HBO Folio

I think experience always make a person rich. I am not talking about work-experience and “rich” does not mean rich in monetary terms. It is experience of human natures and behaviors that add value to a person’s perception and thinking. Sometimes I felt that I did not know myself. Isn’t it strange, if someone tells you that he doesn’t know himself? But it is true, people assume that they know themselves but actually they are totally unaware of their inner selves. And I think this is the reason why monks used to spend time in meditation to find innersole. I was also among the people those think that they know themselves very well. But let me have reflection on the HBO course and tell you the story of my walkabout where I met with many incidences and each of them made permanent changes in my character. For me, it was not meditation but experiences of events and learning from those events to explore inner-self.
Most of the managers neglect Human factor in the organization and from my past experience, some always believed in hierarchy. It is India’s biggest automobile company and it perfectly follows hierarchical ordeal structure. In such structure, I found one thing common that some managers are not at all motivating for their team; hide their weaknesses by bootlicking their superiors and expecting same thing from their sub-ordinates. Before coming to AIM, I felt that there must be some definite steps to avoid such kind of team culture. But I couldn’t find the answer; in fact I didn’t get time to find the one. Hence as human tendency, I adapted with the situation but always made my efforts to foster team-communication by arranging team outings etc.
In HBO classes, I not only found answers for these questions but also methods & frameworks to make the organizational change. Now I believe that Human behavior is utmost important part in an organization and carefully developing behavioral skills will be extremely useful. I also understood the importance of Personnel Management and found that it is a systematic and methodical process. Understanding the required change in personal behavior was not necessary and hence Walkabout was a tool for me to make behavioral changes. When I started feeling the workbook, I was intrigued by the written outcome of this assignment. Developing systematic development plan was priority for me.
Walkabout Experience: Working for a social cause was our common goal of the project and we consented on it as a team. But we did not just want to make a single event but we wanted to help charity foundations in longer term. We were sure about our purpose is to apply our skills gained so far in the MBA program to help society. Even though we had common vision, initially we did not agree upon the method by which we could achieve this goal. Even though everybody has the same motive to perform in the best interest of the organization, there are conflicts in the organization regarding few issues. Hence, understanding other person’s concerns is important for an efficient team player. We discussed pros-cons and compared the outcome of each project with the goal that we set forth. Finally we agreed and came out with plan for the program.
Discomfort: Executing the plan was difficult part of the whole project. I wanted to execute the plan early and wanted to make sure that we complete our walkabout ahead of time. I personally feel that I failed in this task to influence people to act early on the project. But another aspect of it was that project measures were not directly measured in term on participation and hence it was difficult for me to force somebody to act proactively. Hence, to influence some one it is required to have connectivity of thoughts and we can also influence someone by our own actions. This was the most important learning that I got for achieving my personal goal of respectable leadership. This can help me in my managerial field in managing team with diverse skills & attitude. Sometimes managers find it difficult to manage young team members who are enthusiastic and sometimes bawdy about their performance.
Experience of CFA Preparation: It was long time back when I studied aggressively and was motivated to achieve something. While preparing for CFA, I experience the “Flow” which we discussed in classrooms. I set out my goal, draw plan, organized it in timely manner so that it won’t affect my MBA studies & executed it successfully. For executing the plan, I had to sacrifice my intimation for parties, boozing etc. I devoted any available spare time for CFA study. I don’t know about results of this examination but it certainly strengthened my self-mastery skills.

How to be more influencial

I applied simple method to check my influential behavior, I don't know if it is a good method or not. Last week in term-break, we went for a trip to Subic, I observed while making decisions about place to go or hotel to stay etc. I was little incompetent in convincing people.
Is it a good observation or method of observation?
I also tried to read few books from library about becoming persuasive by Harward Press.
Sir, I need your help in this area of development. What would you suggest me to improve my influential skills ? Another thing is, I find it difficult to make strong decisions which may hurt people and hence while discussing Wyeth case, I recommended to give people time for improvement.
Also, I want to share little personal change that I encountered and its relation with the Johari window observations. I don't know, but after coming to AIM, I became little more introvert it might be because study load. But my Johari window observations were very strange and made me think that is it a really improvement.
Attributes I selected in Open Spot (Arena) were

adaptable
extroverted
friendly
intelligent
shy

But only "Intelligent" attribute is strongly matching (40%) with the people's observation. Also most of them observed me as "independent" & "bold" I thought myself exactly opposite of these. And hence I tried to relate it with my increased introvert. This is because I wanted to discuss my behavioral change.

HBO Insights

It was the first class of HBO when my learning team had presentation about "What makes Best Employer?", I was pretty excited about the subject content and researched 2 days for understanding different topics in first part of course. It was exciting experience because, it was first lecture and we had no idea about the expectation of Professor and whole class. While preparing for the first seminar, I asked myself what is HBO? is it really "Human Behavior Organization" ? And if it is then why is it so? Is it for me to manage other people or is it to work in some organization effectively. Interestingly as course commenced I understood that it is both ways, it is to manage your team effectively as well as to perform efficiently in an organization.

As course advanced new aspects of behavioral patterns got unfolded, I started relating it with my previous experiences. I also understood the importance of Personnel Management and found that it is a systematic and methodical process. As I worked in both Old and New (decentralized) cultural environment, I used to wonder why my manager behaves like a dictator. Why did he always try to do things in his ways? It also gave frustration to young and enthusiastic team members like me. It was the HBO class in which I understood advantages and disadvantages of both approaches of personnel management. It was not just theoretical experience; professor also asked practical questions like what if employee is simply lazy. As mentioned in first paragraph, it was not just for us to decide what should be done with such employees but it was also directed to us that we should be always be active and energetic in a responsibility based cultural environment.

Wyeth Philippines Inc. (de Carlo) case was very interesting and "take home" was that confident & strong leaders can change organization's future. It was fun when many people tried to do "firework" (even though it was hypothetical), but objective was using power in right direction in right proportion. Only thing I observed that students get drifted away in particular direction where class is not supposed to go. I observed this while discussing "People are Our Great Asset" when students spent lot of time discussing actual entries of Human Resource of a company. Finally Professor intervened and told class that it is just metaphor.