I am an alumnus of S P Jain Institute of Management and Research. We alumni were sent a message by the institute announcing the new dean, outlining his resume. The new dean joins in early June the alumni newsletter announced. I thought i would share my musings even if they have less value for the effort. Maybe you too could write to the new dean or could add or subtract from the same.
Dear Dr Ranjan Banerjee,
I write as an alumnus of the school that you are going to lead and we bear with us our best wishes in your new appointment. We from the alumni have been sent your resume in advance, about a month back and are guardedly delighted that it sounds promising. We wish you the very best and pray for success that you lead the place we cherish as our alma mater.
We stand outside the ring placing our trust that the faculty and student body that you will lead is successful in its entirely new chapter, after a long and fairly successful first innings. An innings that will be also difficult to match given its singular accomplishment of retrieving a mofussil and nondescript institute in a tiny chemistry lab, to a place among the respected institutes among business schools in India.
One faculty member described the institute more than two decades ago as a fragile ecosystem, a combustible mixture of ideas, ideals, impossible people all of who are learning, improvising and reinventing all that seems worthy of cherishing. That certainly is the vision and often even with the best of leadership is not easy to accomplish. We would be less informed and wise than the faculty body to highlight the institutes pressing concerns but we might certainly ruminate on what we thought made the institute good if not great. I also humbly state that this might not entirely be what the alumni body think or even agree, so I would not be presumptuous to stake a claim as their voice. This a mere attempt however flawed. I may also accused of having a biased view which in the interests of full disclosure state, that i also served as faculty there. Yet in humility this may be treated as a mere observation that could be viewed as caution at worst or at best unsolicited advice. Your appearance on the stage is a follow up on a great act with a brilliant performance by a masterful player Dr ML Shrikant (though some might stay marred by its extended tenure). All such second acts are difficult to follow as your onlookers may unfairly have a high set of expectations.
Yet we must say that we have all been students of the first innings at what some believe a hallowed place and can look back with some perspicuity about what made the place great (though not all would the term 'great' so indiscriminately). It would be facile to simply say that it was just the earlier dean Dr ML Shrikant who most alumni hold in high esteem if not reverence that made the difference. But that would be just not useful nor fair for you to reflect upon. Neither should you grudge us our devotions to the past as they have been earned with much effort and performance by the institute. We would probably be unhappy if you jettison the entire past as a needless liability for it had great strengths as also big weaknesses. Though these strengths emerged from the personality of Dr Shrikant we shall ascribe them to the institute assuming that its ethos still carries over as a fragrance in its practice however ossified.
I think of the strengths that built the place up especially through its formative years in the nineties was its ability to take calculated risks in carving a niche for itself among the clamor of so many also-rans including several with better pedigree and plentiful resources. Things have not changed significantly and rankings do matter. To begin with the institute performed best when there was a crisis at hand (which was often) especially its turnaround from a loss making unremarkable extension of Bhavans college to a preferred school among students and recruiters. It turned crisis of identity into opportunity and delinked from the university at a time when almost everyone thought it suicidal. It also improvised organizationally to manage with the tiny core faculty body; creating a band of very committed though small faculty to double up as teachers and administrators owning up all aspects of the school and its governance even co-opting the student body into the same. Making the student body own up swathes of governance created a flat organisation and a pull for service delivery performance; it added muscle and numbers; keeping costs low and transparency high. It also managed the service quality expectations as everyone owned up both the weaknesses and strengths in improvising with what was available. Over the years the involvement has declined though not the intent.
