Feb 21, 2022
| FROM ISB PGP Admissions Director Blog: ISB Alumni Network is one of the many assets that PGPMAX provides |
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Sanjiv Bhagat is an experienced Chief Executive Officer and currently serves as Vice-President at AT&T ASEAN. In a career spanning over three decades in the telecommunications & IT industry, Sanjiv has worked with organisations such as HCL, IBM, and AT&T. Skilled in strategy & business planning, CRM, go-to-market strategy, and sales management, Sanjiv is also a professional mentor, helping fellow colleagues and young executives achieve their goals. A fellow member of the Institute of Directors, Sanjiv graduated from the Indian School of Business in 2012. In a recent conversation with him, we had the opportunity to talk about his PGPMAX experience, ISB days, and other contemporary topics. Here is a summary of the interaction. Tell us about yourself, your current organisation & role, and your professional journey so far. I have been in the industry for 36 years now. I started my career with HCL back in 1986 as an application developer, then moved to technical support. I believe my career took a great leap at IBM. I joined the organisation as a technical specialist and when I left IBM, I was country manager for their networking division. After leaving IBM, I joined AT&T in 2000 as General Manager (India). In the last two decades with the organisation, I have served at various positions, climbing up to the position of Chairman & CEO for AT&T India. Currently, I am based in Singapore and responsible for AT&T’s ASEAN business. You were already serving as managing director in AT&T India back when you joined the PGPMAX program. What inspired you to do an executive MBA program & why did you choose the PGPMAX programme? Why ISB? There were a couple of reasons to pursue an executive MBA programme. My career growth had been purely based on the learnings from experience & job performance. I realised it was time for me to structure my learning & then take a leap from there. When you are on the job training, you do learn a lot, but you may not be able to structure it properly. You have a lot of thoughts and ideas but lack the process to structure and present them effectively. I knew a structured learning programme would help me improve myself. That is why I thought an executive MBA would be an ideal programme for me. I started looking for B-Schools with a good curriculum and a great brand value. ISB was a right fit with its 18-month modular learning programme & had a good name in the industry as an institute. Though PGPMAX was fairly new, the school held a reputation as great as IIMs or maybe even more. One thing I liked about PGPMAX was its format. While other programmes were a mix of online and campus, PGPMAX had 1 week learning on campus every 5 weeks which I thought was great because you get a chance for classroom learning. To meet your batchmates in person and spend a week learning together is a great experience. Also, one could spend 5-weeks working & 1-week learning. So for me, the format worked very well. Secondly, ISB has an impressive faculty. It was everything that I was promised. Most of the visiting faculty was from world-class B-Schools. The third and most important thing that I considered was the average cohort experience in the programme. I already had over twenty years of experience and wanted like-minded batchmates for a better learning experience. All these reasons led me to finally join ISB. What do you think is the right time to pursue to PGPMAX programme? I don’t look at PGPMAX as just an executive programme but rather as a senior executive programme. If you look at executive programmes in other institutes, the average experience is around 5, 6, or maybe 7 years. At PGPMAX, at least in our batch, the average experience was around 10-12 years. I found it very exciting because there were a lot of common areas and scope to learn from peers. After working for 20 years, it is not easy to go back to education, and becomes more difficult if you don’t share common management issues and interests with your cohort. So, I think 10-15 years of experience is required to reap full benefits from PGPMAX. Where did you think you were headed in your career before you took the course? How has the overall ISB experience affected the direction? For me, it is difficult to directly relate career progression with PGPMAX. Had I not been to ISB, I might have reached the current level in my career, or probably it would have taken a bit more time. But PGPMAX helped me to fast forward my growth for sure. It definitely helped me structure my thoughts & navigate management problems better. By the time I finished the programme, I became Chairman & CEO for AT&T India. Now I am in SINGAPORE handling organisation’s ASEAN business. Though I can’t pinpoint, the programme signalled senior management my commitment to work & career. That provided more opportunities and garnered more confidence from my colleagues. Any specific lessons have you learnt during the programme and what relevance does those lessons bring in your work function and role? There are a couple of classes that I always recall. The marketing & strategy class at Wharton was excellent. I think that was one of the best marketing-strategy sessions we had. There were a lot of simulating discussions not just on marketing but also on product development. But what I apply on my day-to-day basis even now are the lessons from ‘Management of Organisations Needing Change’ class. That is a true course for anyone who needs to manage an organisation. It aided me in a lot of ways on how to handle people & organisation; manage the change specifically because change is constant and has to be tackled systematically. In my view these were the best classes we had and gained a lot from them. Apart from that, I think a lot of learning came from my classmates. The diversity in the experience we had from various industries was phenomenal. While at work, one is only exposed to their own industry but the programme provides the chance to meet people from various industries who are experts in their domain. So, there is a lot of learning to attain from these interactions. Another thing that I learned on my own during the programme was effective delegation. I knew if I had to complete PGPMAX successfully, I had to make sure there is somebody who takes care of the office in order to devote my full attention during my time at ISB . I surely made some mistakes but I learned from them. Because of that, I have held on to effective delegation. I kept delegating work responsibly and became more productive. The performance of the whole team also went up because of that. What is your philosophy of a good leader? What nuances of leadership did you pick up during the programme that were worth applying in your professional life? One thing that I have learnt from my own experience and collective experience of people I have worked is that one should always work on their strengths. People generally try to improve their weaknesses and I think rather than improving the weaknesses, one should focus on the strengths. You can take your weakness, let’s say from level 4 to level 6 but if your strength is level 8 you can take it to level 9 or 10. I firmly believe one should work on one’s strengths and not on their weaknesses (unless the weakness is fatal to business). Pick up any great leader for instance, you only see their strengths. It’s not that they don’t have any weaknesses but it’s just that they don’t let their weaknesses show up. Another aspect of leadership is while building a team, hire people who are better than you in their domain. It is because at the end of the day, it is the team which is going to perform. So, hiring the best people who are better than you in their own domain is utmost important part. One needs to be honest as well. Finally, I think a leader needs to have integrity & ethics at his/her core. What are the new challenges business leaders face in the wake of the current global pandemic? How has business leadership evolved in these unprecedented times? Business leadership has two aspects – one is business itself & the other second is the people. The pandemic has hit both – business and people greatly. The business itself as moved a lot more on to the digital side than before. The only positive thing that I see in such uncertain times is the acceleration of digital transformation. The growth in digital transmission has increased manifolds because people have realised that if they don’t adapt, they will be out of business. So that’s the only positive thing I see out of the pandemic. Now that the businesses are bouncing back, leaders need to make sure that businesses have the right tools and the right resources in place so that pandemic doesn’t impact everyday functioning. I think digital transformation is something that probably every company needs to undergo. From the employee’s point of view, it has been very tough to stay motivated. Ever since the pandemic has hit, everybody started working from home and it is very difficult to keep oneself motivated virtually. So, leaders had to make sure to keep the team driven & energetic. We arranged a lot of activities such as meeting out of the office, taking them out on lunches, doing virtual fun sessions, etc. I think that was a bigger challenge, at least for me and we succeeded in that. Nobody left their job. People are sticking with us even now and performing very well so that means they are happy with the way we are handling it. What does it mean to be a part of ISB alumni community? What value have you derived and how has it benefitted you? As PGPMAX alumni, I think we are very closely linked. We have created digital groups on all social networks & have all our classmates there. We stay connected to each other almost on a daily basis and try to arrange get-togethers once a month with whosoever we can meet. We are also connected with people from other batches as well and have a https://gmatclub.com/chat group named “Kal, Aaj Aur Kal” (Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow), signifying older and upcoming batches. Every time a PGPMAX student comes to ISB, he/she joins that group. Both of these groups (classmates group and the overall PGPMAX group) are pretty helpful. Anytime one needs any help, they reach out in the groups and definitely get some solution or another. It is one of the many assets that PGPMAX provides. What is it that keeps you buoyed and relevant? What do you cherish doing in your spare time? In my industry, I have to learn something new every day. Technology changes so fast that by the time you read about something, something new comes up. So it’s a continuous process of learning for me. We have AT&T university & have mandated hours of study at all levels. Also, I have industry friends in my network to discuss related topics & keep myself relevant to the industry. In my spare time, I am a photographer. I do all kind of photography but I love wildlife photography the most. I have my own blog. Maybe you can sometimes go and view it. If you must encapsulate ISB experience in just one word, what would that be? Not one but two – GAME-CHANGING. Author: Sanjiv Bhagat, PGPMAX Co’12, Vice President – AT&T ASEAN |
Feb 21, 2022
| FROM ISB Admissions Blog: ISB Alumni Network is one of the many assets that PGPMAX provides |
