Context: June Diary

07.06.2007

Programme on Managerial Effectiveness for the executives of Aban Constructions Limited.
Inspired by Mr. Ajith Pannikkar the GM - HR of the company I created a small wallet sized cards containg the Old Lady/Young Lady Optical illustration on the one side and a set of one liners summarising the day's learning on the other.

08.06.2007

Programme on Executive Time Management for the executives of Gabriel India Limited, Hosur.
The Hosur plant is part of the Rs. 600 crore Gabriel India Ltd, which is itself a part of the Anand Group. This unit manufactures shock absorbers. Their major customers are TVS, Honda and Yamaha.

The plant is situated on seven and a half acres of land. The spic and span production unit is surrounded by a lush green landscaped lawn with a lot of tree cover. In fact the group policy is to create "sixty percent tree cover and forty percent production facility"!

There is a small shady bamboo thicket on the facility with seats in the middle. Executives retire here for "filter coffee" with the GM. The activity is a freewheeling brainstorming exercise where the GM documents suggestions for improvement made by employees. On the whole an enriching experience, hopefully mutual!

12.06.2007 and 13.06.2007

Programme on Budgeting, Costing and ERP Skills for the executives of the Vikrma Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Trivandrum. The two day long programme was quite interactive with participants raising various issues. But there was an alarming drop in attendance during the post-lunch session on the secong day. As I evaluate myself on this, I have to concede that my own rating of myself on a scale of 10 would be 5 for this programme.

This could possibly have been due to my being unable to relate commercial costing concepts to the "spend what you want so long as you've budgeted for it" approach prevalent in most government run institutions like VSSC. Many participants expressed the need for a VSSC based case study, especially on Activity Based Costing.

As VSSC is competing with China and US for international (Satelite Launch Vehicles) SLV contracts, costing becomes relevant. The basic cost unit for an SLV is the cost per kilogramme of the payload (i'e. the satelite).

On both the days I was received and escorted by Mr. Gopakumar of VSSC. He is a fund of knowledge on philosophy and life style related issues. Being a strng advocate of the back-to-basics culture he was very critical of the Pizza and mall culture slowly taking over the entire country and thus destroying the traditional and time tested life style which was conducive to the holistic development of the body, mind and soul.

Every time I visit VSSC, I feel proud that I am handling sessions at the institution where our President the great A P J Abdul Kalaam worked!

Coordinated the Management Study Centre programme on Arbitration on Contractual Disputes. The programme was facilitated by the Nani Palkhivala Arbitration Centre, Chennai. The speakers were four distiguished advocates, viz., Arvind P Datar, N L Rajah, V S Jayakumar and M S Krishnan. There

were twenty two participants.

The programme was well received.

24.06.2007

Conducted the Management Study Centre programme on Managerial Effectiveness. I truly apprciated the enthisiastic and energetic participation of Mr. Hosmani from Bangalore. He has already attended my Team building workshop and is very much interested in personality development and the Seven Habits.

28.06.2007