Entering into an IIM was a tough task; coming here was exciting, the scenery here is breath-taking and now I need to plan about how to make full use of these two years that lie in front of me. I was struck with idea and enthusiasm for making full use of it, you know like leaving behind a legacy. Now there would be two ways to establish a legacy, that is one you are natural or other you hack your way into it. Assuming I am not natural, I have to hack my way. Now before hacking our way we need to understand what we are dealing with. It’s like a machine, which is if you want to improve it, first know it.
So, inside IIM
, I often had discussions with friends about the curriculum and intend of designing the course in a particular way. The answers we came up was simple ones that instead of just making us study the book of managers, they are making us study the life of a manager. Having a full-time residential course in IIM allows the class to be set at any time that is comfortable for the faculty and also to report for urgent batch meets in a whim. This makes us understand that we are all time workers, the only aim is to learn. We are also subjected to strict deadlines for our projects, assignment submissions and even for filling up forms. This is making everyone respect others time mainly someone who would ask you to do something in a certain time period, it could be from your boss if you are an employee or from your client, if you are an employer, bottom-line is any way you can’t escape. Other activities that go on are group tasks and consequently formal presentation by the whole group, this lets one get comfortable around people of same or different backgrounds, this is something which is such a big advantage and is often underlined. Other activities which give high weightage to soft-skills are class participation, command during the presentation and leading a club or committee. So overall for anyone entering into IIM hard-skills are not tough it is more of an exercise for anyone who has cracked CAT examination but the difficult thing is soft-skills. Now connecting all the above dots, we are full-time workers with a strict deadline who have to work with the diverse background of students in order to perform at our peak. People who enter IIM thinking that maybe soft-skills won’t be as essential as it seems and they could get around without actually trying or applying it out. This shouldn’t be the approach as it would be a deciding factor in who makes it big and who doesn’t. Taking facts into account, a manager has to deal with the employees, convince the senior management, sell and market himself/herself, and make other people realise his/her value. So the hack is a simple one here, have dominating set of soft-skills, be confident, not arrogant, ask questions as this would raise your curiosity and make other people agree to you by humility not humiliation.
Last but not the least is the motto of cultural club of IIM Kashipur and that is “Work Hard and Party Harder”. This is it doesn’t matter how much you work the end result should be you enjoy more than you work and as an IIM student I wish that everyone gets this enjoyment from their work so that people want to work more in order to enjoy supreme.