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Sanjiv Bhagat is an experienced Chief Executive Officer and currently serves as Vice-President at AT&T ASEAN. In a career spanning over three decades in the telecommunications & IT industry, Sanjiv has worked with organisations such as HCL, IBM, and AT&T. Skilled in strategy & business planning, CRM, go-to-market strategy, and sales management, Sanjiv is also a professional mentor, helping fellow colleagues and young executives achieve their goals. A fellow member of the Institute of Directors, Sanjiv graduated from the Indian School of Business in 2012. In a recent conversation with him, we had the opportunity to talk about his PGPMAX experience, ISB days, and other contemporary topics. Here is a summary of the interaction. Tell us about yourself, your current organisation & role, and your professional journey so far. I have been in the industry for 36 years now. I started my career with HCL back in 1986 as an application developer, then moved to technical support. I believe my career took a great leap at IBM. I joined the organisation as a technical specialist and when I left IBM, I was country manager for their networking division. After leaving IBM, I joined AT&T in 2000 as General Manager (India). In the last two decades with the organisation, I have served at various positions, climbing up to the position of Chairman & CEO for AT&T India. Currently, I am based in Singapore and responsible for AT&T’s ASEAN business. You were already serving as managing director in AT&T India back when you joined the PGPMAX program. What inspired you to do an executive MBA program & why did you choose the PGPMAX programme? Why ISB? There were a couple of reasons to pursue an executive MBA programme. My career growth had been purely based on the learnings from experience & job performance. I realised it was time for me to structure my learning & then take a leap from there. When you are on the job training, you do learn a lot, but you may not be able to structure it properly. You have a lot of thoughts and ideas but lack the process to structure and present them effectively. I knew a structured learning programme would help me improve myself. That is why I thought an executive MBA would be an ideal programme for me. I started looking for B-Schools with a good curriculum and a great brand value. ISB was a right fit with its 18-month modular learning programme & had a good name in the industry as an institute. Though PGPMAX was fairly new, the school held a reputation as great as IIMs or maybe even more. One thing I liked about PGPMAX was its format. While other programmes were a mix of online and campus, PGPMAX had 1 week learning on campus every 5 weeks which I thought was great because you get a chance for classroom learning. To meet your batchmates in person and spend a week learning together is a great experience. Also, one could spend 5-weeks working & 1-week learning. So for me, the format worked very well. Secondly, ISB has an impressive faculty. It was everything that I was promised. Most of the visiting faculty was from world-class B-Schools. The third and most important thing that I considered was the average cohort experience in the programme. I already had over twenty years of experience and wanted like-minded batchmates for a better learning experience. All these reasons led me to finally join ISB. What do you think is the right time to pursue to PGPMAX programme? I don’t look at PGPMAX as just an executive programme but rather as a senior executive programme. If you look at executive programmes in other institutes, the average experience is around 5, 6, or maybe 7 years. At PGPMAX, at least in our batch, the average experience was around 10-12 years. I found it very exciting because there were a lot of common areas and scope to learn from peers. After working for 20 years, it is not easy to go back to education, and becomes more difficult if you don’t share common management issues and interests with your cohort. So, I think 10-15 years of experience is required to reap full benefits from PGPMAX. Where did you think you were headed in your career before you took the course? How has the overall ISB experience affected the direction? For me, it is difficult to directly relate career progression with PGPMAX. Had I not been to ISB, I might have reached the current level in my career, or probably it would have taken a bit more time. But PGPMAX helped me to fast forward my growth for sure. It definitely helped me structure my thoughts & navigate management problems better. By the time I finished the programme, I became Chairman & CEO for AT&T India. Now I am in SINGAPORE handling organisation’s ASEAN business. Though I can’t pinpoint, the programme signalled senior management my commitment to work & career. That provided more opportunities and garnered more confidence from my colleagues. Any specific lessons have you learnt during the programme and what relevance does those lessons bring in your work function and role? There are a couple of classes that I always recall. The marketing & strategy class at Wharton was excellent. I think that was one of the best marketing-strategy sessions we had. There were a lot of simulating discussions not just on marketing but also on product development. But what I apply on my day-to-day basis even now are the lessons from ‘Management of Organisations Needing Change’ class. That is a true course for anyone who needs to manage an organisation. It aided me in a lot of ways on how to handle people & organisation; manage the change specifically because change is constant and has to be tackled systematically. In my view these were the best classes we had and gained a lot from them. Apart from that, I think a lot of learning came from my classmates. The diversity in the experience we had from various industries was phenomenal. While at work, one is only exposed to their own industry but the programme provides the chance to meet people from various industries who are experts in their domain. So, there is a lot of learning to attain from these interactions. Another thing that I learned on my own during the programme was effective delegation. I knew if I had to complete PGPMAX successfully, I had to make sure there is somebody who takes care of the office in order to devote my full attention during my time at ISB . I surely made some mistakes but I learned from them. Because of that, I have held on to effective delegation. I kept delegating work responsibly and became more productive. The performance of the whole team also went up because of that. What is your philosophy of a good leader? What nuances of leadership did you pick up during the programme that were worth applying in your professional life? One thing that I have learnt from my own experience and collective experience of people I have worked is that one should always work on their strengths. People generally try to improve their weaknesses and I think rather than improving the weaknesses, one should focus on the strengths. You can take your weakness, let’s say from level 4 to level 6 but if your strength is level 8 you can take it to level 9 or 10. I firmly believe one should work on one’s strengths and not on their weaknesses (unless the weakness is fatal to business). Pick up any great leader for instance, you only see their strengths. It’s not that they don’t have any weaknesses but it’s just that they don’t let their weaknesses show up. Another aspect of leadership is while building a team, hire people who are better than you in their domain. It is because at the end of the day, it is the team which is going to perform. So, hiring the best people who are better than you in their own domain is utmost important part. One needs to be honest as well. Finally, I think a leader needs to have integrity & ethics at his/her core. What are the new challenges business leaders face in the wake of the current global pandemic? How has business leadership evolved in these unprecedented times? Business leadership has two aspects – one is business itself & the other second is the people. The pandemic has hit both – business and people greatly. The business itself as moved a lot more on to the digital side than before. The only positive thing that I see in such uncertain times is the acceleration of digital transformation. The growth in digital transmission has increased manifolds because people have realised that if they don’t adapt, they will be out of business. So that’s the only positive thing I see out of the pandemic. Now that the businesses are bouncing back, leaders need to make sure that businesses have the right tools and the right resources in place so that pandemic doesn’t impact everyday functioning. I think digital transformation is something that probably every company needs to undergo. From the employee’s point of view, it has been very tough to stay motivated. Ever since the pandemic has hit, everybody started working from home and it is very difficult to keep oneself motivated virtually. So, leaders had to make sure to keep the team driven & energetic. We arranged a lot of activities such as meeting out of the office, taking them out on lunches, doing virtual fun sessions, etc. I think that was a bigger challenge, at least for me and we succeeded in that. Nobody left their job. People are sticking with us even now and performing very well so that means they are happy with the way we are handling it. What does it mean to be a part of ISB alumni community? What value have you derived and how has it benefitted you? As PGPMAX alumni, I think we are very closely linked. We have created digital groups on all social networks & have all our classmates there. We stay connected to each other almost on a daily basis and try to arrange get-togethers once a month with whosoever we can meet. We are also connected with people from other batches as well and have a https://gmatclub.com/chat group named “Kal, Aaj Aur Kal” (Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow), signifying older and upcoming batches. Every time a PGPMAX student comes to ISB, he/she joins that group. Both of these groups (classmates group and the overall PGPMAX group) are pretty helpful. Anytime one needs any help, they reach out in the groups and definitely get some solution or another. It is one of the many assets that PGPMAX provides. What is it that keeps you buoyed and relevant? What do you cherish doing in your spare time? In my industry, I have to learn something new every day. Technology changes so fast that by the time you read about something, something new comes up. So it’s a continuous process of learning for me. We have AT&T university & have mandated hours of study at all levels. Also, I have industry friends in my network to discuss related topics & keep myself relevant to the industry. In my spare time, I am a photographer. I do all kind of photography but I love wildlife photography the most. I have my own blog. Maybe you can sometimes go and view it. If you must encapsulate ISB experience in just one word, what would that be? Not one but two – GAME-CHANGING. Author: Sanjiv Bhagat, PGPMAX Co’12, Vice President – AT&T ASEAN |
Feb 24, 2022
Feb 24, 2022
Mar 3, 2022
| FROM ISB PGP Admissions Director Blog: Decoding a SMART Hospital |
