I completed my MBA from IIM-B this year in March. I was one of the eight Gold medallists out of 593 students graduated from IIM-B this year. This 2-year program included regular classes coupled with stay at IIM-B during weekends. This course demanded nothing but the best out of everyone. Many have asked me as to how I managed to juggle successfully between the 3 balls – Family, Profession and Education at the same time. One has to have a shared interest with all the stakeholders if you want to succeed.

The key here was to create a robust Eco-system among (with) all your stakeholders. This will then ensure that everything else runs smoothly while you can concentrate on critical things.

I would spend a minimum of 10 hrs. at office every day and weekends at the institute. During this tenure, connecting with family and seeking their support in this journey was very crucial. Having breakfast along with family before leaving for office used to give me lot of leverage to spend time with family and also reaching home by 7.0 PM and having dinner with family was ensuring that I am not leaving them out of touch and every day to spend some time with family systematically on weekdays. Occasionally, we had some time to spend during weekends when I was not at IIMB. Although it land me spending late evening for office work at times but worth it.

At office, I worked with my team to develop their competencies and empowered them to take care of the operational topics. I would involve only where it was necessary based on the topics. My team and I worked a lot on processes and ensured that we are more of process driven and not people dependent. The idea here was to manage the processes (and not the people) and engage with the team. This was crucial in building the right Eco-system at workplace. This ultimately helped me manage my work schedule within the working hours. We did not have many instances where we had to extend our work hours to late nights or work on weekends.

Similarly, in my studies, I used to plan everything systematically on a weekly basis. Classes were scheduled for Friday evenings and full day on Saturdays. I would plan all my studies before the next schedule of classes began. I always ensured that on daily basis, I would finish my assignments and case studies before sleeping for the night or wake up early morning and complete them without any excuse. I would also plan the daily load systematically for every subject, that way balancing the load equally. I also factored in the specific event if any taking place during that week. I ensured that I stuck to the plan and completed all the tasks before the next schedule began.

I used most of my leaves in the last 2 years for preparation and projects. I managed to do 3 international projects - One was with Soul National University - South Korea, another was with Smurfit Business School, Dublin - Ireland and one with Lomonosov Moscow State University – Russia. I had to visit these countries for a week each. This meant a lot of investment in terms of money, efforts and time. This all came with lot of learning's that was very enriching and value adding.

This is short summary as to how I managed multiple roles and gave the best in every aspect.

I have always believed that the best way to lead others is to lead yourself first. Leadership is not only leading big teams and leading a mass but it starts from self and goes way beyond. Only when we start leading ourselves with passion and integrity we set examples for others to follow, during which we earn respect from others who will then see us as their role models. This is something I have always believed and learnt over my career in different roles.

Start with yourself

The following words were written on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in the Crypts of Westminster Abbey:

When I was young and free and my imagination had no limit, I dreamed of changing the world.

As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.

But it, too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.

And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed my self-first, then by example I would have changed my family.

From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world.

We inspire others by leading self. Seeing my journey, my wife re-started her hobby of art and transformed her passion to profession and now her work has been displayed in several art galleries. Inspiring each other in our team, 6 of us are engaged in higher studies on various fields and up-skilling ourselves. One of my team member is doing course on Data analytics and AI, another is doing CFA, one of them is doing up-skilling course with IIM-C and one another colleagues is getting expertise through course in IFRS and forensic accounting and so on.

We all need to inspire from each other’s and aspire to be better compared to yesterday and a lot may follow….!

IIM-B 8 Gold medallists for 2018 Convocation