A Teacher Like Her

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Whenever she entered the classroom to teach us Marketing, my colleagues at IE School of Human Sciences and Technology (HST) used to hold their seats tight to accumulate every drop of learning she extended to us. We didn’t learn just marketing in her classes; we learnt life-skills, attitude, generosity and much more. Her energy, her statements, her acuteness is marvellous. I am privileged and blessed that I learnt from you, Professor Ana Rumschisky. Your contribution to my life is a grace, and I would never be able to pay this debt ever.

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In India, there is a very popular adage in the Sanskrit language “Matha Pitha Guru Deivam”. The translated word for word, it is, “Mother Father Teacher God”. The meaning of this adage is the greatest truth, and the order in which one should offer reverence. The phrase is a fundamental tenet in existence from the time of the Vedas and beyond and represents the hierarchy in which one should respect these entities.

First comes the mother (Matha or Mata) who gives birth to the child, thereby bringing us as a child into this world. Next comes the father (Pitha or Pita), because it is the mother who knows the truth about the father and she points us to the father. The mother and father then take us to the teacher (Guru), and it is the guru, through his or her teachings, points us to God (Deivam or Devam). Here God represents the consciousness or self-awareness or our real self.

You have genuinely awakened the consciousness and self-awareness in us!

You accommodated a thousand failures of mine, and yet you foresee the other side of mine, which is about to realise. I believe your words as much as I believe in myself. Your everlasting impression on my life will reflect on my leadership tomorrow and forever. I am your lifetime student, and I am blessed of being one.

Your words are a flair of nectar that quenches even the dead morale. Your experiences are rare to learn and practice upon. I bet no one can ever forget your pieces of advice and thoughts. The passion and intention behind everything are crystal clear, and it makes a clear impact with a punto. 

You are not just a distinguished and incredible teacher, you are an amazing human!

 

Long live, Prof Ana. We Love You All! 🙂

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10 Months, 10 Things — All About IE

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In the past ten months, I persisted 54 Group Projects, 42 Subjects, 11 exams and an unknown number of individual tasks to proudly earn my Master at IE Business School. As someone asked me, “How good IE is?,” and I loftily replied: “how good are you?”

Nothing comes easy and what comes easy has no glory. It was a big sacrifice to leave my job, staying away from parents for so long and keeping a sharp eye on every Euro I was spending. Today and forever, I can proudly announce that I took a bold decision and it is set to transform my life endlessly.

It was not an easy journey at all but I fought well, I survived, and I earned what I deserved.

10 months in the Mecca of Human Science and Technology, and I have gained 10 life learnings:

Go Beyond: You have to push every limit you set for yourself to be successful. Success doesn’t lie where you think it is, you have to go beyond. One step further, and one step more until you’re unbeatable. One more shot, one more improvement, one more chance to be irreplaceable.

I woke up every day to fought the great battles against my own limitations. To push myself beyond what I considered is the limit. I puked, I cried, I made horrible mistakes; that’s how I learnt, and I shall continue to learn all the way.

Collaborate: Edward Everett Hale quoted, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” If I have to sum up my whole IE learnings in one word, it would be, “Collaboration.” There is no force mightier than collaboration. You may walk alone a few steps successfully, but you will never reach far enough, I can guarantee it. I have seen untrained people collaborating and winning, I have witnessed extraordinary people falling apart and losing. People who are not team-players are just not good enough!

Tough Love: Is not it true to find what you love and let it kill you? People often ask me why you love IE so much and I answer them, “Why not to love something I sought with all my heart, what made me strong enough to face any reckless obstacle in my life, what challenged me to embrace difficulties to rise.” As Valeriia Nikolaienko, my philosophical coffee date and good-friend told me that IE made her daring enough to make her hands dirty in any damn thing even she doesn’t know about. Everything seems possible now.

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No Ordinary: We all are born ordinary, but it is up to us to make a choice not to die ordinary. As Nelson Mandela said, “There is no passion to be found in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” It is not just about life, it is about work as well. There is no passion to be found in settling for the work that is less than the one you are capable of producing. At IE, I entered as an ordinary student, but I walked out with the potential to be extraordinary in whatever I shall do in my life.

Know Thyself: Life doesn’t give us many opportunities to know ourselves in depth, our values, capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. To be a great leader, you must take time to actualise and practice it. To harness the best potential of your team, you must know thyself. It starts with you, to lead with integrity, to set an example that others will follow.

At IE, you should know your strengths to survive on difficult group tasks. To turn your weaknesses into opportunities and become successful. I have seen some fantastic transformations happening around, and it was inspirational to learn from peers.

