Professor Sanjeeb Kakoty, Faculty at IIM-Shillong, was recently voted by the students of IIM-Shillong as the InsideIIM Professor of The Year! He was kind enough to answer a set of questions we posed to him around his experiences as a Professor at one of India’s top IIMs, teaching some of the brightest minds in the country. Here is what Professor Kakoty has to say –
What is the best part about teaching these future leaders in your classroom?
If you look at all the revolutions in the world, it has always been the youth who have been at its vanguard. A classroom at an IIM ideally represents some of the best young minds the country has. So the classroom represents an opportunity to mould and guide the young who have the innate ability to transform society. I always ask myself if I would succeed in lighting the spark within them!
Your students have praised you for the interesting ways in which you teach your classes to make studies interesting. How important do you think this approach is for the students to cope with the real world out there?
There is this beautiful poem, Choruses From The Rock by T.S Eliot, where he sums the problem of modern life and the education system. A part of the poem reads something like this:
“The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
So, in my classes, we celebrate the fact that everything in life is not quantitative. Knowledge and learning are not always binary and students learn to appreciate the existence of a non-linear world where things appear in shades of grey and solutions are in the realm of the existence of multiple solutions to a single problem!
Cases, real-life examples, academic models/theories, projects with peers – Which method, according to you, is most effective in teaching your subject to students?
Just as there are numerous input devices in a computer, the human mind also receives inputs from various sources to make sense of the world around. It could be real-life examples, case studies or models and theories. But the fact is that I started working from the age of 15 as a radio announcer, to writing for newspapers to being part of a computer start-up, to a writer, a documentary filmmaker to a carpenter, a farmer and a start-up man with a couple of successful ventures - I certainly have a lot of stories to share!
How has the use of technology transformed the modern MBA classroom?
Information has never been more easily available. As a matter of fact, the present generation is suffering from information overload. There is too much information floating around and a growing inability to process that information and make sense of it. Moreover, technology is also creating a generation of cut and paste experts who profess to possess expertise on liberally borrowed ideas, without acknowledging the source. As a matter of fact, the excessive use of jargon and complex theories to complicate simple problems which can be solved with simple solutions is becoming more the trend than the exception.
But at the same time, judicious use of technology can and does render the most complicated and tedious of tasks relatively simple and can go a long way in enhancing both effectiveness and efficiency. Maybe a special course of doing so needs to be introduced!
How do you feel when you see people whom you have taught become successful in their lives and conquer the professional world out there?
I always tell my students that my report card is in their hands. It will come to me some years down the line in their careers. I tell them that when they are successful AND happy, I would consider being a successful teacher. I guess my report card is still being written!
Give us one student’s story that you have closely followed or tell us about that one student who had amazing growth during their MBA and surprised you.
I distinctly remember the day.
It was the first class of the Sustainability and Business Class of the 2nd batch of IIM Shillong. I asked each student of the class the reason why they chose to join a management institute. There was the usual slew of answers about the value of an IIM, to grow professionally etc.
One lean, not very tall student stood up and said: “To make more money!” He continued by saying, “Before I joined this course I was earning X amount. Post the IIM degree I hope to earn X +2,”. I made a mental note of this student.
In the last term of his career, he happened to choose my elective on Business and Societal Transformation. Probably he had forgotten all about his response to my question in the first term. He made a presentation about transforming his village which did not have a high school nor a hospital and how he wished to use his education to ensure that nobody suffered the way his mother did, because of the lack of a doctor in their village and how she had to be carried over a long treacherous road to reach the nearest hospital.
I was elated when he used my pet phrase to end his presentation - "Money is never the end, it is merely a means to an end!"
What are the kind of changes/developments that you see in the B-school curriculum in the years to come?
The entire economy represents a bubble that is liable to burst at any moment. Human consumption is way beyond the ability of the earth to regenerate itself. The wealth, income and resources of the world are in the hands of a few individuals.
If one looks at the wealth distribution statistics of either the OXFAM or Swisse Credit, it is apparent that 10% of the people control 90% of the global wealth while 90% are left with 10%. This huge imbalance cannot continue for too long. The changes which may occur in the B-School curriculum may be directed towards sustainable development and inclusive growth.
As a matter of fact, I was a part of the drafting committee, and the only one from India, that wrote the report on Management Education for the World, a part of the 50+initiative that was presented at the Rio Earth Conference. This report is supposed to set the agenda for developing the curriculum of all B-schools across the world. One interesting snippet is the desire of this report to “Develop the human being in the leader and the leader in the Human Being."
What, according to you, are some of the qualities that an aspiring B-school student must possess?
The one quality that J.R.D. Tata looked for in people was ATTITUDE. He rightly said that a person with the right attitude can be moulded to become the best, whereas a person only with high grades and the wrong attitude is sure to fail in the long run. In order to have the right attitude, one has to have empathy for others, the sincerity of purpose and a commitment to truth and integrity and hard work.
What are your thoughts about InsideIIM’s Professor of the Year initiative?
Frankly, I was not even aware that something like that was going on. Probably the fact that I am social media shy, and not a very worldly person, I felt quite embarrassed when people congratulated me for it. Frankly, every teacher who has put in his or her sincere effort at co-creating knowledge by jointly learning and unlearning with students is equally deserving of this!
Read all about the InsideIIM Professor of The Year series here.
*Featured image credits - IIM Shillong Facebook page