In the area of academics the institute thought very radically by overturning the "teaching" paradigm (pouring the venerable vintage into yawning receptacles)to one of 'learning' making both the student and faculty body to simultaneously own responsibility. This made the programme delivery student centric than departmentally delivered parcels. With such an inversion it needed a focus on what paradigm made sense in designing its MBA curriculum. Logically that centre of gravity was found in making course work grounded in decision making than in theoretical rigour of course work offered by disciplines. This also meant more focus on a generalized MBA than niche research driven elective platters that tend to be too focussed and inward looking. With this change the pedagogy shifted from lectures to case discussions and other forms of collective learning and individual reflection. This included reflecting on thinking (or rather thinking about thinking) and pedagogy and rooting for a student body to simply think better or clearly than the mastery of a subject. This also meant that 'learning to lead' and 'working with people' apart from thinking creatively and clearly was not a function of the classroom but more so outside the class room. Efforts were made to align work and rewards to engage students to learn to lead, organise and create their own opportunities. This democratization of learning radically overhauled the power structures that afflict department focussed silos to being anchored almost entirely out of the class room. This process took more than almost a decade, often faltering when it was not almost anarchic; with Dr ML Shrikant leading the charge often at his best. It also meant that courses would be constantly revised to reflect new ideas and concerns and demands of industry rather than just mathematical sophistication of a discipline. These were discussed in faculty groups creating a shared language and engaging more cross functional thinking who would refer to hand offs from other departments which in turn reduced turf battles. One of the less stated ability and one never given credit for was to jealously guard the autonomy of the institute to just those stakeholders committed directly and emotionally to its success i.e principally students and faculty and industry. That meant for a long period keeping donors out of the sphere of influence (it was not entirely unmarred though) as also other stakeholders who might share the success though not necessarily the ideals and values that drove its performance. Managing the governance was a delicate balancing act that given its less visibility was never celebrated nor widely understood. That autonomy was worth fighting for with pugnacity and it needed less Vedanta but more "saam daam dand bhed". It spilled over into policies of appropriations on surpluses before the balance were carefully distributed to sister institutions.
The fact of the matter was that most of these bootstrap innovations were virtues out of necessity for a very long period yet they created a coherence, a shared commitment and a common goal. Lest this sounds too good we might add that there was a heavy price paid also for the constant improvisation and lack of stability. Often it was only another formalism as not everyone was convinced or even capable of handling the new methods. It often discounted the demands it made on faculty that were not patent and glossed over administrative support that was assumed but was limited. Most of the initiatives were not always up to the standards expected but the ideas and intent were a desirable end. Satisficing a requirement became the norm and often it was a compliance than a deep performance. The faculty turnover was its worst kept secret for several years and many were sacrificed at petty altars in the administrative bludgeoning. The administrative staff were the constant bedrock who despite their less glamorous contribution kept up the semblance of continuity. But the model worked despite its formalism. Yet however some felt that over the years it became more mechanical and routinised and inward looking despite its efforts. One felt that the power structures had aged to becoming even geriatric and were like aneurysms despite their best effort to energize and was just the shadow of same. Often in being unbridled in the pursuit of its ideas or opportunities the institute did make choices that were less than desirable and sometimes the ends justified the means. The institute suffered one presumes an ambivalence and shyness to managing its public relations and networking with industry leadership. It viewed it as a delegable function desirable but distant reserved for the occasional conclave or conference. Networking is not about placements or even outshouting competition but building a partnership with considerable stickiness. The institute was also rather weak in its research and consulting practice and had little of it for a significant period of time (given the lack of resources) and when they did start the ball it probably veered not to a synergistic collective purpose but pursue the formalism of publishing. It is debatable how meaningful and relevant they were (a problem most business schools in India suffer from). One presumes that with new accreditation processes the compliance of faculty resources to external norms inhibited its long standing commitment to innovations in curriculum design and delivery. The few resources it had were clearly being overstretched or outsourced in serving its long tail of offerings that would rarely be curtailed even though they presumably don't add to the whole nor contribute significantly either academically or economically.
These musings are not meant to glorify or even indulge us into being stuck in the past but probably hint at the strengths that lie hidden in the institute's many processes and routines that can be more creatively tapped; or even avoid its excesses. I have taken the liberty of penning these on behalf of the many who graduated from its portals and cherish the institute for having contributed in no small measure to what many of them today are; and continue to hold stake in its success. This is neither exhaustive nor entirely without prejudice. I am sure some might have much more to say, add or even deny. For we all believe that the institute needs to be handled with care and engineered to fulfill its destiny however modest. In doing so we believe it needs wisdom and when that runs out; that it would need in ample measure patience, and when that runs out it needs luck "as unmerited mercy unanticipated'! We wish you all the three.
Best Wishes to you and your team!
A Srinivas Rao
Batch of 1989
Well said.
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