As an IPM student, I have had the luxury of being an IIM student since the day I graduated from school. I have had quite a few interesting experiences in the classroom, one of which I would like to share here. I have always found Organizational Behaviour classes very interesting, they bring out the intricacies of human behaviour, which are extremely interesting to observe. In one particular session, we performed an activity which was essentially meant to test our teamwork and trust as a class, but we assumed that it was to test our gullibility and cunning.
We were divided into different groups for the activity the rules of which were; we had to choose between the letters ‘X’ and ‘Y’. If all the teams chose ‘Y’, then all of them would receive a positive outcome while if even a single team chose X in place of ‘Y’, they would get a positive outcome while the rest would get a negative score. However, if every team chose ‘X’, everybody would end up with a negative outcome. One member from each team was allowed to interact before making the choice. During the interactions, we all focused on convincing the other team members that we would mark a ‘Y’ trying to gain their trust through every inspiring speech possible, but after the first round, we discovered that only 2 teams out of 8 had marked a ‘Y’. In the next meeting, it was obvious that nobody trusted anyone and there was a very brief discussion and everybody went and marked ‘X’. In the second last round, an interesting thing happened, someone had marked a ‘Y’. When we met for the last time, one team member said that he had done it to gain the trust of other teams and we should all work together for at least the last round. We agreed on face for this but when the results for the last round came out, everybody had marked an ‘X’! We couldn’t help but laugh at the outcome of our class. Our teacher told us that never once had this experiment ended up favourably, and at that point, we realised that the entire purpose of this activity was very different than what we had assumed it to be. Here we were trying to trick each other into believing that we would mark a ‘Y’, while losing out as a class. We all ended up wishing that we would have been the anomaly for this experiment but alas, we were like every other human on this planet.
The firm I would really love to work with in the Aditya Birla Group is the Aditya Birla Nuvo as for me it’s a brand that portrays strength, passion and sophistication. It has had great investments in the past and really seeks out on opportunities. Also, it’s a major investment into renewable energy also attracts me as I think it is the industry of the future and has a long way to go. I think I’m have a great understanding of the strategy aspects of business and hence would love to make decisions for not only a single sector but a plethora of sectors across the industries while managing a giant premium conglomerate.
-Mahimn Bhatt