One fine afternoon, I and my friend started our journey to the classroom for the first lecture of corporate governance course here in the last term. We started our usual discussion on how we want the course to be (given that it is the last term), how the prof. would be, how much the workload be, given that she will be teaching us for the first time and no one has any idea how she teaches as she has recently joined the institute.
On our way to classroom, walking down the corridor (devoid of any 2nd year student and full of the anxiety of final placements of the batch); my friend notices that the new professor is behind us, possibly towards the same classroom to take the first lecture of her course. He hinted the same towards me, and we came to an instant agreement (rarely arrived at between two MBA grads on any damn topic and that too at a lightening speed!) that we should mark our words and discuss limited stuff in the remaining part of our journey to the classroom. At once I thought why not discuss something really good on Corporate governance and act smart and then I realised that I was suffering from ‘Bounded Rationality’.
Gradually we realised that the distance between the prof. and us was slowly reducing and my friend was continuously keeping a watch on the developments like a manager trying to foresee what will happen in the immediate future. And then we started “moderating” our behaviour to look like ‘normal’, of course we are going to be managers soon and hopefully we have learnt that art by now (we hoped!). But again the reality was far different than what we wished it to be, possibly in our last term we did not have energy or enthusiasm and we were crawling to the classroom (a part of the brain trying to justify the remaining part that we need to attend lectures) so the distance was reducing. At the same time the professor is looking forward to meet the budding managers of tomorrow in the first ever interaction that she would be having with the 2nd year students, so she was walking a little fast, maybe she did not wanted to be late for the first ever opportunity to talk to 2nd year students.
Whatever! The distance was decreasing and again the two of us came to another agreement that we needed to speed up, the classroom doors are now visible and we should be able to reach them well before we have to greet the professor. My friend glances backwards a bit trying to hide the fact that he is continuously checking on where the professor is at any point of time. Front and then Back, front and then back, it is like we are almost there, (it is like I made 5 strong points in the GD and I should be just in the next round of the process), like we are sure our speed was just right to be able to get into the classroom before encountering the professor. We were almost confident that even if we cannot make sound arguments in the case discussions this was too basic for us to fail and that even if we do not know how to calculate the financial ratios we were very sure that we calculated our speed quite accurately. We were mechanically doing the same repetitive job, look front and then back, front and then back, front and then back; sounds something like the routine job at work everyday.
Suddenly we realised that the professor was right there behind us and we could very well wish her a good afternoon just by turning back. At the same time we were puzzled as to how this could have happened and we didn’t even realised, that we did not do the same repetitive task well. We did picked up some speed or at least we thought we did or is it the complacency that has occupied our mind before we even started our managerial carrier. How can the distance reduce to such an extent despite my friend keeping a close tab on the “developments”, the shock and surprise can well be described similar to what the financial world had got when they were hit by the sub-prime completely unaware. Well the ‘right sense’ came to our mind like a ‘bail-out’ package and we turned back and greeted the professor. She smiled and said “Don’t worry guys I am not following you”.
Well she noticed that my friend was continuously keeping a tab on the “developments” and it was rather obvious that we were trying to run away. Anyway we got another ‘bail-out’ and we realised that she was carrying a lot of course handbooks for the class and that we should offer some help on the same. Like our financial industry (after the bail-out), my friend too got new boost of energy and rushed towards the classroom door and kept it open for Mad’m to enter and I decided that very moment that I am going to pen it down...... errr "pen it down" or should i say "type it up"..... whatever !!!
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