Work Until It Is Done: At IE you don’t work on your projects until it is the dusk, you work until it is done! Hard work has no replacement but working hard is not enough if you wish to stay ahead. You have to be creative, collaborative and consistent regarding your efforts. The rule is simple, you have to give your 110%. There is a stage when your efforts become your luck. Especially, when you have to compete against exceedingly best people around. Define your luck with your work.

Re-think, Re-evaluate, Re-design: Challenge what they call the best, the best is yet to come. Re-think what is prevailing, re-evaluate what are the standards, re-design what should be optimised. IE is entrepreneurial, we reject what is consistent, we reject what is mediocre.

Learn Forever: You should only stop learning when you die, I wish there would be the scope of carrying some books to the grave. A minute of free time after IE experience drives me crazy, I crave to make every second worth of learning something new. Never let anything to stop you from learning every day, it should not be a need, it should be a deeply ingrained habit.

Diversity is Love: 31 students in a class representing 26 nations, it was a dream come true. We built our own nation, a nation of nations. A neverending bond defined by love and gratitude. If I write my story about these flawless people, words will fall apart. Let me hide those tender feelings into the safe of my heart forever because few things can never be expressed but to be felt, eternally. All I do, to love you, MRCB O2.

Time Flies: As my friend, Paco said in his closing ceremony speech, “It was the year that went with the lightning speed.” We were so busy with work that we never realised that our golden days together at IE are over. That’s life! Nevertheless, we are IE family forever.

To end this note, I wish to reiterate an excerpt from my INFLUENCE AND PERSUASION assignment:

“Add value to seek value. Everything that is considered the best is scarce.” – Sourav Raina  

……..so is IE Experience.

 

IE Forever!

 

Why is learning more important than grades?

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When I got the admission call from IE Business School, it was a dream come true to study with extraordinary colleagues in one of world’s best business school. Soon I realised it is not easy to be a part of the best place; you have to sacrifice all your comfort to get going, to perform and to climb the Gaussian curve. Everything is designed to drill down the abilities of students to perform under pressure and not to break down during extreme stress which I call “Puking Moments.”

“Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.” – Edward de Bono

The war of grades became so fiercely that the advantage of diversity, lifetime friendships and sense of collaboration got overruled. Sooner, I realised to be a part of the race that ends where it starts and not doing well means resentment and depression. Having mixed grades in the first term motivated me to go for better grades in the second term, and I scored the best possible grade in all four subjects for which the results are declared as of now. To introspect and justify grading, I went through the subjects again and realised that I completely missed the learning in a subject for which I was graded the best, and it was self-depreciating to defend my knowledge versus my grade. All the way, I found that I just tricked better to score a good grade and it does not reflect my intelligence all the way in this matter.

“Grades measure your performance in school, while intelligence measures your performance in life in general.”

Good grades make you feel nice, but at the same time, they give us an illusion of being intelligent and proficient in a subject and bias our point of view and process of learning. Whereas learning generates intelligence and intelligence measures your performance in life. We lose too many talented people by defining intelligence through exams that are wholly inadequate and constricting. Your education may become outmoded in next five years, but your attitude, your connections and your learnings will be lifelong. Remember, nobody gives a damn about your marksheets more than YOU during an interview. As my program-director at IIM Calcutta said during the closing ceremony, “These certificates are just pieces of paper, you yourself hold the key to your success.”

Organisations need leaders, collaborators and team-players who can build it together to last. Afterall, competition is not about building through copying others but to improve your offerings to stand-out and become a source of inspiration. As Zen Shin said,

“A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms.”

 

5 Timeless Books to Read in 2018

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If reading books are one of your new year resolutions, I assure you that you have made the best decision of your life. In this world where attention is the new scarce, you may find it a lot boring but this is the luxury not everyone can afford.

Books are timeless, but there are books that are relevant after thousands of years of their origin and they are going to be relevant till the universe becomes irrelevant itself.

Here are 5 timeless books I recommend this month:

 

The Bhagavad Gita:

It is not just a religious scripture, it is a way of life. It is far more important to read it in the language you understand rather than enchanting “Shalokas” in Sanskrit.

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” – The Bhagavad Gita

 

Meditations

Meditations is a collection of 12 books written by Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who’ll introduce you to Stoic philosophy, the concept of logic, self-discipline and give you faith that the course the world runs is a good one.

