We digress and must return to the subject of this blog, which is based on the premise that business, its administration and hence the study of business administration can also be perceived as very simple stuff.

The intention is definitely not to undermine the past or ongoing work of many great minds in this field, but only to highlight the fact that an elegant view helps in making sense of what goes around us in the world of business. Just to clarify, Wikipedia describes elegance as beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity!

Anyone who has ever attended school would know that much of Physics can be understood by Newton’s three laws of motion. Likewise, it is my opinion that a fundamental equation of business helps us understand much of it. And, no prizes for guessing, here it is: Revenue – Cost = Profit.

At first glance, we can bucket major areas of management studies into either a revenue or a cost focus, though there would be elements in them which would qualify for classifying into the other focus as well.

Incidentally, this is similar to the way faculty are organized at IIM A; they have a primary and secondary area each. For example, strategy and marketing could qualify to be primarily revenue drivers whereas operations management, management of IT and Organizational Behaviour could be the key drivers to sustaining cost competitiveness.

The underlying desire in this experiment of classification is to see whether every business problem could be looked at in terms of understanding which drivers are causing the problem in the first place.

People who are familiar with the practice of consulting firms will also appreciate that the revenue, cost and profit approach is a well-established framework in the case study method.

Another pertinent area of manifestation is in financial analysis of businesses, where we see revenues, costs and profits in the holy trinity; balance sheets, income statements and cash flows.

However, it needs to be stated that activities on the revenue side like strategy and marketing somehow appear to be more glamorous and fields of operations and OB (organisational behaviour) less so.

There is enough research evidence available to prove that companies who have achieved sustainable growth manage all aspects of their business equally well, be it the revenue side or the cost side.

On an individual level, I have observed that many organizations practice a policy of requiring its employees who aspire to reach to senior management positions do a lot of job rotations in seemingly unconnected roles.

Perhaps, these rotations in different divisions which could be revenue making or just cost centres would help in providing the employees with a more holistic view of business.

A suitable metaphor to this theory could be the yin and yang of creativity and discipline which are both essential for a talented artist to achieve and exhibit his true potential.

If you are not interested in profits (for you are part of a not-for- profit organization), there is still no escape from this universal law. It only means that revenues must at least equal cost.

Every other for- profit organization which want to survive, thrive and flourish needs to ensure that they abide by this principle. What separates the great companies from the good and the not-good ones is the level of awareness of this equation and its active pursuits.

ALSO READ: The One Management Topic Few Prospective (And Current) MBAs Talk About!

Nandan Nilekani, while addressing the students of IIMA last month in a packed out session, explicitly mentioned the fact that, in the early days of Infosys’ existence, its employees used to be mindful of whether they were creating value and hence profits, every single day!

This paranoia is definitely not omnipresent, for there are many examples of companies which do not seem to be running after profits but are in pursuit of other goals like market share and valuation (e-commerce and taxi aggregators, anyone?).

Given the elegance of our beloved equation, does it make any sense to mindfully violate it for long periods of time? Intuition tells me that it is not going to be a sustainable model.

Aniruddha Srinath,is in the PGPX (2016-17) batch at IIM Ahmedabad. He has more than 7 years experience in Manufacturing Strategy and Operations. He has a Master’s Degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. (Featured Image Courtesy : www.flickr.com)

As is normal practice in most graduate schools, we are currently studying core courses, or “Building blocks” as they are officially referred to.

If you happen to look at the aspirational and reflective posts of most prospective, current and past MBA students, they will probably mention that they want to specialize in areas like finance, strategy and marketing.

My humble submission is this. These areas may be more glamorous, but the most important lessons you will learn and retain for the rest of your life and career will probably come from the area of organizational (and individual) behaviour.

My rationale for making the above hypothesis is simple. In the course of our personal and professional interactions, we would be required to apply and display a variety of theories, skills and frameworks. A common factor to all these interactions is the inescapable need to involve ourselves with people and groups (or, in a business context, organizations).

Add in the complexity of businesses going global and workforce mobility becoming the norm. There is a high chance that we would be working in an American organization on a project for a customer from Europe who is of Arab descent and having a vendor who is Chinese but works for an Indonesian firm!

In scenarios like these, it is imperative to acquire a sense of cultural sensitivity around the diverse individuals or groups that one would work with.

The discipline of organizational behaviour and its study equips us with refined intuition on topics of culture and diversity. I recently heard a senior executive, an MBA from an IIM himself, state that, of all the subjects he learnt in business schools, he had forgotten much but only organizational behaviour remained fresh and appeared the most relevant to his work.

Another dimension of organizational behaviour is its ability in a reactive manner to analyze what kind of business practices would work in a particular setting. Of course, I refer to the variation in different settings based upon varying cultures of individuals and organizations.

I would give the illustration of a company with which I have deep ties, Toyota Motor. Toyota was my first job stint and hence the experience there has shaped the way in which I have developed much of my career as well as professional traits.

Toyota is (not surprisingly) studied in a lot of business schools and specially in topics based on Operations Management. However, the place I could connect a greater chord to my experience in Toyota was in the Organizational Behaviour sessions.