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[img]https://blogs.isb.edu/healthcare/files/2022/03/image001.jpg[/img] Smart hospitals “optimize, redesign and/or build new clinical processes, management systems and maybe even infrastructure, all enabled by underlying digitized networking infrastructure of interconnected assets, to provide a valuable service or insight which was not possible or available earlier, to achieve better patient care, experience and operational efficiency” as defined by Heathcare Global. Implemented through three important layers: data, insight and access, these hospitals create added value by addressing the key drivers of a healthcare facility. But, what are its benefits for patients, healthcare providers, and others and how can it be financed? What will it take India to build one? AMPH Co 2022 students [url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-sruthi-gondi-634621168/]Dr. Sruthi Gondi[/url] and [url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/drnishants/]Dr. Nishant Sunkarineni[/url] invited experts and industry leaders to share their opinions and insights on “pathways for building a smart hospital” in the AMPH Discussion Circle hosted by the Max Institute of Healthcare Management. [b]Key insights from the discussion [/b] [list] [*]The healthcare sector is a complex environment and faces an array of challenges that include “changing care models, consumerization of healthcare, elevated cost pressure, healthcare digitalization, cybersecurity, funding challenges, tackling staff shortage, public and political pressures” while maintaining the core essence of patient-centricity and clinical efficacy.[/*] [*]Technology-led initiatives in a healthcare setting can provide strategic tools that can optimize multiple aspects of operational performance through the vision of “SMART HOSPITALS”.[/*] [*]Currently, Indian hospitals have incorporated a few aspects of smart strategies but have a long way to go, though the recent pandemic has accelerated the thought process.[/*] [*]Sophisticated RFID tags for inpatients, bar code scanning of medicines, smart prescriptions, smart EHR, smart lab reports assessment, remote monitoring devices, AI in clinical management, staff/patient workflow applications are some of the smart initiatives that can be implemented in the near future.[/*] [*]Developing technology-led patient-centric strategies is the key.[/*] [*]Feasibility in terms of developing smart infrastructure and its financial viability for both short and long-term basis should be assessed.[/*] [/list] Moderated by the students of AMPH Co 2022, the Max Institute of Healthcare Management hosts the AMPH Discussion Circle on the third Sunday of every month on its LinkedIn page. [b][url=https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6901020084551454720]Click here[/url][/b] to go to this discussion thread. |
Mar 3, 2022
| FROM ISB Admissions Blog: Decoding a SMART Hospital |
|
[img]https://blogs.isb.edu/healthcare/files/2022/03/image001.jpg[/img] Smart hospitals “optimize, redesign and/or build new clinical processes, management systems and maybe even infrastructure, all enabled by underlying digitized networking infrastructure of interconnected assets, to provide a valuable service or insight which was not possible or available earlier, to achieve better patient care, experience and operational efficiency” as defined by Heathcare Global. Implemented through three important layers: data, insight and access, these hospitals create added value by addressing the key drivers of a healthcare facility. But, what are its benefits for patients, healthcare providers, and others and how can it be financed? What will it take India to build one? AMPH Co 2022 students [url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-sruthi-gondi-634621168/]Dr. Sruthi Gondi[/url] and [url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/drnishants/]Dr. Nishant Sunkarineni[/url] invited experts and industry leaders to share their opinions and insights on “pathways for building a smart hospital” in the AMPH Discussion Circle hosted by the Max Institute of Healthcare Management. [b]Key insights from the discussion [/b] [list] [*]The healthcare sector is a complex environment and faces an array of challenges that include “changing care models, consumerization of healthcare, elevated cost pressure, healthcare digitalization, cybersecurity, funding challenges, tackling staff shortage, public and political pressures” while maintaining the core essence of patient-centricity and clinical efficacy.[/*] [*]Technology-led initiatives in a healthcare setting can provide strategic tools that can optimize multiple aspects of operational performance through the vision of “SMART HOSPITALS”.[/*] [*]Currently, Indian hospitals have incorporated a few aspects of smart strategies but have a long way to go, though the recent pandemic has accelerated the thought process.[/*] [*]Sophisticated RFID tags for inpatients, bar code scanning of medicines, smart prescriptions, smart EHR, smart lab reports assessment, remote monitoring devices, AI in clinical management, staff/patient workflow applications are some of the smart initiatives that can be implemented in the near future.[/*] [*]Developing technology-led patient-centric strategies is the key.[/*] [*]Feasibility in terms of developing smart infrastructure and its financial viability for both short and long-term basis should be assessed.[/*] [/list] Moderated by the students of AMPH Co 2022, the Max Institute of Healthcare Management hosts the AMPH Discussion Circle on the third Sunday of every month on its LinkedIn page. [b][url=https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6901020084551454720]Click here[/url][/b] to go to this discussion thread. |
Mar 3, 2022
Mar 4, 2022
Mar 4, 2022
| FROM ISB PGP Admissions Director Blog: What does it mean to be a corporate lawyer with an MBA from ISB? |
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A good lawyer knows the law, a great lawyer also understands business. While practising as a business and white-collar crimes lawyer in India, Ayushi decided to pursue the EMBA she had been considering for years. As part of her profile, Ayushi was working extensively with the board and the CXOs offices of both public and private companies, India and abroad. She wanted to gain a better understanding of business strategy to counsel and provide the best legal advice to her clients. “I come from a multi-generational business family, and we always saw lawyers as outsiders to the business. However, as part of my profile, not only do I intend to be a more valuable contributor, but it is also a requirement to counsel the clients pro-actively in navigating business risks in line with continuing evolving regulatory landscape. Thus, it became critical to understand the nuances – clients need effective legal advice which is informed by an understanding of business.” An EMBA requires exceptional commitment and time, and a continuous management of resources and family. For the same, Ayushi wanted to invest herself in a course that was internationally recognized, rigorous, well-respected, and suited to her asks. “ISB’s collaborations with several business schools across the world, and the hybrid-nature of the program, allows us to truly have the best-in-class faculty. They teach and bring out the most diverse perspectives from the cohort. The class discussions have opened me to analyse issues and think in more practical measures, which is beyond my myopic view of the world. I am learning the relevance of not only identifying risk, but to analyse and quantify risk in order to recommend and make best business decisions.” ISB’s continuous efforts towards helping students to network with other cohorts, alumni and also, other programs, is helping Ayushi build a credible community of professionals. “I came to the school with the objective of just learning about business, but ISB is stretching the horizon to a wider range of opportunities. This is certainly an investment in our future”. |
Mar 4, 2022
| FROM ISB PGP Admissions Director Blog: No matter what you have as your vision, after the PGPMAX course, you will see the bigger picture |
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Rajalakshmi Vijay is a seasoned Chief Executive Officer with a rich background in leading global teams towards growth in diverse industries. Fondly known as Raji, her career experience spans over three decades working in several organisation and roles. From National Insurance Company to Airtel, GE Capital, Tata Group and Flipkart, she has demonstrated skills in business turnaround, profitable growth & acquisitions. An ISB alum from PGPMAX class of 2019, Raji feels honoured and proud to be associated with the institution. It is through that fond association that she obliged to have a conversation with us on her career journey, ISB experience, learnings & much more. Here is a summarised version from the interaction. [b]Tell us about yourself, your current organisation & role, and your professional journey so far.[/b] I have been the CEO of the Altruist Technologies BPO, an ITES firm for last five and a half years. Before that I worked with Tata Motors, GE Capital, Flipkart and Bharti Airtel in various roles. At Altruist Technologies, I lead a team of 15,000 employees with offices in India, UAE & Kenya. I am an all-India rank holding Chartered Accountant and a proud ISB alum from PGPMAX Class of 2019. [b]What inspired you to join the PGPMAX programme? Why ISB?[/b] There are two ways to look at this. First, one can study the programme offerings and how it enriches your knowledge & skills. Second, to identify the right time in your career when you can assimilate the different stakeholder perspectives in an organisation and this is where ISB comes to the forefront. For me, it is the latter. As a leader, prior to my ISB experience, I was merely looking at business from organic growth, stakeholder value (to name a few) point of view. This course widened my understanding to include complex business growth strategies such as mergers & acquisitions, the IPO route, etc. It helped broaden my perspective of what business success is in a challenging environment. The programme also gave a whole new meaning to the definition of stakeholder and value. To sum up, the PGPMAX course elevates your knowledge and slates you to become a senior leader. [b]What is the right time to pursue PGPMAX?[/b] I believe the right time to pursue PGPMAX cannot be defined in terms of years. For some people it can be earlier & others, a little bit later in terms of experience and not in terms of age. In my opinion, it is essentially the time when you feel you want to accelerate your career. In other words, when you want to see the value and direction of the organisation from the top. Unless you pursue a programme like PGPMAX, accelerating your career growth is an uphill learning process. There can be growth based on hard work, commitment, skills, intelligence, knowledge or any other factor. But the ability to consolidate it all & apply it in an organisation comes only with a structured training like PGPMAX. [b]Talking about your career direction, where do you think you were headed in your career when you took the course? And how has the overall ISB experience affected that direction?[/b] Before PGPMAX, my focus was largely on the Indian market for growth. I am now able look global. The complexities of expansion become more easier to handle through knowledge gained from the PGPMAX course. This is one of the reasons why UAE and Africa came into the picture for me. Critical to me in this journey is, I look at partners and clients supporting the organization as win-win long term partnerships. In the pre PGPMAX period, it was about the short-term acceleration in growth. Now, I stress upon sustainability of business and inclusion of the ecosystem and employees in this journey. My vision is still growth but what ISB has done is change the way I look at the ecosystem. No matter what you have as your vision, after the PGPMAX course, you will see the bigger picture. [b]Tell us about the time you spent on campus, specifically about the course and the faculty? What ISB memories do you connect with most profoundly?[/b] It always makes me smile when I think of the ISB campus days. PGPMAX is a tightly packed programme. It is rigorous and I firmly believe it prepares you for a CXO role. The most interesting part of this programme is that it covers the entire arc of corporate learning. Right from finance, pricing & marketing to crisis, change & much more. The faculty at ISB is well chosen for this course. If you ask me who are my favourites, they are my personal favourites. Prof. Sridharan Swaminathan from North-Western University who taught us finance & pricing. Being a Chartered Accountant, I had my favourite well defined. My favourite is also Prof. Sreedhari Desai, a visiting faculty from UNC Kenan. She taught us change management and in this world of constant change, I think it is very important to imbibe these skills. And the Covid19 happened after our graduation… In terms of memories, my batchmates will always be the best and the evergreen part of the programme. They make the package complete. There are courses that you could say, have and will stay with me. One is product pricing and the second is crisis management. These two are a “must know” if you want to take on the mantle of a CXO role in an organisation or aspire to have your own start-up. Without product pricing and building the ability to handle any crisis, the challenges in these positions will loom larger. These were very important and interesting topics in PGPMAX. [b]What are the new challenges do you think business leaders are facing during the current pandemic? How has the business leadership evolved in these unprecedented times?