“People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.” -Marcus Aurelius

 

Man’s Search for Meaning:

Man’s Search For Meaning details holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s horrifying experiences in Nazi concentration camps, along with his psychological approach of logotherapy, which is also what helped him survive and shows you how you can – and must – find meaning in your life.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl

 

 

The Diary of a Young Girl

It is a story of feelings of a 14 years old girl who died of  Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!” – Anne Frank

 

The Old Man and The Sea

It is written by Ernest Hemingway, that is enough….

“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” 
― Ernest Hemingway

 

Feed(me)back if you enjoyed reading them: sourav.raina@student.ie.edu

 

 

10 great quotes to celebrate “World Kindness Day”

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Kindness starts within, how do we treat ourselves in a very moment of time & thus it reflects how we see others. A smile; a word; a gesture of kindness, can do more than we can imagine. A kind heart captivates love & gratitude, it attracts happiness & free us to experience the ecstasy of selflessness.

Start with a note to yourself, no matter how small it is, it matters.  A morning wish; to offer the lift; to share a good thought; to make someone smile, everything counts.

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“A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

— Saint Basil

“A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.”

— William Arthur Ward

“How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time.”

— Morgan Freeman

“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” 

— Henry James

“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and blind can see”

— Mark Twain

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.” 

— Joseph Joubert

“There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.” 

— Dalai Lama

“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”

— William Wordsworth

“The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in the prayer.”

— Mahatma Gandhi  

Perform a random act of kindness for two minutes a day, you can actually retrain your brain to be more positive. Kindness is contagious, it comes back with added happiness and contentment.

Happy Kindness Day! 🙂

Event: Branding building in the age of cognitive overload

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Since Professor Richard Thaler has got Nobel in Economics for his theory about “Exuberance is Rational,” it is sort of introspection for me to sit and re-look the concepts of marketing I know. I always perceived myself as an irrational customer, that’s why I was reluctant to pay the maintenance fee for 1 year at CR7 CRUNCH when I am about to use it for 9 months. Yes, Eli (MRCB Partner in crime) found it weird, and I kept my point explaining the concept of rationality.

Prof Thomas Ramsoy did answer my question in a beautiful way that how important it is for managers and academicians to collaborate and work to achieve the purpose of grabbing “attention” of customers in the times of cognitive overload.

Neuromarketing is indeed a beautiful invention of cutting-edge technology to analyze what a consumer never shares. It indeed tells us how a consumer “behaves” in a particular situation without even consciously intended to. Learning about the brain always makes me inquisitive that how capable it is, thanks to my association to positive psychology.

It was an informative session from an eminent professor, who is also the founder of Neurons Inc, revealing the exciting facts about brain and how it is targeted in the world of marketing. In a race of seizing the pie of a customer’s market-share, how brands end up without even getting noticed.

There is no tunnel with a single way, while the time is limited and the customer is impatient. It is the matter of a couple of seconds, in which customer makes its purchasing decisions. Challenge is to focus on direct emotions, not just liking.

Nevertheless, there is a lot to learn for marketers from Neuroscience, and it is the time to “re-search” the subconscious!

Tough Love

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If continued working with Asian Paints, today I would have completed 6 years of professional journey. It is wonderful to be at IE and starting a new adventure with hugely talented & phenomenally diverse bunch of people on earth. Sometimes, I can’t even believe that it is happening and yes, it is profoundly happening now.

Starting the first day at Segovia, a World Heritage Site by UNESCO,  is famous for its cathedral, alcázar castle and its aqueduct. It is also renowned for its Romanesque art and many other outstanding buildings, including monasteries and convents. One of these convents, the Convent of Santa Cruz la Real, is currently the headquarters of IE University campus just outside the city walls in the Eresma River valley. A 12th-century building which was personally commissioned by Queen Isabella, whose figure sculpted in wood appears praying together with her husband.

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The Dean, Mr. Lee Newman commenced his powerful speech about IE’s believe in dynamic learning in a continuously changing world, and infusion of “Change is attitude” DNA among its students. To “TOUGH LOVE,” and strive to bring out the best possible; (H)umanly, (S)ocially and (T)echnologically. It was already quite clear that it is going to be a tough year ahead. To challenge the limits and GO BEYOND.

IE is not traditional, and it is never going to be, it is the Business School of today!

It is the place where technology and humanity meet to create remarkable scientifically proven facts. It is amongst few places on earth where women outnumber men, where the student to faculty ratio is unbelievable, where the whole world studies in a country.

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Precisely, IE School of Human Sciences and Technology is the home of 357 meticulously chosen students from 67 nationalities, who can speak 32 languages, who represent the world’s best organizations and possess the capability to become the future ambassadors.

