Still more on IIPM.

Now I am more or less convinced about IIPM and its actions. They want to be one among the top advertisers in India (last year they topped the list in a number of months).They will go all out advertising any rubbish things in all national dailies of repute to achieve this goal. Today’s Economic Times (January 30) sports a full page ad of IIPM(Page 5).Continues with the IIPM Planman Consulting Chief Executive Forum Calendar 2006-07 ASIA. Under the top heading they give a caption ”Dare To Think Beyond” (the usual IIMs left out)and as the second line, “Across Industries, Across Geographies” and then give the calendar but titled “Forum Calendar 2005-07” and gives various programmes from November 2005 till December 2007 with five programmes in 2005,eleven programmes in 2006 and only 8 programmes scheduled for 2007.The ad gives photographs of a number of faculty members highlighting their respective positions & strengths. One of them, Jayanta Chakroborty (Services Marketing) has been described as “Jayanta is one of the most loved and popular faculty members at IIPM. His dynamic command over the participants gives ‘her’ an edge while driving ‘her’ point across. His specialization lies in the areas of Marketing. He also heads IIPM in Pune”. To top the whole story, they give a message as a strip on the left: ”IGNORANCE ISN’T BLISS; IT’S BAD BUSINESS”.!!!! VOW! is only what I can say.

Added on Feb 16,2007.
The IIPM continues with its ad splashes in national dailies in February too. The Hindu(5th February) and The Economic Times(6th February ) carried full page ads.. As an academic, I fail to realize why an educational institution, with so much of credentials to its credit(as claimed by IIPM), need to advertise so frequently? Too much of the same ad can be boring too. Let’s look at from a different angle, that of a parent. Why should I send my child to a business school which wastes money on splashy advertisements? That money could well have been used for the upliftment of the library and other facilities, welfare of employees and students. Remember one of the principles of investments by Peter Lynch, the legendary fund manager and author of “Beating The Street” and “One Up On Wall Street”? He decides against investing in any company which has invested lot of money in sprucing up its HQ as he felt that the money could have been better utilized for better serving the customers than increasing the luxury of the CEOs. A discernible parent looking for higher education opportunities for his children shall also look at educational institutions in a similar manner.

More on IIPM

In one of my earlier postings(dated Dec 26,2006), I had written about IIPM and their somewhat misleading ads. Come new year and IIPM has gone full page ads in almost all national dailies. The Business Line dtd Jan 11, 2007 also carries one full page ad (page 5). The ad continues to carry the MDP Calendar of the IIPM-Planman Chief-Executive Forum(Calendar 2006-07,Asia). It is not clear why one should give a calendar including 2006 when we have already entered 2007. And the first entry in the program shows a date of December 05 against it. Out of a total of 20 programmes, only 12 pertain to the year 2007 and 11 were for 2006 and 1 for 2005. What is the intention of IIPM? To get more enrollments for the programs in which case Calendar 2007-2008 would have been sufficient or to underscore their theme of “Dare to think beyond IIMs” in which case any dirty trick is okay?

Book:The High Impact Leader

I Just completed reading the book “The High Impact Leader” written by Bruce J.Avolio and Fred Luthans(2006, McGraw Hill).While the book describes authentic Leadership Development(ALD) in detail, the authors provide some very interesting statistics about confidence and trust in leadership in different types of situations. A survey conducted by Gallup Leadership Institute over a period of thirty years shows that the confidence and trust in the US military leaders has more or less remained at 80 on a scale of 1 to 100 in spite of the Vietnam debacle, 9/11 or even recent criticisms against Iraq War. In contrast to this, confidence and trust in business leadership hovered around a low 28 This is, in spite of a jump in the number of ethics officers appointed in US organization by 25%.One thing business leaders can be happy about is that it has not dipped considerably despite the dot-com bubble burst,9/11 and Enron & WorldCom. The authors go on to analyse the reasons what makes people more confident about military leaders or what makes military leaders to be seen as more authentic? The authors feel that there is no better way of demonstrating one’s authenticity than the willingness to sacrifice your life for a cause, a mission and in the military people’s case your fellow soldiers, for the people and the country. To others, self-sacrifice signals your commitment. “It may be as simple as waiting in line last to be fed, delaying your vacation to help someone get their project done, evenly splitting the rewards from a successful project, giving up something you value for the good of your group, and/or saying what you think when it most matters, even if it will detract from your career prospects or compensation bonus” . says Avolio & Luthans. The authors narrate some of the well-known examples like Disney’s Eisner , who over a recent 5-year period, returned -41% to the shareholders, but was paid a whopping $706.1 million over the same period to point to why business leaders don’t create confidence and trust in the minds of the people.

A good book on authentic leadership development. The only drawback I could notice was that the authors have not given living examples of authentic leadership. They have mentioned only one example from the business world, Buffet in the whole text. Of course , they argue that the book is on Authentic Leadership Development and not on Authentic Leaders. I feel that people usually will be able to get more inspired if they already know somebody who has been successful using the ALD process.