[/b] The challenge that leaders are now facing is clearly about employees. On one side there is safety, second is productivity and the third side is collaboration. The pandemic has brought its challenge of distance. So, to be able to bridge that gap and bring in a single direction for employees is the biggest challenge. The way this can be managed is probably through some kind of an experiential or structured learning. Let’s just put it like this – if you have gone through a structured learning on crisis management like I did during PGPMAX, sailing through the pandemic challenges could be a little less tough. You learn how to quickly put down the anchors in a crisis like this and then work your way through. [b]How significant do you think pursuing PGPMAX is during pandemic? Should one pursue the programme in these times? [/b] Learning has got no time or boundaries & children have taught us that. The young generation is getting educated through digital platforms such BYJU’s, Unacademy, etc. They are moving ahead & accumulating knowledge. So, for learning, pandemic really does not make any difference. The subjects during PGPMAX and the professors who teach bring in a lot of value. That value does not, in anyway, get reduced because you are attending virtual classes during the pandemic. You could probably miss on what I call the comradery in a class but that can always be built over a shorter period of time when you meet on campus or outside. During project work, they align you to groups. So even if you are not physically meeting a person, you would still be working together and learning a lot from each other. I think this teaching methodology is a very critical part of the PGPMAX experience. If children can cope & learn during the pandemic, so can we adults. If you want to do something different, use this time to learn. [b]What is your philosophy of a good leader? What nuances of leadership did you pick during the programme that were worth applying in your professional life?[/b] This question is subject to many answers. I think a good leader is someone who can lead a team on one path and plan an alternate path when the current one falters. In the pandemic, we all moved to an alternate path. The agility to take both – people and goals together in the same direction is what I feel defines a good leader. How PGPMAX enabled me to become a leader is by ensuring I learn [b]directional collaboration[/b]. It made me think of collaboration, not just between colleagues or functions, but on a larger platform involving employees, partners, competitors & the entire business ecosystem. To manoeuvre all these in the same direction is what I call a directional collaboration. I gained insights into [b]integrated thinking[/b]. I didn’t use the term “out of the box thinking” because that is something that you could develop over a period of time. What you learn is the ability to see all the pillars at the same time to drive a goal or objective. By pillars I mean finance, costing, people, partners, business, stakeholders, etc. PGPMAX teaches you this. Apart from that, you do pick up leadership traits from your classmates and their experiences. This is a very rich learning. PGPMAX ensures that you learn from varied experiences. When you are constantly in a group of experts in their own field, you do pick up leadership traits from them. [b]What does it mean to be a part of ISB alumni community? What value have you derived from it?[/b] The ISB Alumni Community is the best part of the course. There is always someone around to bounce a question to, give an answer or help at any opportunity. It feels like there is someone who always has your back covered at all times. That is the Alumni community. For example, I wanted to know about going for an IPO and I put it in the group for advice. I had multiple folks in alumni community giving me their experiences, calling to make sure I don’t stumble along the way. They even gave me references of bankers and underwriters. I can say confidently that the ISB Alumni Network is a network that supports. [b]What advice would you give to the current class and to the prospective students?[/b] PGPMAX is a big opportunity. What you want to take out of this course is entirely upto you. Pick and choose what you want from your time at ISB. Nothing comes easy. All best things in life are to be earned and the same is with PGPMAX. Expect tightly packed schedules, a lot of homework & studying and catching up when you are not having the scheduled classes. A lot of projects & learning but amongst all this, surprisingly, you will have new friends & loads of fun. [b]What is that keeps you buoyed & relevant? What do you cherish the most in your spare time?[/b] The answer to what keeps me relevant is similar to question on why I chose PGPMAX. I wanted to accelerate my career growth and stay relevant. Upgrading your knowledge, pursuing PGPMAX and adding value to my work professionally keeps me interested. What keeps me charged, is my running. I am a marathon runner and run almost every day. It is my “me time”. In addition to running, I learn Hindustani classical music. The one single thing that keeps me going is: every Monday morning, if I wake up feeling excited to start the week, I have achieved the first step towards my goals. That is the secret sauce! [b]How would you encapsulate your PGPMAX experience?[/b] In your career, you can grow to the highest level if you have the potential. You can either grow with a mentor who can give you all the time in the world to train & teach you or you can grow by pursuing a programme like PGPMAX to guide you. Author: Rajalakshmi Vijay, PGPMAX Co’19, CEO – Altruist Technologies |
Mar 4, 2022
| FROM ISB Admissions Blog: What does it mean to be a corporate lawyer with an MBA from ISB? |
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A good lawyer knows the law, a great lawyer also understands business. While practising as a business and white-collar crimes lawyer in India, Ayushi decided to pursue the EMBA she had been considering for years. As part of her profile, Ayushi was working extensively with the board and the CXOs offices of both public and private companies, India and abroad. She wanted to gain a better understanding of business strategy to counsel and provide the best legal advice to her clients. “I come from a multi-generational business family, and we always saw lawyers as outsiders to the business. However, as part of my profile, not only do I intend to be a more valuable contributor, but it is also a requirement to counsel the clients pro-actively in navigating business risks in line with continuing evolving regulatory landscape. Thus, it became critical to understand the nuances – clients need effective legal advice which is informed by an understanding of business.” An EMBA requires exceptional commitment and time, and a continuous management of resources and family. For the same, Ayushi wanted to invest herself in a course that was internationally recognized, rigorous, well-respected, and suited to her asks. “ISB’s collaborations with several business schools across the world, and the hybrid-nature of the program, allows us to truly have the best-in-class faculty. They teach and bring out the most diverse perspectives from the cohort. The class discussions have opened me to analyse issues and think in more practical measures, which is beyond my myopic view of the world. I am learning the relevance of not only identifying risk, but to analyse and quantify risk in order to recommend and make best business decisions.” ISB’s continuous efforts towards helping students to network with other cohorts, alumni and also, other programs, is helping Ayushi build a credible community of professionals. “I came to the school with the objective of just learning about business, but ISB is stretching the horizon to a wider range of opportunities. This is certainly an investment in our future”. |
Mar 4, 2022
| FROM ISB Admissions Blog: No matter what you have as your vision, after the PGPMAX course, you will see the bigger picture |
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Rajalakshmi Vijay is a seasoned Chief Executive Officer with a rich background in leading global teams towards growth in diverse industries. Fondly known as Raji, her career experience spans over three decades working in several organisation and roles. From National Insurance Company to Airtel, GE Capital, Tata Group and Flipkart, she has demonstrated skills in business turnaround, profitable growth & acquisitions. An ISB alum from PGPMAX class of 2019, Raji feels honoured and proud to be associated with the institution. It is through that fond association that she obliged to have a conversation with us on her career journey, ISB experience, learnings & much more. Here is a summarised version from the interaction. [b]Tell us about yourself, your current organisation & role, and your professional journey so far.[/b] I have been the CEO of the Altruist Technologies BPO, an ITES firm for last five and a half years. Before that I worked with Tata Motors, GE Capital, Flipkart and Bharti Airtel in various roles. At Altruist Technologies, I lead a team of 15,000 employees with offices in India, UAE & Kenya. I am an all-India rank holding Chartered Accountant and a proud ISB alum from PGPMAX Class of 2019. [b]What inspired you to join the PGPMAX programme? Why ISB?[/b] There are two ways to look at this. First, one can study the programme offerings and how it enriches your knowledge & skills. Second, to identify the right time in your career when you can assimilate the different stakeholder perspectives in an organisation and this is where ISB comes to the forefront. For me, it is the latter. As a leader, prior to my ISB experience, I was merely looking at business from organic growth, stakeholder value (to name a few) point of view. This course widened my understanding to include complex business growth strategies such as mergers & acquisitions, the IPO route, etc. It helped broaden my perspective of what business success is in a challenging environment. The programme also gave a whole new meaning to the definition of stakeholder and value. To sum up, the PGPMAX course elevates your knowledge and slates you to become a senior leader. [b]What is the right time to pursue PGPMAX?[/b] I believe the right time to pursue PGPMAX cannot be defined in terms of years. For some people it can be earlier & others, a little bit later in terms of experience and not in terms of age. In my opinion, it is essentially the time when you feel you want to accelerate your career. In other words, when you want to see the value and direction of the organisation from the top. Unless you pursue a programme like PGPMAX, accelerating your career growth is an uphill learning process. There can be growth based on hard work, commitment, skills, intelligence, knowledge or any other factor. But the ability to consolidate it all & apply it in an organisation comes only with a structured training like PGPMAX. [b]Talking about your career direction, where do you think you were headed in your career when you took the course? And how has the overall ISB experience affected that direction?