management for life

IESE has been the opportunity of a lifetime for me. it started with culture shocks and lack of sleep, but i am gradually waking up to the lessons it has in store for me. to know who i am. to know what i have. to know what i like. to know what i can do. to know what i want.

i have been aware of some things before coming here. accounting for my expenses. i knew exactly where every rupee i had spent. and i knew exactly where every moment of my time had gone. after coming here i got to know how it all fit-in in terms of accounting for my desires, both in terms of purchases and in terms of actions. what was the opportunity cost of not going to indore? and then of not going to chennai? today when i look back it these two decisions were the investments that brought me to this place, and with a strong emotional support from my family. love included in family. i was conscious of keeping a healthy flow of working capital. i rather have cash in hand than on loan in someone else's pocket. that's usually bad debt. same with investments. money invested in stocks is not to be trusted for emergencies. with operational finance i came to know how working capital could make or break companies. heck i had even done a project on working capital. had compared ratio across industry, trying to analyse their health using those numbers. what did i know that i was trying to get to the level of analysis that bankers do for a living. i am glad engineering professors don't have the exposure to investment banking. then the marketing strategy project. i knew the 4 ps but again didn't know how to use it. the survey we did to understand the customer was a humongous task. making and giving presentations was probably the biggest transferable skill from those days.

the next opportunity is the internship. this is the chance i have that pulled me out of my job. to work with like-minded people, to explore a new world at a whole new scale of responsibilities. where you will not have a supervisor to review your work before it goes out. you are your reviewer. and of others as well. the world is calling, are you listening? oh you have your eyes set beyond that? exchange. a new culture, a new peer group. a new world of opportunities. and a fire within that is looking for a new whiff of oxygen. keep it going. and one day you will fly.