Post a brilliant weekend spent with friends of distant past with whom I got re-united after long, it was time to begin THE week. The start of real work! This was the week when we entered the battlefield - the action began! Monday morning, worst time of the week when it comes to work - a popular belief, but this on this particular one, I was excited because finally that day had arrived when I would actually get to be a part of the business world - give my ideas, brainstorm with fellow upcoming and established business leaders, to be out in the field and making things work for real.
To get things started, we were greeted by our Business HR Partner, Ms. Pritha Banerjee, who gave us all a thorough overview of the Mahindra & Mahindra AFS division leadership team. Post this, we were given a pep talk by Mr. Yogesh Gandhi, the General Manager of HR at M&M for AFS division. Mr. Gandhi's frank and straight-up, crisp setting up of expectations and the general advice on the manner of conduct at M&M truly struck a chord with me. I felt responsible in that moment and told myself silently to carry out my job with utter due diligence here during my time with Mahindra & Mahindra.
Later, we met our teams that we are working with presently. I got to meet my Project Guide with whom I had previously spoken on phone, courtesy of a buddy call arrangement by Mr. Aakash Parihar and the GMC team. I was swooned after my meeting with my Project Guide/Manager - Mr. Ruchik Gandhi. He is a straightforward, no-nonsense person who gave me the freedom from day one to execute my ideas and time and time again reminded me of the prestige of being a GMC intern. Ruchik himself belongs to this legacy of GMC interns - and got the PPO during his time. This inspired me a lot and I hope to follow in his footsteps. Besides this, a great fact about Ruchik is that he is a great person in general, always approachable and very helpful. I feel very lucky to have been allotted to him and I look forward to every day I am getting to work with him.
Ruchik introduced me to the leader of our team - the VP of BSPM team, Mr. Mukund Krishnamurthy - and all the managers in the office. A fellow intern and I in the BSPM team were met with a galore of enthusiasm and energy by the team who were very warm in their welcome. Ruchik helped us settle in, found us a place in the office, and just gave us the green light to begin! I started with some of the early impressions I had about the project I was going to work on. Compared to that, Ruchik asked me paint my vision for the project - a dream start! We were allotted the project well in advance and they were communicated by Mr. Parihar and the GMC team, so I sort of did my homework. I felt needed and was sure my inputs would be valued - something instrumental as a motivation to continue at any job.
Later, we met with our VP and set the expectations on paper - the goals - we call them level L3 & L5 (L3 being the minimum achievement required from us, and L5 being the recommendation of a disruptive idea - a game changer). This structure really helped me to move forward, and the freedom I have to work on my ideas and the execution of it resonates with the culture of Mahindra & Mahindra, and the philosophy imbued by Mr. Anand Mahindra - that the leaders at Mahindra & Mahindra are given the wings to fly and they have an absolutely remarkable trust in the people. Ruchik always keeps inspiring me for the next disruptive idea, and I'm more and more driven every time after our meetings.
I believe, at a personal level, my progress has been brilliant in the first week itself, and I'm getting to learn more and more wonderful things about the world of business. 'I feel I can fly' would be how I'd sum up my experience in the first week.