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IE demands better than the best! You work after you are done with your work. Every day begins with a challenge to give the best shot. I heard that people start in nice suits and end up in Jeans and T-Shirts. That’s TOUGH LOVE!

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…..till the next BLINK, proud MRCBian! 🙂

 

 

 

How “Market-ing” is Evolving in Digital Era

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As the market-ing entered into the digital era and thus continuously evolving its concepts. Marketers have to re-look and re-arrange the strategical inputs to co-create the whole thing. Unsurprisingly, marketing has adopted the process of digitalization at its best to understand and connect the customers, thereby creating the superior value propositions.

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In the digital world, communities are the new segments & brand-advocacy is the new customer-loyalty. Customers are socially connected and they find themselves in a better position to believe the recommendation of a stranger rather than organizations. Such communities serve as a medium of the noiseless decision-making process and refrain from falling into the trap of luring advertisements. Today, consistently communicating and maximising touch points do not necessarily translated into the desired results. On the other hand, a calculated attempt of winning a customer can result in a better return. With increasing mobility and connectivity, this is the challenge that marketers have to come up with.

In the era of traditional marketing, customer loyalty was somehow considered as customers retention and “word of mouth” was restricted within a group or area. The term is now evolved as “Brand Advocacy,” to let the customer endorse a product or service in a better-connected world and this is crucial to the success and failure of the product or service. Its importance increases with increasing trends of communities and especially when it is unlikely to influence the decision-making process of today’s customer.

It brings a change to the earliest and widely used framework to describe the customer buying process is AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action). Derek Rucker has proposed a modification of AIDA that he calls the four A’s: aware, attitude, act and act again. Four A’s further modified by Philip Kotler: aware, appeal, ask, act and advocate, to make them more relevant in connectivity era. The terms, “act again” & “advocate,” clearly signify the target area of marketers.

 

Young & Productive: Focus in Social Disruption

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Speaking to young minds is an exceptional experience, fiercely energetic and eager to learn. They unusually figure out the directive path with steak eye & always curious to question. It happened to be at Lovely Professional University last month while speaking to around 400 grad students.

Today the world is evolving in an entirely different way. While it is modified to interact socially with the personification of digital, emotions are reshaping. Bombardment of over-information has kept people busy and ignorant to what really needed to learn and what should be avoided entirely. Just feeding our mind with overload doesn’t mean to be a worth of knowledge. It is the biggest challenge for gen-next how to organize the information and filter it as per its significance. Posting on Facebook about changing the world doesn’t help, apart from ‘virtual contentment,’ which is a new kind of disguise.

To push forward and challenging the status quo needs conventional but intelligent approach, books are still brilliant regarding information dissemination and logically reason the process of thinking. The Internet is helping disastrously, not because it is bad, but it has made to engage people smartly in a useless way and to make money out of it. I, somehow, find it better to disengage uniquely by uninstalling social media apps and login via laptop only. Just to keep a smartphone nearby, decreases the efficiency of a human brain by 10%.

There is a lot more needed to change the world, and the good news is we, all, are blessed with the ability to do so. Figure out, what is really important and how should it can be achieved & how really it is going to contribute to making a difference. Start it with a random act of kindness and develop the ideas of future, involve everyone without distinguishing, read WHY NATIONS FAIL by Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson.

Relying on others fail people more frequently than to get up and take the baton of responsibility, to put more than required and constantly. There is no innovation yet so effective, to make a human more capable against his willingness to dream and work hard to achieve.

P.S. Blog is not aligned to my core profession but human-factor is the basis of existence.

Book Review: “Roohaniyat”- The Book of Soulfulness

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Life is unusual!

Sometimes it takes all the beautiful people away from you and sometimes blesses you with equally loving people. Our friendship prospered in the phase where friends could turn foes. A man with such wisdom, in tender age, is what made me his fan before even knowing “Roohaniyat.”

There is something great about Roohaniyat; it makes this boy bleed his heart out, to cherish the sheer essence of poetry, to make words fall for his pen. Hindi poetry is rare, so the writers of it. The most beautiful thing about Roohaniyat is that it has been written in flawlessly uncomplicated words, which can be well-understood, even to a ‘not so poetic‘ girl. 😉

To review such a good work is obviously not my cup of tea, but I would still rate it 4.5/5. 0.5 goes to the probability of a stereotype-judgment & to let him work even harder in life.

P.S. Next time if you go to his clinic for a root-canal, do ask him to sing his soothing poetry, instead of Anesthesia.

“Roohaniyat” is available on amazon.in. Grab a copy!