At Kellogg so far

It is now almost three months that my MBA program at Kellogg has begun. So far, things have been very exciting with so much gained. In the midterm exams I scored 100% in two courses (Finance and "Decision Making under Uncertainty") and 90% in the other two courses (Business Strategy and Accounting); but then, it is no big deal - about 50% students in the class score more than 90% in the subject !! So, my performance itself did not excite me much; but, the new concepts I learned and the distinct perspectives and insights I gained in these subjects did enthrall me.

Particularly, the concepts in Finance instantaneously appealed to the natural quantitative and analytical person inside me, and did increase my appetite for more advanced Finance. As I sat through the Finance-1 course and discussed/debated many concepts with the professor, the question that continuously recurred in my mind was "why did I not take up this fascinating subject of Finance earlier?". And, no wonder the Career-Leader assessment (which I took as part of the requirement before the program started at Kellogg) came up with the "Corporate Finance Analysis" as one of the highly recommended post-MBA career paths for me!!

Perhaps, the "Finance guy" was always in me - albeit in a more informal away; as Neelima and I assessed numerous times the finance involved when buying our home - later refinancing the mortgage - and eventually selling the home, when diversifying our investment portfolios in stocks, real estate, and in other resources, when buying or selling our cars, an so on, it was me who raised the capital and did the budgeting while Neelima identified and picked suitable portfolios to invest !!

I won my first three rounds of tennis matches in the Kellogg Tennis club ladder tournament and am due to play the fourth round soon. More than winning, it is always fun playing and meeting new people and making friends as part of this tennis club; I am thrilled to be one in the student community at Kellogg that is ever enthusiastic and ever ready to be part of something that is fun and competitive.

I got elected as my section's academic representative to the Kellogg Student Association (KSA). The secret ballot election did get me majority of votes over my good friend Orlando after a competitive campaigning. While the work as the representative consumes time, I am deeply excited to be part of the body that can make a significant contribution to the academics at Kellogg. While I tried, I did not get selected to positions in the Finance club and one other group. And anyway, my non-selection was a blessing in disguise as I eventually saw the course work and recruiting activities amassed and also found myself somewhat occupied with Aadya's birth and the sale of our home in October.

In a few weeks time, the Fall quarter is coming to an end with our final exams scheduled a week after the Thanksgiving break. I am gearing up to deal with the final exams (I am at the receiving end now, after until more recently being on the other side of the aisle!).

As I travel to Dallas right after the last exam on December 10th, I will have only four days to spend with Vedant before Neelima and kids go to India on 14th to stay there for a while. The thought that I will not be seeing them again until at least March is a bit daunting to me. And it is even more dejecting that the Chicago's insanely egregious temperatures in winter will freeze the time as well!! I only hope that the intense recruiting months of January and February at Kellogg will melt the time faster.

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?

Rarely do we find good friends who make a significant difference in our lives and careers. Even rare are bright friends who give us great books, which can deeply enrich our knowledge and thinking. I am fortunate to find both categories of friends at various stages in my life so far. Most recently Durga Prasad, Mangesh, and Nag gave me three good books to read as I left Dallas and embarked on my journey at Kellogg. The first book I read was "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?" by Louis V. Gerstner.

Lou Gerstner was the Chairman and CEO of IBM from 1993 to 2002, and led its turnaround from the brink of insolvency to the leader in the IT business. Gerstner starts the book with the discussion on how he came about to be chosen as the CEO to lead in the spring of 1993 when most business pundits had written off IBM as one of those fading giants whose time has long passed in the business world. He then discusses a series of critical management and fiscal decisions he had to make to first stem the decline of IBM and then how he had to strategize IBM's revival.

The book provides wonderful insights into the leadership challenges and hard resistance one encounters when trying to transform the culture and thinking and to shift the direction of an institution. Especially, since IBM was perceived to be that huge elephant moving slowly in the technology business world, where the likes of Microsoft, Intel, and other companies were fast changing the rules of the game.