[/b] Before PGPMAX, my focus was largely on the Indian market for growth. I am now able look global. The complexities of expansion become more easier to handle through knowledge gained from the PGPMAX course. This is one of the reasons why UAE and Africa came into the picture for me. Critical to me in this journey is, I look at partners and clients supporting the organization as win-win long term partnerships. In the pre PGPMAX period, it was about the short-term acceleration in growth. Now, I stress upon sustainability of business and inclusion of the ecosystem and employees in this journey. My vision is still growth but what ISB has done is change the way I look at the ecosystem. No matter what you have as your vision, after the PGPMAX course, you will see the bigger picture. [b]Tell us about the time you spent on campus, specifically about the course and the faculty? What ISB memories do you connect with most profoundly?[/b] It always makes me smile when I think of the ISB campus days. PGPMAX is a tightly packed programme. It is rigorous and I firmly believe it prepares you for a CXO role. The most interesting part of this programme is that it covers the entire arc of corporate learning. Right from finance, pricing & marketing to crisis, change & much more. The faculty at ISB is well chosen for this course. If you ask me who are my favourites, they are my personal favourites. Prof. Sridharan Swaminathan from North-Western University who taught us finance & pricing. Being a Chartered Accountant, I had my favourite well defined. My favourite is also Prof. Sreedhari Desai, a visiting faculty from UNC Kenan. She taught us change management and in this world of constant change, I think it is very important to imbibe these skills. And the Covid19 happened after our graduation… In terms of memories, my batchmates will always be the best and the evergreen part of the programme. They make the package complete. There are courses that you could say, have and will stay with me. One is product pricing and the second is crisis management. These two are a “must know” if you want to take on the mantle of a CXO role in an organisation or aspire to have your own start-up. Without product pricing and building the ability to handle any crisis, the challenges in these positions will loom larger. These were very important and interesting topics in PGPMAX. [b]What are the new challenges do you think business leaders are facing during the current pandemic? How has the business leadership evolved in these unprecedented times?[/b] The challenge that leaders are now facing is clearly about employees. On one side there is safety, second is productivity and the third side is collaboration. The pandemic has brought its challenge of distance. So, to be able to bridge that gap and bring in a single direction for employees is the biggest challenge. The way this can be managed is probably through some kind of an experiential or structured learning. Let’s just put it like this – if you have gone through a structured learning on crisis management like I did during PGPMAX, sailing through the pandemic challenges could be a little less tough. You learn how to quickly put down the anchors in a crisis like this and then work your way through. [b]How significant do you think pursuing PGPMAX is during pandemic? Should one pursue the programme in these times? [/b] Learning has got no time or boundaries & children have taught us that. The young generation is getting educated through digital platforms such BYJU’s, Unacademy, etc. They are moving ahead & accumulating knowledge. So, for learning, pandemic really does not make any difference. The subjects during PGPMAX and the professors who teach bring in a lot of value. That value does not, in anyway, get reduced because you are attending virtual classes during the pandemic. You could probably miss on what I call the comradery in a class but that can always be built over a shorter period of time when you meet on campus or outside. During project work, they align you to groups. So even if you are not physically meeting a person, you would still be working together and learning a lot from each other. I think this teaching methodology is a very critical part of the PGPMAX experience. If children can cope & learn during the pandemic, so can we adults. If you want to do something different, use this time to learn. [b]What is your philosophy of a good leader? What nuances of leadership did you pick during the programme that were worth applying in your professional life?[/b] This question is subject to many answers. I think a good leader is someone who can lead a team on one path and plan an alternate path when the current one falters. In the pandemic, we all moved to an alternate path. The agility to take both – people and goals together in the same direction is what I feel defines a good leader. How PGPMAX enabled me to become a leader is by ensuring I learn [b]directional collaboration[/b]. It made me think of collaboration, not just between colleagues or functions, but on a larger platform involving employees, partners, competitors & the entire business ecosystem. To manoeuvre all these in the same direction is what I call a directional collaboration. I gained insights into [b]integrated thinking[/b]. I didn’t use the term “out of the box thinking” because that is something that you could develop over a period of time. What you learn is the ability to see all the pillars at the same time to drive a goal or objective. By pillars I mean finance, costing, people, partners, business, stakeholders, etc. PGPMAX teaches you this. Apart from that, you do pick up leadership traits from your classmates and their experiences. This is a very rich learning. PGPMAX ensures that you learn from varied experiences. When you are constantly in a group of experts in their own field, you do pick up leadership traits from them. [b]What does it mean to be a part of ISB alumni community? What value have you derived from it?[/b] The ISB Alumni Community is the best part of the course. There is always someone around to bounce a question to, give an answer or help at any opportunity. It feels like there is someone who always has your back covered at all times. That is the Alumni community. For example, I wanted to know about going for an IPO and I put it in the group for advice. I had multiple folks in alumni community giving me their experiences, calling to make sure I don’t stumble along the way. They even gave me references of bankers and underwriters. I can say confidently that the ISB Alumni Network is a network that supports. [b]What advice would you give to the current class and to the prospective students?[/b] PGPMAX is a big opportunity. What you want to take out of this course is entirely upto you. Pick and choose what you want from your time at ISB. Nothing comes easy. All best things in life are to be earned and the same is with PGPMAX. Expect tightly packed schedules, a lot of homework & studying and catching up when you are not having the scheduled classes. A lot of projects & learning but amongst all this, surprisingly, you will have new friends & loads of fun. [b]What is that keeps you buoyed & relevant? What do you cherish the most in your spare time?[/b] The answer to what keeps me relevant is similar to question on why I chose PGPMAX. I wanted to accelerate my career growth and stay relevant. Upgrading your knowledge, pursuing PGPMAX and adding value to my work professionally keeps me interested. What keeps me charged, is my running. I am a marathon runner and run almost every day. It is my “me time”. In addition to running, I learn Hindustani classical music. The one single thing that keeps me going is: every Monday morning, if I wake up feeling excited to start the week, I have achieved the first step towards my goals. That is the secret sauce! [b]How would you encapsulate your PGPMAX experience?[/b] In your career, you can grow to the highest level if you have the potential. You can either grow with a mentor who can give you all the time in the world to train & teach you or you can grow by pursuing a programme like PGPMAX to guide you. Author: Rajalakshmi Vijay, PGPMAX Co’19, CEO – Altruist Technologies |
Mar 10, 2022
Mar 11, 2022
Mar 16, 2022
Mar 17, 2022
Mar 20, 2022
| FROM ISB PGP Admissions Director Blog: PGPMAX helped me to reinvent myself to get to the next level |
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After graduating in engineering (Bio-Medical Instrumentation) from Mumbai University, Shaju Ramachandran started his career as Field Services Engineer at Philips back in 1994. Little did he know he would be associated with the same organisation till date, rising to the level of a global leader. In over 27 years of his career, Shaju has served at various positions & geographies, aiming to build precise treatments for patients and shortening treatment timeline. An ISB Alumnus from PGPMAX Class of 2016, Shaju describes his experience as an opportunity by chance. Currently based in Amsterdam, he took some time out of his schedule to connect and discuss his PGPMAX journey, learnings from the programme and how it all began. Here is a summary from our interaction. Tell us about yourself, your current organisation and role and your professional journey so far. I look at myself as a business innovation & transformation professional with around 20 years of leadership experience in managing global teams, global customer accounts, building capacity and improving lives by digitizing cancer diagnosis & treatment in medical technology. I’m currently placed in Amsterdam, working for Philips Healthcare in the country for last 4-5 years and have been fortunate enough to scale up business in the oncology space. As Philips transitions into a solutions & services organisation from just selling boxes, I am responsible to support that transition by building up professional and managed services in the precision diagnosis solution space. I think I am one of the lucky few who have been within the same organisation for more than 2 decades. I joined Philips right after my graduation as a service engineer, installing and servicing medical equipment, and gradually made my way up the ladder. I have worked at various leadership roles in customer service, operations, project management, building up new teams, delivering customer solutions, etc. Having come from a technical background and having done actual technical activities in the field, the transition to a management role needed a wider perspective. That eventually led me to ISB. What inspired you to pursue an Executive MBA programme? Why did you choose to pursue PGPMAX from ISB? When you are in your day-to-day job and are doing well at it, you don’t think about change or investing in yourself to get to the next level. I was lucky that I had managers who gave sound advice to me. In fact, one of my immediate managers basically recommended that I should join PGPMAX and I am glad he did. Had I not heeded his advice, I would have reached saturation in my role by now. PGPMAX helped me to reinvent myself to get to the next level. So, I would say firstly, the good advice from my manager and secondly, ISB was working with Philips for the programme. These two reasons led me to pursue PGPMAX. After finishing the programme, what do you think is the right time to pursue PGPMAX? I am not sure I can tell you the right time because I think it is different for everyone. Everyone should look at where they are in their professional journey and what they need to get to the next level. What you have learnt over a period of time, will only get you to a certain level. To get to the next strata, you need to learn & reinvent yourself. For me, it happened after more than 20 years in my career. For others, it can be at 15, 25, or even at 10 years. I believe it varies based on where you are professionally, what has been your journey so far and where do you want to go in your career. However, the most important point is to reflect and assess that right time. Where did you think you were headed