Term 2 - Changing the Zoom on My Lens

Late-Night Strolls, Brilliant Minds, and the FOMO Trap

It has been a week (at the time of writing) since returning from the ISB Mohali campus for Term 2 of PGPMAX. Through Term 1, I realized the program is designed to keep us on our toes, but what caught me completely off-guard was the deep, quiet pull of the academic setting - the group projects, late-night study sessions and rooms buzzing with the energry of the brilliant minds in the cohort. There was something utterly nostalgic about my midnight strolls around the campus. It picked me up and plonked me straight back to 2011 into the serene solace of the 1 am walks along the 2.2 loop under the starry skies at IIT Kharagpur. I don't know if it was the atmosphere or the yearning to be young and carefree again **wistful sighs** ; but it is hard to capture that exact feeling in words: a quiet optimism about what lies ahead. The unmistakable energy in the air - an anticipation of bigger things to come. And a quiet desperation to finish the assignment before the next curveball is thrown.

It was equally charming to watch the cohort - all accomplished professionals by day, shed their executive personas and slip back into being students again. The campus has a way of erasing corporate pretense, replacing it with a shared sense of misery for assignments, an easy camaraderie, endless banter and inside jokes. With so much happening all around, the FOMO was real. Navigating the balance between jumping into every post-class hangout and turning in early for much-needed sleep, became worthy of a cost-benefit analysis. In the end, learning when to say "count me in" and when to call it a night turned out to be its own unique masterclass in self-pacing.

Turns out even this seemingly mundane campus dilemma neatly fits into a box with a rather academic name - self-leadership . I think Term 2 was really about changing the zoom on my lens - before leading anyone else effectively, I need to lead myself with self-regulation and empathy. Sometimes I must look closely at myself and my choices, and sometimes step back to understand larger things at play. Concepts we dived deeply into studying Leading People and Organizations.

Leading People and Organisations

LPOG began with a soul-searching exercise: What do you most want from your work? And the answer to the question was revealed in true economic style - through various kinds of capital - Material, Social, Natural and Human Capital. If I could honestly answer this, then I have created a statement of purpose for myself, and this can be my anchor, in the turbulent waters of work and life. It made me realize that while I can put up a facade with others, I cannot lie to myself. It also taught me that chasing material things is not terrible - after all we can only be philospophers after our basic needs are met - and basic needs is not just food, clothing and shelter, but also the means to pursue our passions and interests. In our Indian culture, we are raised to believe material pursuit is not virtuous. It wasn't as if I wasn't aware of the Daily MEDSS - Meditation, Exercise, Diet, Sleep and Special Hobbies before - this was a timely reminder to actively pursue it too. The exercise to calculate the carbon-footprint also another timely reminder to be more circumpspect about my choices and their impact on the environment - a balance where I already do some good things but I can still incorporate many simple changes to improve. You can calculate your own carbon-footprint here: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/

In my 15 years of corporate work experience, I have interacted with leaders, peers and juniors - diverse and unique. LPOG gave me the language to describe and understand the leadership styles I have seen. It gave me a framework to understand why some teams felt "nicer" to work with and why I felt compelled to do better than others where I did not care so much. The Beingful way of leadership is what I aspire to and knowing this makes me concious of my choices and actions. The section on Cognitive and Affective Empathy was such a revelation - it explained why I tend to struggle with guilt and stress, even when it is completely unnecessary.

From Self to Teams

Working in the software industry, meant working in teams. None of the team concepts were new to me but the LPOD course gave me a new vocabulary to describe what I had experienced over the years. Teams are rarely static - people join, people leave and each change rebalances the structure - so we are constantly forming, storming and norming. And in the midst of all this, the performing shouldn't take a hit but often does. If the team leader has defined the right mindset - the growth mindset - then the team can realign quickly without loss of momentum. The Team Charter should be set at the outset and revisited to keep up as the team matures. I can count on one hand the number of managers/bosses I have had who showed some of these traits. Teams are different from groups - which can be a set of people without much interdependence. I can also recollect times when we operated as a group while we were supposed to be a team. The difference in output is immediately obvious. Lessons from Term 1 particularly Groupthink came back quite strongly.

