the course. This is the course. And I will make my time for it. In Bombay, there is a street, this thing, which says that I don't, I don't, it sounds very rude in Hindi, but English translation is, don't teach a father to me.

I'm the father to have sex. That is the whole thing. Tell me what's the letter. Some guy is going to try and teach you anything about management good luck with that.

I have a feeling that we might have given a few ethics some ideas. Just thinking, is there somebody from Bangalore? I want to write. I'm not raising the average age of MBA admission.

Good idea. I think we are making more experience in my day. I have a totally pointless thinking of fresh clashing. What favorite subject?

Wait, I don't think Tony said both of these. No, I think we can do it. Okay, go ahead. My name is Arjun.

But my naturally was strategy. We had a very good prof who came and totally changed the way. Yeah, it totally changed the way that me and a couple of others who were very keen on this sort of thing, looked at marketing, but business in general. A very close second would be a subject called account planning, which basically is what Shrike and I were doing in agency for a while.

And what made it interesting was a way it was conducted. So we had to, the theory part of the course was like two hours. And after that, you said, you know, you can go out and actually do something. So for the entire week, we would be going out interviewing people, actually making creatives, actually shooting ads and stuff like that.

And just that entire experience was. I just to give a shout out. Yeah, I just to give a shout out. I don't know if Chuck, it was for you, but fellow, fellow podcaster on the IBM network or traveling professor.

No, not for us, not for us. Not for us. He took an account planning module for us as they might be doing it. That's it.

That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it.

That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it.

That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it.

That's it. For me, it would be definitely. See, that's what the favorite subjects are usually revolving around the professor. Around the professor.

And for me, it was an incredible professor called Ashish Kulkarni who taught economics. He was at the Vocal Institute of Economics and he used to teach over there. And he came into economics for us. And I submitted one of my best assignments.

He was teaching us about GST. And at that time, he was teaching us what the goods and services tax is about. And he said, he decided to write a simple. He said, see, I only want you guys to do this.

I'm not taught you GST right now to make it. I want you to take whatever you've understood, the way you've understood it. And write it in your own original. And then I submitted it to me 200 words.

And the submission I gave was there was no Wikipedia article or GSE. So I wrote that article. Wow. And I submitted it to Wikipedia article as my submission.

Yeah, I somehow think the favorite subject or memory or whatever also depends on the time that it comes in during your MBA education. Like for example, I think it was in the fifth or sixth time, I still that we had actual finance subjects, something like economics incidentally. Yeah, I think something like economics or economics or something of that sort. Because by then me and a friend of mine, a really good friend of mine, we were both fed up with any prof who came and said, all right, what is the brand?

We had enough of stuff like that. And then this guy came in and spoke non-faf for the first time. Like a guy who was actually talking about company valuations. And both of us were like with a jaw drop.

So that's what market capitalization means. Holy shit, that's what it means. And we were completely blown away. That became one of our favorite subjects, our favorite experience at least from that.

What was the subject? I forget about it. But it's something like economics, something related to the stock market. I remember that him talking a lot of the market caps and things like that.

Perhaps it was stock valuations or something like that. Tony? Yeah, my favorites were actually I think thinking back probably then I enjoyed more the marketing ones. But thinking back, it's actually microeconomics and Obi-Wan.

I mean, all of us are like finance and Obi-guys. Yeah, but Obi-Wan was actually sort of the introduction to the behavioral part of behavior. Yeah. Right.

All of the business advice. He was truly the Obi-Wan Kenobi of your mentor of your journey to a behavioral crucifix. They go ahead. Yeah.

So, that it for you? It was statistics, hands down statistics. Wow. I know the first time.

The birds here. No, it was so we had a I forget who the teacher was. But he was good at connecting statistics with real life problems. And so before that, I don't remember doing we must have had statistics in engineering.

I mean, you never really you do it in things like statistical thermodynamics. Now, it's very, very different. I mean, you study all the all the all the equations and all the theorem and everything. But you never connect it with real life situation.

That was amazing. I mean, that that give me like I love that subject. That was one and microeconomics in general. In general.

Yeah, it was fascinating. Just reading stuff about, you know stuff about economics was very interesting. Yeah. But who thinks it seems like I mean, basically from this perspective, it seems like we were all I mean, any part of actually things where we actually ended up learning rather than just reinforcing what we already knew was where the best of things actually.

Yeah. No, but a point is taken that it's a big function of the professor. So we had one professor who was became very senior in HDFC and HFC Bank and he taught us finance something called financial management, which is very similar to what Chuck was saying. The value in companies, stocks shares, how do you value assets?

How do you value things? What do you do with and it was not just you know, just not finding the net present value of income stream or something like that. It was like, you know, trying to account for a lot of intangibles and things. It was fascinating.

And he would talk about because he was a senior guy, even then he would talk about a lot of real life sort of situations and it opened it was just because of because of the professor. He was like, real, really someone who could look up. So yeah. Here's to the good professors who made who made whatever education was it.

It's been a fairly long discussion on something that we had no intention of recording, which is a hard topic. We decided on the topic. Why inside the other side of the office? And I mean, because we are talking about an MBA and this is what we were in some sense trying to do.

Any parting thoughts like any other aspects questions? I want to ask one final question though. Like at this point and we can try to be as brief as possible, is would you recommend anyone to do an MBA at this point of your career? At this point of your life?

Oh, yeah, for sure. I think I would. Yeah. I think I would.

So would I. So would I mean for all that I keep disparaging MBA as a tribe. There is a lot of value in the education and it's kind of you know, those skills are required in every walk of life. I am probably the only one who disagrees.

At this point I don't see because I suffer some reason I've gotten a lot of respect for hard skills. And I feel like if anybody especially if someone's done a like who's had my background was a soft skills undergraduate background. But if someone comes from a hard skill undergraduate background and has a bent for it, I would actually encourage them to kind of like take that forward because I see the future to be a place where I mean, while FAF will be useful, the world would be better with less of it. Fair enough.

But so what I would I would. I mean, it's a nice sentence to bridge between two factions over here is I would say MBA as long as the whoever wants to do it sees the role of it in their life since I'm not to necessarily escape from something like I think we've all been through that phase of who I don't like my software job and everybody else is not that and as long as like if for somebody for example, she gets somebody who is doing hard skills, but is unable to rise beyond a certain point in the fair. Then yes, an MBA definitely makes sense. Yeah, I guess that is my dentist.

You know, surprisingly surprising it is so yeah. Yeah, surprisingly it was surprisingly what we say profound from you, Chuck. Yes, let's expect it. Yeah, and it all started from from a random profanity.

Which we were just supposed to leave before talking about something. Yeah, this is what that that famous friend of us does. Yes. Yes.

So you want to take out? Yeah. So yeah, so they safe, stay managing and stay simplified. Stay managing.

Yeah. Stay managing. Yeah. Man.

Yeah. That is also a signing off for four old men to tell.