in your career before you took the course? How has the overall ISB experience affected the direction? Like I mentioned before, I had already been at various leadership roles in customer service, operations, project management spaces and each role were based on some experience from the previous role. I was leading teams and delivering results using on the job experience. I think I had reached the saturation point where my prior experience could not have taken me further. It was my manager who had recognised it more than me at that point of time and recommended PGPMAX. It might seem like a big statement but without PGPMAX, I would not have reached where I am today. ISB gave me the right tools and a more holistic view about overall business. It taught me how I should look at things and helped by bestowing confidence to leap forward to the next level. Tell us about your ISB days, specifically about the course and the faculty. What ISB memories do you connect with most profoundly? Initially, I had my apprehensions about whether I would be able to pursue the programme. We had to spend a week on campus, leaving our daily job behind. There were so many things that you had take care off to complete the course. But once I was in campus and attended the first session, I started to see the value of the programme. It is not only about the classes that you attend or the knowledge that you gain, but also about the connections and friends you make. If I talk about the memories, there are a lot but something that stands out for me are group assignments. If you ask me, it was great in terms of being able to work with various team members in the group. Everybody was from different industries, brought their diverse perspectives & experiences to the discussion. If it was a team of 5 people, the collective experience was surely around 100 which is huge. When you are work in that kind of group, the pace of learning and growth is fast. Working late nights until the next morning to finish the assignments together helps you form strong connections naturally. It also creates a huge impact in terms of understanding other perspectives. ISB has a high quality of faculty. Each professor is a leader in their own right and comes with a lot of experience and knowledge. The kind of knowledge sharing that happens in sessions are immense. I had a great experience overall. What is your philosophy of a good leader? What nuances of leadership did you pick up during the programme worth applying in your professional life? My leadership philosophies are very simple. One is how do you create value for your customers. The second is how you can keep your team engaged and motivated. If you are able to do these two things effectively, the rest follows. That has been my experience throughout in various roles and across geographies that I have worked in. Some of the courses we did at ISB and some of the learnings that we have had from our batchmates and alumni also helped in that respect. Be it strategy sessions, team leadership sessions or change management sessions, all of that helped me move further in that direction. What are the new challenges business leaders face in the wake of the current global pandemic? How has business leadership evolved in these unprecedented times? I don’t think anybody could have planned for the current situation that we are in. It conveys that leadership should be ready to handle any kind of situation. How to handle the unknown is very important. In terms of the current pandemic, remote team leadership has become very important because you rarely get to meet your team member. Even when you are a global leader, you have local teams with whom you met regularly and global teams who you meet occasionally. But the last two years have been quite difficult. Secondly, the pandemic has also accelerated the rate of digitisation. In the healthcare space, it was already coming in at a slow rate in terms of the transformation because anything that brings in change faces resistance to an extent. But the pandemic accelerated the digitization in the healthcare sector. We see a lot of changes happening both at the customers’ front as well as at the supplier front. This also connects ties directly to my current role where we are trying to build professional services and managed services instead of just selling the technology to the customer. How significant is pursuing PGPMAX during the pandemic? Should one pursue executive education in such times? One should definitely pursue PGPMAX in these times because like I mentioned, pandemics already showed us that we need to be ready with the right tools, skills and thought processes in order to manage such uncertainty. Having the support of the large alumni community that you build with ISB helps. The knowledge you gain through the programme only helps you in getting a better perspective than what you have today in terms of managing these kinds of situations. What does it mean for you to be a part of the ISB alumni community? What value have you derived from it and how has it benefitted you? The strength of the ISB alumni community lies in the huge collective experience, diversity in terms of perspectives and the industry experience that everybody brings in. The kind of access that you have with all the alumni around the world helps you tremendously. For instance, I was contacted by somebody recently because they had recently switched to Switzerland and wanted to understand about what kind of roles they could expect. They were actually looking for executive coaching and I was able to share my experience with them. Similarly, when I have certain requirements, I reach out to the people in the network and ask for their help. It helps you in terms of making your decisions more profoundly as it becomes much better when you have more inputs from people who are experienced and have gone through that same process. What is it that keeps you buoyed and relevant? What do you cherish doing in your spare time? On the professional front and being in a healthcare company like Philips, the mission resonates with you which is to improve people’s lives. We aim to directly touch about 2.5 million people’s lives every year by 2030. So, that keeps me quite motivated in my role because I know I am making a difference. What keeps me going is working with diverse teams and achieving our objectives. The pandemic has shown us that we think we are ready for anything but actually, we are not. So, we need to keep reinventing ourselves. We need to keep learning new things; reading experiences from other areas; see how others have succeeded and learn from your own failure. Even if you have the entire experience and knowledge in the world, you can still fail. How do you learn from those failures and move to the next stage, makes all the difference. In my spare time, I like to unwind myself watching sports. I am a big sports buff and living in Europe gets you to watch a lot of football. In the last 2-3 years, I have learnt to balance life better, spending more time with family. You don’t realise that in the early stages of your life but with time, you start to appreciate it more. What advice would you give to the current batch of PGPMAX students? I would say invest in your personal growth. It is very important. Like in my case, I am very grateful that my manager advised me to pursue this programme. It is very important for you to take a moment for yourself. Look at what you are doing in order to make the required transformation. If you don’t reinvent, it becomes very difficult to progress. So my advice would be – invest your time & money in reinventing yourself; learning new skills and thought processes in order to be ready for the future. If you must encapsulate your PGPMAX experience in just one word or a line, what would that be? Describing it all in one word is difficult but I would say “Confidence”. PGPMAX gives you the confidence to go back to your professional life filled with new energy. You start speaking the language of your chief marketing officer or people you were not able to communicate effectively with before. The programme helps you to start speaking the business language and boosts your confidence tremendously. So, I think that confidence is the biggest factor you develop at ISB. Author: Shaju Ramachandran, PGPMAX Co’16, Global Managed Services Leader (Precision Diagnosis Solutions) – Philips, Netherlands |
Mar 20, 2022
| FROM ISB Admissions Blog: PGPMAX helped me to reinvent myself to get to the next level |
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After graduating in engineering (Bio-Medical Instrumentation) from Mumbai University, Shaju Ramachandran started his career as Field Services Engineer at Philips back in 1994. Little did he know he would be associated with the same organisation till date, rising to the level of a global leader. In over 27 years of his career, Shaju has served at various positions & geographies, aiming to build precise treatments for patients and shortening treatment timeline. An ISB Alumnus from PGPMAX Class of 2016, Shaju describes his experience as an opportunity by chance. Currently based in Amsterdam, he took some time out of his schedule to connect and discuss his PGPMAX journey, learnings from the programme and how it all began. Here is a summary from our interaction. Tell us about yourself, your current organisation and role and your professional journey so far. I look at myself as a business innovation & transformation professional with around 20 years of leadership experience in managing global teams, global customer accounts, building capacity and improving lives by digitizing cancer diagnosis & treatment in medical technology. I’m currently placed in Amsterdam, working for Philips Healthcare in the country for last 4-5 years and have been fortunate enough to scale up business in the oncology space. As Philips transitions into a solutions & services organisation from just selling boxes, I am responsible to support that transition by building up professional and managed services in the precision diagnosis solution space. I think I am one of the lucky few who have been within the same organisation for more than 2 decades. I joined Philips right after my graduation as a service engineer, installing and servicing medical equipment, and gradually made my way up the ladder. I have worked at various leadership roles in customer service, operations, project management, building up new teams, delivering customer solutions, etc. Having come from a technical background and having done actual technical activities in the field, the transition to a management role needed a wider perspective. That eventually led me to ISB. What inspired you to pursue an Executive MBA programme? Why did you choose to pursue PGPMAX from ISB? When you are in your day-to-day job and are doing well at it, you don’t think about change or investing in yourself to get to the next level. I was lucky that I had managers who gave sound advice to me. In fact, one of my immediate managers basically recommended that I should join PGPMAX and I am glad he did. Had I not heeded his advice, I would have reached saturation in my role by now. PGPMAX helped me to reinvent myself to get to the next level. So, I would say firstly, the good advice from my manager and secondly, ISB was working with Philips for the programme. These two reasons led me to pursue PGPMAX. After finishing the programme, what do you think is the right time to pursue PGPMAX? I am not sure I can tell you the right time because I think it is different for everyone. Everyone should look at where they are in their professional journey and what they need to get to the next level. What you have learnt over a period of time, will only get you to a certain level. To get to the next strata, you need to learn & reinvent yourself. For me, it happened after more than 20 years in my career. For others, it can be at 15, 25, or even at 10 years. I believe it varies