Reflection

REFLECTION SHEET-4

-Vijay Srinivas T

The discussion on patterns in organizations was an interesting one. After coming to IIMA wherever I go outside everywhere I could see patterns and relate to the things and concept taught here at class. This is eerily similar to how organizations also function in certain patterns. When a company is used to doing things a certain way since its inception it becomes difficult for a company to change the way it functions. Case in point is Tata Sons. Cyrus Mistry was supposedly fired or removed because he went against many of the principles and value that Tata has stood for like the fight prolonging with NTT on the Docomo case and the way he dealt with the Steel plants in Europe. He might have taken those decisions from a pure business perspective but that went against the company principles and what the company has believed in till now.  

Even Tata has many failing brands and companies like the other ones also discussed in class. Tata’s main source of income is TCS and Tata motors. Misty knew about this and wanted each company to be self-sufficient and wanted each unit to be profictable.  

The best discussion that has ever happened in the class till now was on classification of Management into Art, Science or Craft. Most of the concepts taught here at IIMA fall into the Science and Craft category. But to be a manager or a leader the ability to take decision comes from the art category of management. This Art category is what differentiates a good manager from the bad ones. Both of them will have access to the almost the same set of information always but the ability to take good decision is an art that has to born with or acquired over a period of time during which lot of mistakes might also be committed.  

And also the discussion about whether a management course gives you the knowledge required to be an entrepreneur or at least let you acquire the skills or not was a very interesting discussion. The fact about many Fortune 400 CEO’s not even being graduates was a very lopsided argument is what I think. For every success there are thousands and thousands of failures. In the case of non-graduates the success rate is very low and that is why people choose to get an education and play it safe, at least for some part of their life.