One of the profound questions that the book addresses was, "when the culture at IBM was responsible for its immense growth and unchallenged leadership position in the decades of 50s, 60s, 70s, and in the early 80s, why was the same culture and management style leading to its recent decline?". The book extensively discusses how IBM was founded and built by the legendary Thomas J. Watson Sr., and how his equally legendary son Thomas J. Watson Jr. propelled IBM to the top through the making of mainframe computers. The success of the mainframes made IBM the technology company without a competitor and brought the major share of its revenue. The technological contribution of IBM to the growth of America (and also the world) made people recognize it as a "national treasure". How many non-governmental and/or for-profit institutions can really find themselves being called the pride and treasure of a nation?

But then what happened? Why did IBM start to decline even while it was unarguably still the leading supplier of the mainframes and other technology products. The book provides an astute analysis on how the perception, thinking, and the approach on the customer needs did not adapt to the changes in the market conditions and competitive forces; how the school of thought "build the technologies and the customers will come", which worked during the no-alternative era of mainframes, was continued to be believed at IBM even after the advent of vigorous campaign by Microsoft and Intel (jointly called Wintel!!) that the future is all about desktop computing. While CTOs and technologists at the most of the customer companies of IBM at that time understood and believed that the campaign about desktop computing is not completely true and that the backend computing has much more to offer in the future, IBM's lackadaisical approach to counter the Wintel's campaign did not help things much and eroded its customer base.

Gerstner talks about how he set out to transform the culture to make it more customer centric and orient the thinking to "understand what the customer needs and then build the technologies"; the book provides a detailed account of all the external challenges and internal resistance he faced in trying to bring this change - this is a must read for all of us who know that the most difficult thing for a leader is to bring change in people and in their thinking (but mostly don't know how to achieve that).

Personally, I could also make a connection with the above discussion in the book with my chronic belief that to attain success it is imperative to adapt to one's continuously evolving surroundings and be prepared for any sudden and significant shift in one's situation (in fact, this is the theme of the other book "Who Moved My Cheese" that I recently read on Neelima's behest).

The book also discusses how IBM came about coining the term "e-business", and talks in detail about the future of the e-business. "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?" is a must read for all the technologists as well as the managers. And, no wonder I found it very engaging and enriching as it appealed to both the technologist and the MBA candidate in me.

Arrival of Aadya

Our daughter Aadya (means "Unprecedented" in Sanskrit) arrived on October 9th (Friday), bringing us a bundle of joy. Apparently she brought us some luck too. We had our home in Dallas on market for sale for more than a few months, and slowly we were getting disheartened as no acceptable offers were seen. All of a sudden, the same day Aadya was born and when we all were absorbed in that special episode of life, our real estate agent called me and forwarded a decent offer from a buyer. I had to quickly put things together to negotiate, finalize, and clinch the deal. Fortunately, I could find time to conclude and sign the contract before I left Dallas on Monday.

In September, as the expected due date of 9th October for our daughter's arrival was nearing, I was getting a bit nervous hoping that the baby will wait until October. While it was more convenient for me to plan my travel to Dallas in October than in September because of my tight schedule at Kellogg, the more compelling reason for my hope was different and perhaps a bit romantic !!

Our son Vedant (means "Scholar" in Sanskrit) and both Neelima and myself were all October-born, and no prizes for guessing that we wanted our daughter too to be born in October. Of course, now we see that people do not believe us when we say that it was not a deliberate plan and the "October family" just happened. By the way, Shwetha (Neelima's younger sister) too is an October-born and we certainly want both our kids to get her intelligence, focus, and determination and follow her in her accomplishments.

Here is the picture of Vedant with Aadya on the day she was born. Many of our friends and relatives have appreciated the names to be very beautiful and charming. In fact many have asked us if (and some even assumed) it was me who came up with the names because of my reading and interest in Sanskrit and Telugu literature. So, how did we arrive at these names? It was simple for me while surprising for many. It was Neelima who first thought of the names. I just accepted them as I could not think of any other names more beautiful !!

Three years ago, within the three minutes Vedant was born he was placed in my hands. It was such a peerless joy that I could see the minutes melting away quickly, transforming into hours and then days and then months and years as he grew up fast by the time Aadya arrived. Every moment of my thrill of seeing him crawl the first time, and then walk and speak,and then run and eventually play football with me has been preserved. But, now while I miss him a lot I also feel doubly sad to miss all those special moments with my daughter. These days Neelima and I talk about this a lot and then just feel better that our hard work and sacrifices will certainly create even more larger opportunities for them.

