Of some cliched lines and succesful undertakings

What a week it has been, A week full of tasks, evaluations, results, assignments and of course of Manthan '09(internal B-fest of IBS-B).

The event which started on a grand note last week with promotions beginning on the 13th, went on with full enthusiasm and fervor atleast from the teams that braved up the academic hardships.

Come 17th and it was time now for the 13 member teams to march in to the auditorium to begin with various events across verticals.

Continuing with where we had left in Tarkash '08, Rakesh and I managed to build a rather strong team this time, for our opertaions vertical 'The King's Gambit'. Well 'strong', i realise can be a qualititative or a quantitative word, its all just relative.

The day unfolded rather inauspiciously with some technical snags of running the video, but that was that of inauspiciousness as the rest of the events went according to schedule that i had prepared on my favorite 'Excelsheet'.

Brijesh came up with these scintillating posters for the vertical, which I have collaged as you can see on the left.

Like with every junior batches, there were quite a few pull-outs this time too and I am pretty sure that the 'Best Managers' might have had a torrid time motivating teams or sometimes even the other way round.

From an individualistic 'operations vertical' perspective, the competition that was on offer among the teams was appreciable, but I guess not enough to win accolades at other colleges. Having said that the top 5 teams were highly competitive and I really liked the spirit each team showed.

Of the obvious differences between Tarkash and Manthan, a major difference I observed is the real life issues of managing people, and at the same time ensure being goal-oriented no matter what. Somehow, I felt managing Manthan was definitely much more a challenge personally.

The mantle of being a vertical head showed me that 'with greater power comes greater responsibility'. Woah, I am getting better and better at cliche-ing things!

Talking about cliched things, over the last week I realised that some of the lines we utter are so bloody cliched. A few on top of my mind that I wish to list are:

• 'May the best team win' - It's just a hope that is hopelessly wrapped in a hope of hopefulness.
• 'Our selection process is fair' - You wouldn't probably find a more corrupt process.
• 'We wish to be part of the team' - I hope they really understand what teamwork is all about.

Coming back to the learnings, Manthan surely gave me an opportunity as a testing ground for my leadership skills. There were a lot of feedbacks, based on which I have some questions and thoughts:

• Is diplomacy an art or science?
• Leadership should never go the reactive way, it is always the responsive model that works.
• Is collaborative leadership a myth ?
• Leaders should always have plans D and E in place, because nowadays its no surprise if plans A, B and C go for a toss.
• Need to understand quick and fast, clear and loud that a leader is a leader because he has a job to do, being goody-goody to everyone is not an option.
• It also becomes easier for the leader to make decisions if s/he is grounded on strong ethical principles.
• I can continue listing but a leader should also know, when to continue and when to stop. Smart ability of disseminating information is a must have quality for leaders.

Wise men have said, that there is always something that goes wrong. Despite anything, I'm gald that the whole event was a grand success and I hope we were able to manage to leave a smile on the lips of our juniors.

Cheers

Sanjay