based on where you are professionally, what has been your journey so far and where do you want to go in your career. However, the most important point is to reflect and assess that right time. Where did you think you were headed in your career before you took the course? How has the overall ISB experience affected the direction? Like I mentioned before, I had already been at various leadership roles in customer service, operations, project management spaces and each role were based on some experience from the previous role. I was leading teams and delivering results using on the job experience. I think I had reached the saturation point where my prior experience could not have taken me further. It was my manager who had recognised it more than me at that point of time and recommended PGPMAX. It might seem like a big statement but without PGPMAX, I would not have reached where I am today. ISB gave me the right tools and a more holistic view about overall business. It taught me how I should look at things and helped by bestowing confidence to leap forward to the next level. Tell us about your ISB days, specifically about the course and the faculty. What ISB memories do you connect with most profoundly? Initially, I had my apprehensions about whether I would be able to pursue the programme. We had to spend a week on campus, leaving our daily job behind. There were so many things that you had take care off to complete the course. But once I was in campus and attended the first session, I started to see the value of the programme. It is not only about the classes that you attend or the knowledge that you gain, but also about the connections and friends you make. If I talk about the memories, there are a lot but something that stands out for me are group assignments. If you ask me, it was great in terms of being able to work with various team members in the group. Everybody was from different industries, brought their diverse perspectives & experiences to the discussion. If it was a team of 5 people, the collective experience was surely around 100 which is huge. When you are work in that kind of group, the pace of learning and growth is fast. Working late nights until the next morning to finish the assignments together helps you form strong connections naturally. It also creates a huge impact in terms of understanding other perspectives. ISB has a high quality of faculty. Each professor is a leader in their own right and comes with a lot of experience and knowledge. The kind of knowledge sharing that happens in sessions are immense. I had a great experience overall. What is your philosophy of a good leader? What nuances of leadership did you pick up during the programme worth applying in your professional life? My leadership philosophies are very simple. One is how do you create value for your customers. The second is how you can keep your team engaged and motivated. If you are able to do these two things effectively, the rest follows. That has been my experience throughout in various roles and across geographies that I have worked in. Some of the courses we did at ISB and some of the learnings that we have had from our batchmates and alumni also helped in that respect. Be it strategy sessions, team leadership sessions or change management sessions, all of that helped me move further in that direction. What are the new challenges business leaders face in the wake of the current global pandemic? How has business leadership evolved in these unprecedented times? I don’t think anybody could have planned for the current situation that we are in. It conveys that leadership should be ready to handle any kind of situation. How to handle the unknown is very important. In terms of the current pandemic, remote team leadership has become very important because you rarely get to meet your team member. Even when you are a global leader, you have local teams with whom you met regularly and global teams who you meet occasionally. But the last two years have been quite difficult. Secondly, the pandemic has also accelerated the rate of digitisation. In the healthcare space, it was already coming in at a slow rate in terms of the transformation because anything that brings in change faces resistance to an extent. But the pandemic accelerated the digitization in the healthcare sector. We see a lot of changes happening both at the customers’ front as well as at the supplier front. This also connects ties directly to my current role where we are trying to build professional services and managed services instead of just selling the technology to the customer. How significant is pursuing PGPMAX during the pandemic? Should one pursue executive education in such times? One should definitely pursue PGPMAX in these times because like I mentioned, pandemics already showed us that we need to be ready with the right tools, skills and thought processes in order to manage such uncertainty. Having the support of the large alumni community that you build with ISB helps. The knowledge you gain through the programme only helps you in getting a better perspective than what you have today in terms of managing these kinds of situations. What does it mean for you to be a part of the ISB alumni community? What value have you derived from it and how has it benefitted you? The strength of the ISB alumni community lies in the huge collective experience, diversity in terms of perspectives and the industry experience that everybody brings in. The kind of access that you have with all the alumni around the world helps you tremendously. For instance, I was contacted by somebody recently because they had recently switched to Switzerland and wanted to understand about what kind of roles they could expect. They were actually looking for executive coaching and I was able to share my experience with them. Similarly, when I have certain requirements, I reach out to the people in the network and ask for their help. It helps you in terms of making your decisions more profoundly as it becomes much better when you have more inputs from people who are experienced and have gone through that same process. What is it that keeps you buoyed and relevant? What do you cherish doing in your spare time? On the professional front and being in a healthcare company like Philips, the mission resonates with you which is to improve people’s lives. We aim to directly touch about 2.5 million people’s lives every year by 2030. So, that keeps me quite motivated in my role because I know I am making a difference. What keeps me going is working with diverse teams and achieving our objectives. The pandemic has shown us that we think we are ready for anything but actually, we are not. So, we need to keep reinventing ourselves. We need to keep learning new things; reading experiences from other areas; see how others have succeeded and learn from your own failure. Even if you have the entire experience and knowledge in the world, you can still fail. How do you learn from those failures and move to the next stage, makes all the difference. In my spare time, I like to unwind myself watching sports. I am a big sports buff and living in Europe gets you to watch a lot of football. In the last 2-3 years, I have learnt to balance life better, spending more time with family. You don’t realise that in the early stages of your life but with time, you start to appreciate it more. What advice would you give to the current batch of PGPMAX students? I would say invest in your personal growth. It is very important. Like in my case, I am very grateful that my manager advised me to pursue this programme. It is very important for you to take a moment for yourself. Look at what you are doing in order to make the required transformation. If you don’t reinvent, it becomes very difficult to progress. So my advice would be – invest your time & money in reinventing yourself; learning new skills and thought processes in order to be ready for the future. If you must encapsulate your PGPMAX experience in just one word or a line, what would that be? Describing it all in one word is difficult but I would say “Confidence”. PGPMAX gives you the confidence to go back to your professional life filled with new energy. You start speaking the language of your chief marketing officer or people you were not able to communicate effectively with before. The programme helps you to start speaking the business language and boosts your confidence tremendously. So, I think that confidence is the biggest factor you develop at ISB. Author: Shaju Ramachandran, PGPMAX Co’16, Global Managed Services Leader (Precision Diagnosis Solutions) – Philips, Netherlands |
Mar 24, 2022
| FROM ISB Admissions Blog: Identifying and plugging the gaps in Tuberculosis care in India |
 According to the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress in providing essential Tuberculosis (TB) services and reducing the disease burden, with India being one of the worst-affected countries. In 2020, India was the highest contributor to the global gap between estimated TB incidence and the number of people newly diagnosed with TB and reported. The Union health ministry, in its National Strategic Plan (NSP) for Tuberculosis Elimination 2017-2025, called TB India’s “severest health crisis”, as it kills an estimated 4,80,000 Indians every year and around 1,400 every day. On the occasion of World Tuberculosis Day, we bring you details of three interesting TB-related studies happening at ISB’s Max Institute of Healthcare Management (MIHM) currently. We are working with global organisations and partners to understand some of the critical gaps in its care and management in India and how they can be plugged. Incentivising private providers to widen TB care net Traditionally, TB patients prefer to seek private healthcare thus making the private providers the first point of contact for TB patients in India. Several private provider engagement (PPE) approaches have been implemented by the government in the recent past in various parts of the country to extend high-quality diagnostic tools and treatment regimens to privately treated patients. MIHM has received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to conduct a quantitative and qualitative study to evaluate the impact of private sector engagement on patient outcomes, both health and operational. This study will evaluate the Patient Provider Support Agency (PPSA) model to understand how TB care can be improved via patient subsidies and provider incentives. For the same, we have partnered with FMR and the Central TB Division (CTD) with an aim to assess the impact of the PPE strategy on patient pathways for diagnosis and treatment initiation, quality of care, the financial burden to patients and their families, and treatment outcomes. This in-depth statistical analysis of primary and secondary data from five states (over a period of five years) will establish the exposure of patients to various elements of PPE strategy at the patient, provider, and community levels and then measure their impact on the relevant health and operational outcomes. This is the first large-scale comprehensive study on the PPSA model. While we conduct a mixed-methods evaluation study, The George Institute for Global Health will do the cost analysis. The results from these two studies will then feed into the epidemiological transmission analysis to be done by the Imperial College. This exercise will provide an estimated impact of PPE strategy on population-level metrics such as TB incidence, mortality, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and/or years of life lost (YLLs) averted. Involving for-profit organisations to improve the quality of TB care in the private sector India had the largest share (26%) in the global burden of TB in 2019. The NSP acknowledges serious gaps in the programme and emphasises that the public-private mix is an important component for TB elimination in India. While the Joint Effort for Elimination of Tuberculosis (JEET) looks to address inefficiencies in every step of the patient care cascade for TB and to build the programme management capacity, the question of how the private sector in the urban agglomerates could be leveraged at all levels – national, state, and district/cities/towns – to combat this disease looms large. Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) is running a few pilots in Gujarat and Faridabad with Tata 1mg – a for-profit private digital consumer healthcare platform – to provide PPSA services, ranging from drug delivery, sample collection and transport, patient counselling, and online consultations to patients seeking TB care in the private sector. MIHM is conducting a mixed-methods study and costing exercise to evaluate these models to understand the uptake and quality of service of the 1mg pilots vis-à-vis existing donor-funded PPSAs and the costing of 1mg pilots. The quantitative exercise will be conducted in a retrospective setting using secondary datasets. We will also conduct primary qualitative interviews with patients and service providers to capture their experiences and behaviour during the pilot. We will also use the activity-based costing (ABC) technique to explore the cost-driving activities and to calculate the time and resources consumed per unit of activity. The study is funded by CHAI. A randomised control trial to evaluate and understand the effectiveness and cost of DATs in the private sector Typically, an active TB patient is required to take six months of medication to cure the disease. However, irregular adherence or non-adherence to pills is a common occurrence. This increases the increase the risk of death, chances of relapse, and drug resistance among the patients. The Central TB Division (CTD) launched an Integrated Digital Adherence Technology Initiative (IDAT) in 2019 to deliver more patient-centric monitoring and management at scale. But an interim assessment indicated that while IDAT had achieved significant coverage of digital adherence technologies (DATs) over a brief period, several barriers at the level of the health system, health workers and patients needed to be overcome to achieve their desired impact on patient outcomes. Furthermore, currently, the adoption and expansion of DATs is the largest in the public sector. But it is predicted that the impact would be greater if these tools are extended to privately treated TB patients. MIHM has received a grant from BMGF to conduct a multi-year, multi-faceted, comprehensive study to evaluate three adherence monitoring methods from both patient and healthcare worker’s perspectives against the standard of care in the private sector. The four key objectives are to (i) quantify the impact of these monitoring methods on patients’ medication adherence and clinical outcomes, (ii) identify the underlying mechanisms and pathways (“the how”) of the impact of these monitoring methods, (iii) optimise the effect of these monitoring methods on the workflow processes of frontline workers, and (iv) estimate the programmatic costs of their implementation and scale-up. The study will be structured as a multi-site randomised controlled trial embedded in mixed methods operational research and guided by economics and behavioural sciences to meet the study objectives. Qualitative studies, informed by behavioural sciences, will identify barriers and facilitators for optimal engagement with DATs among patients and healthcare workers. A Time-and-Motion study will be conducted to capture the effect of information generated by digital technologies on the workflows of frontline health workers. Advanced analytic methods such as machine learning will be used to recommend optimal use of limited health worker capacity and findings from these analyses will be integrated with estimates of detailed programmatic costs to arrive at the relative cost-effectiveness of the various monitoring methods. This project is being implemented in partnership with BMGF and World Health Partnerswith guidance from the Central TB Division and is aimed at generating rigorous evidence to guide national decision-making on the scale-up of digital adherence management and implementation protocols along with their cost-effectiveness and budget impact. #WorldTBday #EndTB #TBfreeWorld |
Mar 24, 2022
| FROM ISB PGP Admissions Director Blog: Identifying and plugging the gaps in Tuberculosis care in India |
|
According to the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress in providing essential Tuberculosis (TB) services and reducing the disease burden, with India being one of the worst-affected countries. In 2020, India was the highest contributor to the global gap between estimated TB incidence and the number of people newly diagnosed with TB and reported. The Union health ministry, in its National Strategic Plan (NSP) for Tuberculosis Elimination 2017-2025, called TB India’s “severest health crisis”, as it kills an estimated 4,80,000 Indians every year and around 1,400 every day. On the occasion of World Tuberculosis Day, we bring you details of three interesting TB-related studies happening at ISB’s Max Institute of Healthcare Management (MIHM) currently. We are working with global organisations and partners to understand some of the critical gaps in its care and management in India and how they can be plugged. Incentivising private providers to widen TB care net Traditionally, TB patients prefer to seek private healthcare thus making the private providers the first point of contact for TB patients in India. Several private provider engagement (PPE) approaches have been implemented by the government in the recent past in various parts of the country to extend high-quality diagnostic tools and treatment regimens to privately treated patients. MIHM has received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to conduct a quantitative and qualitative study to evaluate the impact of private sector engagement on patient outcomes, both health and operational. This study will evaluate the Patient Provider Support Agency (PPSA) model to understand how TB care can be improved via patient subsidies and provider incentives. For the same, we have partnered with FMR and the Central TB Division (CTD) with an aim to assess the impact of the PPE strategy on patient pathways for diagnosis and treatment initiation, quality of care, the financial burden to patients and their families, and treatment outcomes. This in-depth statistical analysis of primary and secondary data from five states (over a period of five years) will establish the exposure of patients to various elements of PPE strategy at the patient, provider, and community levels and then measure their impact on the relevant health and operational outcomes. This is the first large-scale comprehensive study on the PPSA model. While we conduct a mixed-methods evaluation study, The George Institute for Global Health will do the cost analysis. The results from these two studies will then feed into the epidemiological transmission analysis to be done by the Imperial College. This exercise will provide an estimated impact of PPE strategy on population-level metrics such as TB incidence, mortality, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and/or years of life lost (YLLs) averted. Involving for-profit organisations to improve the quality of TB care in the private sector India had the largest share (26%) in the global burden of TB in 2019. The NSP acknowledges serious gaps in the programme and emphasises that the public-private mix is an important component for TB elimination in India. While the Joint Effort for Elimination of Tuberculosis (JEET) looks to address inefficiencies in every step of the patient care cascade for TB and to build the programme management capacity, the question of how the private sector in the urban agglomerates could be leveraged at all levels – national, state, and district/cities/towns – to combat this disease looms large. Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) is running a few pilots in Gujarat and Faridabad with Tata 1mg – a for-profit private digital consumer healthcare platform – to provide PPSA services, ranging from drug delivery, sample collection and transport, patient counselling, and online consultations to patients seeking TB care in the private sector. MIHM is conducting a mixed-methods study and costing exercise to evaluate these models to understand the uptake and quality of service of the 1mg pilots vis-à-vis existing donor-funded PPSAs and the costing of 1mg pilots. The quantitative exercise will be conducted in a retrospective setting using secondary datasets. We will also conduct primary qualitative interviews with patients and service providers to capture their experiences and behaviour during the pilot. We will also use the activity-based costing (ABC) technique to explore the cost-driving activities and to calculate the time and resources consumed per unit of activity. The study is funded by CHAI. A randomised control trial to evaluate and understand the effectiveness and cost of DATs in the private sector Typically, an active TB patient is required to take six months of medication to cure the disease. However, irregular adherence or non-adherence to pills is a common occurrence. This increases the increase the risk of death, chances of relapse, and drug resistance among the patients. The Central TB Division (CTD) launched an Integrated Digital Adherence Technology Initiative (IDAT) in 2019 to deliver more patient-centric monitoring and management at scale. But an interim assessment indicated that while IDAT had achieved significant coverage of digital adherence technologies (DATs) over a brief period, several barriers at the level of the health system, health workers and patients needed to be overcome to achieve their desired impact on patient outcomes. Furthermore, currently, the adoption and expansion of DATs is the largest in the public sector. But it is predicted that the impact would be greater if these tools are extended to privately treated TB patients. MIHM has received a grant from BMGF to conduct a multi-year, multi-faceted, comprehensive study to evaluate three adherence monitoring methods from both patient and healthcare worker’s perspectives against the standard of care in the private sector. The four key objectives are to (i) quantify the impact of these monitoring methods on patients’ medication adherence and clinical outcomes, (ii) identify the underlying mechanisms and pathways (“the how”) of the impact of these monitoring methods, (iii) optimise the effect of these monitoring methods on the workflow processes of frontline workers, and (iv) estimate the programmatic costs of their implementation and scale-up. The study will be structured as a multi-site randomised controlled trial embedded in mixed methods operational research and guided by economics and behavioural sciences to meet the study objectives. Qualitative studies, informed by behavioural sciences, will identify barriers and facilitators for optimal engagement with DATs among patients and healthcare workers. A Time-and-Motion study will be conducted to capture the effect of information generated by digital technologies on the workflows of frontline health workers. Advanced analytic methods such as machine learning will be used to recommend optimal use of limited health worker capacity and findings from these analyses will be integrated with estimates of detailed programmatic costs to arrive at the relative cost-effectiveness of the various monitoring methods. This project is being implemented in partnership with BMGF and World Health Partnerswith guidance from the Central TB Division and is aimed at generating rigorous evidence to guide national decision-making on the scale-up of digital adherence management and implementation protocols along with their cost-effectiveness and budget impact. #WorldTBday #EndTB #TBfreeWorld |
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