And, what else better can we give to our kids than a solid foundation of our cumulative experience, knowledge, and wisdom, over which they can build greater things for the world to benefit.

An unprecedented honor

It was around 10.30 in the night and I was working seriously on my course assignments. The phone rang and it was my mother from India. I could immediately sense the tremble in her voice due to some surprise or shock, and became concerned. But then, after what I heard form her, it was my turn to be surprised. She said my picture with a profile was just published in the local newspaper that morning (it was morning there in India when she called). My mind went blank for a split second; then it quickly ran through all the wildest possible reasons how in the world
that could happen !!! The funniest thought that came to my mind was whether someone made some mistake in advertising about the missing persons !!!! But then I thought who will even try to publish about me as missing, when everyone in my family knows where and how to reach me in two seconds in this age of technology!! It sometimes fascinates me how fast the brain can process numerous permutations and combinations of information within a split second.

It turned out, my alma mater National Institute of Technology - Warangal (NITW - formerly Regional Engineering College or RECW) ran an article in the newspaper on the distinguished alumni of the institution and they profiled me among the twenty or so such graduates in the last 50 years. NITW is celebrating its Golden Jubilee this year and ran the article with the title "Apoorva Medhavulu" which means "Unprecedented Laureates" (see below the article).

I could not but contain my thrill for a moment on such a rarest of rare honor. I could realize that if I felt that way, how much my parents must be on the top of the clouds. My mother told me that she cried out of joy when my father first noticed and showed the article to her. Next day, as I flew to Dallas just in time for the arrival of our baby, Neelima and her mother looked up the publication on the Internet and were very excited. And, what a thrill as this happened just the day before our daughter Aadya (means "Unprecedented" in Sanskrit) was born. In the past week, as things settled down and I returned to Chicago, I wrote to the Dean of NITW how much I was elated and equally humbled at the honor. I feel I do not yet deserve such a distinction to be placed among stalwarts, as I have so much more to accomplish. Every institution and gathering that I went so far to explore, I always found great minds and inspiring personalities; compared to them I am just a midget.

But, now that the words have been spoken and the recognition has inadvertently been granted, it has become my responsibility to live up to the expectations and show the path to the future
alumni. It is such a heavy burden to carry and its weight can be felt by only those who earn it!!!

Want to be a professor or a student?

How does it feel to be a student after being a professor? How does it feel to do homeworks, assignments, and projects after being a professor? These were the kind of questions, in different variations, I face these days.

My response surprises majority of my questioners. It is much harder and more challenging to be a professor than to be a student. And it is much more fun to be a student !! Of course, my current fun filled experience as a student is certainly augmented by an extraordinary student life environment created at Kellogg.

But in general, what is so difficult about being a professor? After all, teaching is not that hard. In the past five years, whenever I tell people that I am (was) a professor, more than 80% of the time they ask me, "what do (did) you teach?". Only the awared ones, rather rarely, would ask me, "what is (was) your research subject?". People often tend to attribute the job of a professor to only teaching classes. There were several occasions when my own friends, relatives, and acquaintances said, "what a cool job you have with no pressures and hassles...you just have to teach classes and spend rest of the time with the family....you get so much vacation including the summer...and so on". And, in fact majority of students think the same about the professor. I think the opinion is formed as they see only the frontend - what the professor does in class in front of hundreds, while they are not aware of the backend role - what the professor and the team does in his/her research lab. In my career as a professor, I saw that I was spending 75% of my time and efforts on my research program, 20% on teaching, and 5% in administrative activities and service to the scientific community. Many do not realize that a research lab run/led by a professor is like a start-up company. While young faculty are given some seed money to start the research lab, they are responsible to raise money through grant writing and industry collaborations to build and financially sustain their research programs. I am only understating the challenge when I say that only 1 out of 10 grant proposals are funded by the federal funding agencies (NSF, DARPA, NIH, etc) or the industry research consortiums (SRC). And all researchers - young & experienced, from top tier institutions & not so great schools, alone & collaborative teams - have to compete for the grant money. That makes the money raising part of the research program most challenging and that consumed a significant portion of my time and efforts.