The kind of organizational structure Toyota follows works well for them, both at home and abroad (though it takes them a longer time to establish these structures abroad).

The Japanese workforce is heavily influenced by the history of Japan (sense of duty, hierarchy, male dominant) and the harsh conditions it has endured over centuries (earthquakes, lost wars, scarcity of land to grow food and so on).

Viewed in this context, values typical to the Japanese worker like working long hours at the cost of personal life, comfort in working in rigid organizational settings and the obsessive quest to avoid wastage can easily be understood.

Organizations which are vastly different in terms of this cultural legacy would have a hard time in implementing Toyota Production Systems (TPS). This is notwithstanding the fact that the philosophy itself is so simple and we now have a flood of TPS and lean trainers over the world!

In India, the organizations who have had great success in implementing TPS (like the Tata Group and the Sundaram Group) have been the ones who have similar or close cultural heritages.

In this context, it is not at all surprising to me that the seminal work on understanding and propagating the philosophy of Toyota Production System has been achieved by Professor Jeff Liker at the University of Michigan, the author of the bestselling book “The Toyota Way” and a person I have had the privilege of having long discussions with. And, surprise, surprise, his Doctoral degree is in, you guessed it right, Sociology!

In conclusion, my submission to the current and prospective MBA student is this; specialize in a variety and mix of disciplines but learn your OB well ! It will help (and probably save! ) you a lot in the future. (Cover Image Courtsey : en.wikipedia.org)

Aniruddha Srinath,is in the PGPX (2016-17) batch at IIM Ahmedabad. He has more than 7 years experience in Manufacturing Strategy and Operations. He has a Master’s Degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.

I am a Manufacturing professional with 7 years of experience in strategy and product realization in the automotive (Toyota) and aerospace sectors (Cyient).

Additionally, I hold a Master’s in Manufacturing Engineering (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor). My One Year MBA journey started last August with the realization that this format of management education would be a good addition to my learning endeavors and do wonders for the resume as well.

Two months and countless GMAT mock tests later, I managed a 710 score. I applied to 4 good schools (IIM-A, B and C and ISB) and got admit cards from three and a reject after interview from ISB.

I chose IIM-A after a visit to the institute early this month for a KT and farewell session with the current batch.

Upon careful consideration of what went right and not all that right in my admissions package, it is my strong belief that my USP lay in the way that I projected my profile. To further validate my belief, the schools in which my applications were successful were exactly the ones in which I was able to “present myself my way”.

Let me elaborate on why I feel the presentation of one’s profile plays a clinching role in MBA applications.

Most B-Schools have an application to interview ratio of 3:1 and a similar interview to admit ratio, which makes me feel that the first process is an elimination round whereas the second process is selection.

Thus, the focus in the first round is whether you are good enough. In the second round, it is whether you are better than another, or many others. Thus, you (and your profile) must stand out from the rest.

However, to be brutally honest, most of us have regular profiles with rare nuggets of extra-ordinariness. If you are in the majority (Indian IT Male), the reckoning gets tougher. Hence, it is important that you project these nuggets as strongly and as visually coherent as is possible.

That too, in a time bound environment where you have to make the best utilization of the interview question “Tell me about yourself”.

Below is my approach to this situation. Those of you who have an operations background may recognize this as being in the ‘A3 format’, made famous by the first organization I worked for, Toyota.

Please Click on Image to Enlarge

I found the art of making A3 reports fascinating, and have been using this in varied situations like preparing for interviews, appraisal discussions and so on. Trust me, this process is yet to fail.

Preparing this sheet for the first time took up a lot of space in the head and a lot of time. However, once a basic format is done and you are comfortable, it is easy to keep updating and using this sheet in different places.

A distinct advantage of preparing a written document is that it helps you to form clear, distilled ideas from the vague thoughts you might have about many aspects of your profile.

In this, I see a parallel with the whole process of business case/plan creation. A clear benefit I had from this approach was that I used close to half an hour to go through this sheet and hence was able to completely control the course of my interviews at the three IIMs! (On a lighter note, my problem with the ISB interview was that they never asked me to “Tell me about yourself” and I did not get a chance to open up this sheet ).

Some guidelines to help you prepare your own profile sheet:

• The best tool to prepare such a sheet would be MS Excel. In my opinion, Excel is one of the most versatile business applications ever!
• Before you write a single word, have all the page, font and structure formatting ready. This will help in allocating space to different sections of your profile based on your priorities. Of course, the sheet best works when using A3, landscape orientation.
• Use pictorial representation as much as possible. Minimize the use of words. Most people have high retention power for pictures and very less for words.
• Highlight special achievements like there is no tomorrow. Your profile should literally stand out!
• Use a structured way of storytelling. It helps in organizing thoughts. One such structure could be 5W and 1H: Why, What, Who, Where, When & How.
• Write your own profile yourself. It will be an amazing learning experience and don’t let go off that chance for yourself!

Aniruddha Srinath, who is in the PGPX (2016-17) batch at IIM Ahmedabad, has more than 7 years experience in Manufacturing Strategy and Operations. He has a Master’s Degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.