Like many of us, I started my internship with great expectations and the opportunity to learn and add value to the organisation - ITC PSPD Division (DHQ).
To say the least, the case study based learnings in my college, IMT Ghaziabad, have helped me a lot as it gave me the courage and the strength to work in a professional environment and face the exigencies. Here the learning curve is more practical as decisions taken in the office rooms are practically implemented in the external environment with a chance to track the same. Independence, peer learning, appreciation of the work had kept me moving to learn more and work towards the deliverables.
I am in the planning department where we are keeping track of our industry competitors including international competitors which gave me a broad understanding of the changes that has been happening in this industry across the world. Normally the tools and techniques which we learn in the college are just a way to understand the industry dynamics and the companies performance in that external environment. Practically speaking there is a lot more to that as we need to develop business strategies with limited information in hand so as to grow above the industry average and deliver value to the stakeholders.
Unlike in the theory which focuses on broad industry dynamics, I came to learn that industry variables, trends etc are different across regions and countries where organisations need to develop strategies in-line with their strengths to have a meaningful interaction with the external variables and grow above expectations. Eg., In the industry we operate North America, Western Europe markets got saturated with a high concentration of the companies being in a consolidation stage and they are seeking out growth by expanding and acquiring in developing countries under Eastern Europe, Latin America Asia, Middle East and Africa.
There is another part of this internship which makes this stint even more interesting, I was given the leeway to add value by self-learning things and give recommendations which keep me interested, so as part of this I was given a chance to do valuation for our company using fundamental analysis which included financial modelling which I have been enjoining a lot by doing.
Two important learnings include:
1.) I started my internship with an assumption that I will be guided by an industry mentor and things move smoothly but the very thought of it is a big blunder as my initial interactions with my manager made me realise that in this well connected and digital world, "Google" is our mentor and you should showcase something new to add value to the organisation by way of much self-learning.
2.) Normally people tend to stick to their own department and limit interactions to that extent. After my initial days of working, I realised that in every department decisions need to be taken with a holistic view of the organisation for the reasons of high dependencies and inter-linkages.
At the end of the day, one learns not just the work but the ability to do work.