As the inputs (finances) will not flow unless until a credible research program is built through valuable outputs (quality publications and innovations), it becomes imperative to find good problems, solve them, and publish the work. This in turn requires the assistance of quality graduate research students (PhD and MS students), which is always a kind of gamble. I have never come across a professor who has not burnt his/her hands in recruiting a PhD student. When a prospective PhD student is smart and intelligent, we often find the student wavering or undependable or lackadaisical. And, if the student is enthusiastic about research and is determined and hard working, we often find the student lacking the required intellectual capabilities. Even if we find someone with the desired attributes, we often find them lacking good soft skills (communication and writing skills) making it hard for the professor to walk the student through the research quagmire.

Rarely do we find an ideal student, and when we find, it is a great pleasure to advise and lead such students. Among the dozen or so students I advised in their theses/dissertations I was unlucky to get only a few great students. A world renowned researcher once told me that it is much more worse to have a bad PhD student than to not have a PhD student at all. I learnt the
lesson only the hard way. A few bad research students costed me much more than they could ever realize. And, perhaps my soft nature in hiring and firing did contribute to the cost.

There are many more ingrained challenges in a professor's job that is hard to explain in this space. For example, how to find a good research problem/project that can be acceptable to the scientific community and that can further enrich the ever growing body of knowledge? (no one tells you what to pursue and more importantly what not to - you have to make the call). Who are the right people, across the world in academia and industry, with whom one can build successful collaborations or partnerships? These are but only a few of the several challenges that many times we find overwhelming to handle.

Having experienced the above, I find it a bit relaxing to get into the role of a student. Of course, one cannot stay as a formal student forever and is eventually required to take up a job (perhaps for the simple reason that one has to feed the family and pay the bills !!!). I indeed look forward to taking up a much more challenging career after my MBA and continue to be an informal student, as I believe that every profession demands one to be a constant student of the knowledge and the surroundings.

Leadership and Perception

During one of the events in the CIM, the 77 MBA candidates in our section were surveyed with questions on leadership and self-assessment. Q1: How do you rank yourself in terms of leadership ability? (it was left open for our interpretation as to the base population for comparison). Only when every one of us had written down our response we were presented the next question. Q2: Now, how do you rank your leadership ability, compared to everyone in this classroom? As I placed myself in the top 25% category for Q1 and in the average category for Q2, I was curious how my classmates perceived themselves.

Here are the results gathered from the survey:

While I could see that the majority of my fellow MBA candidates responded to successive questions the same way I did, the results surprised me in several aspects. There is no doubt that every one who was admitted into Kellogg exhibited strong leadership qualities at some time or the other and are usually considered to be the top candidates in the world. Then, what made the majority of candidates place themselves in top 25% or in the average categories instead of in the top 10% category?

One of the main sociological concepts we are being taught here are the biases (due to the Availability heuristics) that impede the ability to make sound decisions. In short, the availability bias clouds the judgement as the mind quickly recalls only recent experiences or any information strongly imprinted in the memory and tends to ignore more valid and wider information, and also tends to be insensitive to the base comparison rates. For our leadership experiences, we tend to recollect any personal experiences we had at work or in other activities, and relate them to the outcomes. Most likely, these individual experiences would have involved either a team of competent people with strong views or a complex task and/or a situation assigned by superiors based on the individual's perceived capabilities. And at least for me, my failures have made a far more significant impact on my mind than my successes. As we tend to judge ourselves based on the outcomes from those challenging situations, we may be rating our leadership abilities a bit conservatively.

But then as I write this, an even more fundamental question is pricking my mind. Is there one and only definition for leadership? Was it not possible that the 77 people perceived the question of leadership in 77 different ways? For example, one might have unwittingly provided leadership at work or at personal activities or in dealing with social responsibilities. One might have consciously made efforts to overcome a personal tragedy or might have helped others to overcome their losses, without realizing that all these efforts constitute one or other form of leadership. The experiences can be either deeply personal involving only self or clearly plural involving multiple entities. While each one of us certainly has a large number of experiences constantly accumulated and stored in our mind as a large mass, we tend to throw only a smaller mass for others to catch.

It is always almost impossible to convey our experiences to others in the exact form as we see them (of course, if I can do that then they no longer will be "my own experiences" but rather will be "everybody's experiences" !!!). Besides, we tend to make minimal efforts in conveying our abilities and experiences, as we overestimate (because of the Illusion of Transparency) the extent to which our thoughts are understood by others. And, undoubtedly the predominant usage of many modes of asynchronous communication (such as emails, blogs, voice mails, text messages, etc.) instead of the synchronous modes of communication (such as face-to-face, direct telephone, etc.) is exacerbating this illusion.