Leadership in the Real World

From thorough self-reflection, we progressed to famous case studies from businesses that had greed at the core with rotten leadership (Satyam Scandal) to those serving humanity (Stork Home Case). The most fascinating ones to me were perhaps the on that had lives at stake and yet, they got it wrong due to lack of good solid leadership - like the Everest case or the Columbia Shuttle case study. I asked myself what I would have done in their place and it was humbling to realise that my response to the situation may not have been any different. Sometimes technical competence and good intentions are not sufficient to ensure success and safety. There isn't a one-size-fit-all - what might work here may bomb spectacularly elsewhere. It is also equally true that hindsight is perfect. No one truly is in a position to judge others but perhaps we can learn from their failings.

An organization is only as good as its people and their culture and it is shaped by the purpose that usually lives at the very heart of the organization. The purpose is the north star that guides everything that an organization does. When asked about a what makes a good organization, I would have said some half-baked thing about culture and leaders. LPOG has given me a new way of expressing what I have perhaps known, but never articulated well. There are tools and exercies to get strategy and stakeholder management right. Some really basic ideas presented with such flow and clarity that totally altered my perspectives.

From Organisations to Markets

While learning about good leadership, I also was learning about firms, demand and supply, and the invisible hand of the markets. Together Microeconomics and Macroeconomics have given me enough skill that I can now comfortably read any financial newspaper with resorting to a Google search. I understand the role households and firms can play, how various factors can influence demand and supply. For instance, a rise in household income may change their spending pattern which means the demand curve of certain items will shift left while others will shift right. A crucial point in the study of various shifts and movements of the demand-supply and price-quantity graphs was this - that they are beautifully elegant in theory but it is absolutely chaotic in the real world to get quality data that allows you to estimate demand and supply for a few households/firms - let alone the whole market. Preferences, utilities (Hello DMUU!) and indifference curves form a key part of defining the curves but we did not get into those details - as this was our introduction to Economics. The professor very clearly in stated that Economics is more of an art than a science - because of how data is usually extrapolated from a sample and messy with historical context and human interpretation.

Zooming Further Out: The Economy

Through Macroeconomics, I understood GDP, what contributes to it, labour and capital markets. The subject is an ocean and it made for very lively and engaging discussions. The Econland simulation game taught me about policy rates, government spending, unemployment and exchange rates better than any textbook would have. I learnt to distinguish between monetary and fiscal policy. I understood what deficits are and what is surprising is almost how the entire world seems to be running on debt. I struggled to wrap my head around how each of these relates to the other and I have a long way to be able to instinctively answer questions on any of these topics. There is once again no single right answer that solves all issues for economic development. Macroeconomics is influenced heavily by a country's policy and polictics, savings and spending habits.

I learnt about open and closed economies and currencies - how they track the dollar. I now get that ₹20 buys me a whole Munch bar here, while abroad the same converted amount might barely get me a bite. Of course it might be wiser to spend my money on things local to that geography, which still might seem expensive. The discussion on inflation was eye-opening to say the least. Inflation is the salt of the economy. You need a pinch of it to make things work, but too much ruins the dish. It sounds counter-intuitive until you look at human behavior: if money never loses value, people just hoard it under their mattresses. Why spend or invest? But when spending stops, industries stop growing. No one saves in banks, borrowing dries up, and the entire economy grinds to a halt. A fun exercise was for me to see what my first salary from 15 years ago would be worth today and now, dear reader, you can try it too!

The Big Connection

What began as a reflection on my own motivations and choices quickly zoomed out to my family and household, and then further to markets and economies. At the very start of Microeconomics, the professor remarked that Economics is a subject that needs a cool head but a warm heart. Every choice involves an opportunity cost and requires us to weigh trade-offs, but not every choice is made freely. Sometimes, the constraints we face are imposed by circumstances or by decisions made elsewhere. The same holds true for nations: global power structures and the decisions of economic superpowers shape the choices available to others. Understanding an economy, therefore, requires more than analysing numbers and incentives; it also calls for empathy towards those who must make do with the choices available to them. Because ultimately, the development of a nation is not just about the wealth it creates, but also about the opportunities it makes possible for its people.

Two terms in, I seem to have acquired a growing collection of frameworks, models and new ways of looking at familiar problems. The real test will be applying in real life, not simply recognising them in an exam.

Term 3 awaits, with more concepts to learn, more assumptions to question, more assignments, and all the more fun!