Complete Immersion in Management

The CIM has finally come to an end. These past three weeks have been extraordinary. I cannot imagine there is any other better way to start the intensive two-year program at the Kellogg School.

We had a great deal of fun......each of of us were made to memorize the names of the rest of the 76 members in our section (Jive Turkeys) within the first week through namegame and other activities. We did paint our faces and wore the turkey attires and competed with the other seven sections in the cheering competition !! It was like being in a football stadium cheering at the peak of the voice.....the instructions were clear...if you do not lose your voice by the end of the day, you did not stretch your lungs enough !!!!!!!!

And then came the Amazing Race competition. I volunteered to be part of the Evanston team, which is responsible to run all over the city from one clue station to the other as fast as it can. Perhaps, I was overenthusiastic and overestimated my abilities to run long distances at a faster pace. I could have chosen to be on the Northwestern team (which has to run all over the university campus chasing the clues). Though I usually run a lot, I was amazed to see the speed of the other team members and found it hard to keep up with them after the 5th or 6th station. In the race, at each station the team could get the next clue only after all the team members reach the station and are accounted for. And, it felt bad as I was slowing down the team. But then the surprising thing happened. Marcelo, for all his agility and speed could have easily stayed ahead of the team. Instead he slowed down and stayed behind me through the rest of the race and kept encouraging me to run without stopping. At the end of it, I could not help but admire the team spirit among the members who didn't even know each other a couple of days earlier. The Amazing Race truly turned out to be an amazing experience for me.

The Section Showcase and the CIM Olympics were great fun in preparing, strategizing, and executing each and every bit of the competition as one team of 77 members.

In the midst of all this, the Leadership in Organizations course started with daily 3-hour classes for two weeks. With its demand for extensive reading and case studies, people were just waiting for the course to come to an end. But, it was a great learning experience with deep insights into building and leading effective teams, biases and flaws in decision making processes, influence tactics, negotiation strategies, and strategy for implementing changes in organizations. The legoman exercise was truly an experiential learning. Our team did well in using all the 40 minutes allocated for developing the strategy and in division of labor, and finally used only 2 minutes and 3 secs for executing the strategy. The important lesson the class learnt from the experiences of all the teams was that the execution time is inversely proportional to the planning time, and with the execution time being much more expensive than the planning time in the real world, it is absolutely imperative to plan well before the actual implementation starts.

That our section won the overall CIM championship was a nice icing on the cake. Is winning a habit? Because, the Turkeys section have won the championship four times in the last five years, and they came 2nd the only time they lost. Some say, it is not about winning or losing but more importantly about learning. But, we learn from winning as much as we do from losing, if we pay attention and not get lost in the euphoria. Winning presents the chance to build further and improvise the strategy and gives the confidence to execute the strategy.

I am here to learn and also win by reaching my objective. The new quarter begins on Monday, and I am all set to explore the arts of accounting, finance, business strategy, and management decisions. It is going to be twice the excitement for me with the expected arrival of our daughter in the next few weeks !!!!!!

Opportunity and timing

Neelima and I felt ecstatic at the first moment we received the admission confirmation from the Kellogg School of management. And then the very next moment we sensed a strange sweet and sour feeling; may be it was the nervousness trying to abate the excitement. The reason...we were pregnant and our second kid is due in October !!

We knew we worked so hard for over an year for admission into the Kellogg School and we knew how much we wanted it, and that we will not miss the opportunity at any cost. But, there were so many questions; how will we take care of Vedant and handle the arrival of new baby? Will the move to the Chicago area make things easy or difficult for us and the kids? What will we do about Neelima's job in Dallas that she likes so much? How do we take care of selling the home and cars? What about finances? If I move alone, are we ready to make sacrifices in living apart for two years? If so, can Neelima handle both kids while I am slogging it out at school?

Perhaps, it would have been a lot easier to sort out things, had we been not on the way for our second kid. But, could we have afforded to wait for a longer time for our second kid and get pregnant only after the admissions process was decided either way? Perhaps not.

One thing I had learnt early in my highly-strenuous academic career (of course, I was lucky to get an excellent mentor who explicitly advised me in this regard) was to not postpone any personal happenings that bring joy for the sake of something in career that is not guaranteed. In the research career, the percentage of rejections or failures is disproportionately higher than the success rate, and possessing an anchor in personal life undoubtedly helps to remain sane !!! I have seen someone not getting married or not having kids at all while working hard to get either tenure or promotion or something else. I believed that if I fail in worst case to accomplish whatever I set out to get, at least I should have some beautiful things left with me to not feel devastated.........and, only Neelima and I know how much correct it proved out to be in our life !!

Often people are shocked when I tell them that eleven years ago when I had to choose between the girl I liked (and intended to marry) and the ambition to pursue an advanced degree (PhD), I was clear in making the decision. I was sensing that the personal relation was putting up a roadblock in what I wanted to pursue and so did not hesitate to let it go.

Did I repeat the same thing again now when I left behind my family in Dallas and moved to Evanston alone? In fact, this time I was very hesitant and concerned to leave Neelima and Vedant in Dallas. But for the strength and determination of Neelima and the unflinching support of her parents and her sister, I could not have done it so easily. More than me, Neelima was particular that I should take up this opportunity and that we should make things work out in our favor. I was lucky to have the family that understands the importance of this transition. All the credit goes to my in-laws for alleviating the troubles in our transition.

The point is, opportunity rarely shows up when the time is right for you. You have to make the time and things work out for you when the opportunity is at the door. Because, the possibility of the opportunity returning to you the second time is as rare as the lightning striking twice at the same place. I believe that one has to decide (on one's own) what is most important and puruse it with focus, quickly securing the things that one cannot live without and leaving behind the rest.

As we made this transition, Neelima and I are still looking to answer some of the questions we faced months ago. But in this process of transition, we certainly evolved stronger and wiser, and are better prepared to face the upcoming challenges.

Why an MBA after PhD?

Or, why an MBA when you have a good career going on right now with PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering?

These are the questions I have been facing consistently in the past few months, since I had decided to resign my job as a professor/researcher and join Kellogg School for my full-time MBA program. These were the questions put to me not only by the Kellogg admissions interviewer, but also by several friends, colleagues, family members, and now by several fellow students at Kellogg. Of course, I could sense that many who asked me were doing so more out of curiosity and amazement than out of any intention to discourage me.

Every time the questions were put to me, I think I was able to justify the purpose. But then, I could not help myself wondering what ultimately am I looking for here in my journey in this new area.

As it is hard for someone, who had lived his/her entire life in only one small region or even in one country, to visualize the life in other parts of the world and it is difficult to understand and appreciate the culture, the beliefs, and the lifestyle of people from other far away places, it is natural for people in very different fields of research and management to not understand each other's work culture, style, and purpose.

But for me, who has just stepped out of the field of research after an intense twelve years of constant exploration and publication and entered the field of management, it feels that I am only travelling within the same world from only one hemisphere to the other. As one develops a global perspective after travelling to distant and distinct places, I too hope to attain more clarity in what I vaguely sense for now that I am only travelling from one hemisphere of research career into an another hemisphere of management field, and that they are not two different worlds but are only two hemispheres of the same world.

As I face the question of why an MBA degree after a PhD and a long career of research in technology, something struck me in my very first week at Kellogg. The very first case study that we did in the first week of very first course (Leadership in Organizations) was the analysis of the decision process at NASA that led to the disaster of the Challenger space shuttle launching in 1986, and the very next case study we did in the same week was about the decision process at NASA that led to the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003.

Come to think of it, the people at NASA involved in these decision making processes were the smartest people with highest technical calibre and with advanced degrees in Engineering and Sciences. Yet, the post-mortem of the process revealed flaws in the decision making at various levels. It showed how engineers/scientists, however smart they are, are unaware of their own flaws in the decision making process. So, I believe the analyses justify even more why a researcher/scientist with a PhD must have a good understanding about leadership and decision making, especially if that someone is bound to lead organizations and make critical decisions. Take my word, attributes necessary for providing good leadership and making sound decisions are not taught in most engineering or science programs.

So, my new journey has begun and I look forward to travelling through the many horizons in this new hemisphere.