The event this year was kicked off with a short film on SIIB. The institute has indeed come a long way since its inception and thus the gone by era was only reflected in modest terms. The various courses as well as extra-curricular activities were showcased to the audience. The day began with the lamp lighting ceremony followed by the welcome speech by Dr. Rajani Gupte, Director, SIIB, where in she explained the rationale behind this year’s theme. Any young manager or entrepreneur always starts with a dream but many a times lacks the ability or the courage to act. Thus, this year’s lecture series was meant to help the audience realize the potential of their dreams & ideas and inspire them to work on them.
The audience was then addressed by Dr. Mujumdar, Chancellor, Symbiosis International University as he further emphasized on the meaning of the theme. He used the example of the recent blockbuster “Chak De” and explained how that idea inspired the young Indian cricket team to win the world cup. He also shared his thoughts as to how he incepted the idea of the Symbiosis Cricket Tournament where in the BCCI chief Mr. Sharad Pawar was also present. All in all, according to him, it is not only the idea that sells but the whole product. He stressed on this point by making the audience understand that unless the end result is good, the whole hard work of converting a good idea to action would otherwise go waste.
The session continued with the address of the chief guest for the event, Honourable Shri Jayant Patil, Finance Minister, Govt. of Maharashtra, as he took centre stage. He emphasized on the Indian mentality of cooking up ideas but not going through with them till the end. This, he pointed out, was the major reason for the low conversion of good, solid ideas into action or good products & services. According to him, the major reasons for this would be globalization & technology shift. Due to these points, the major paradigm shift is towards countries such as China, Brazil and other African nations. As a result, there is a major shift in the business trends too.
Continuing with his insights, he shared his experiences of foreign tours and went on to cite the lack of infrastructure, good judicial system and unwillingness of the system to bring about a change. Before he ended his address, he did point out that all these evils can be sorted out well as India had a good young workforce working in the corporate world and coupled with better infrastructure & judiciary system, the rest would be a cakewalk for our country.
The inaugural session continued with the stage now set for the two guests of honour, Dr. Naushad Forbes, Director, Forbes Marshall and Adv. Shri Ujjwal Nikam, Public Prosecutor, Govt. of Maharashtra. Dr. Forbes addressed the audience first and rolled out a three point plan for the implementation of any idea. According to him, innovation is anything new that could be developed for commercial advantage. It could even be an idea growing on another but could be a new concept altogether for a firm or even an educational institute.
His three point formula for success consisted of overarching purpose, focus and commitment towards the end result. He stressed on the need to have a purpose, an aim, which when defined becomes the centre of attention and you only strive to achieve that. An example pointed out by him was that of china as they concentrated only on their GDP growth before anything else. Next up was focus without which nothing can be achieved in this world. For success in any venture, one needs to channelize all their energies towards that one goal. Only then will the task will get completed. Last but not the least commitment is the last ingredient for any successful recipe. He cited the example of the SIIB Leadership Series 2007 team as to how they worked day in and day out for the last two weeks for the success of the event.
The last lecture of the inaugural session witnessed Adv. Shri Ujjwal Nikam, who began by humoring the audience that he never takes a free-of-cost lecture. On a serious note, though, he stated the obvious need of idea to action even in a profession like his which by his own admission is something different than a regular management course. However, he drew inference from his vast experiences of the Mumbai bomb blast case and the Sanjay Dutt case to educate the audience as to how it becomes imperative to use some unique methods when the regular ones fail. He stressed on the point that one should not be afraid of failure, rather one should be afraid of aiming low. Before he ended, he did notify everyone that not all can be like Gandhi or Nehru and seek their own paths as well as find success on them. But that again should not deter anybody from seeking them.
After a small break for snacks and tea, the pre-lunch session began with Mr. T.R.Doongaji, Managing Director, Tata Services Ltd. He stated that affection is a part of leadership and it builds devotees rather than making enemies. He quoted Stephen Covey on the occasion, “moral authority is more important than formal authority” and later on stressed on the fact that one should always look at the larger purpose of the business, i.e. custom oriented, employee oriented, product oriented and country oriented as a whole.
Mr. Lakshminarayan, Joint MD, Motor Indusries Co. Ltd, continued the pre-lunch session as he introduced BOSCH to the audience, as they enter into collaboration with the German giants. Drawing on his experiences at BOSCH he talked about what works at the practical level by citing the turn around of their Bangalore plant. He continued with the details about the turn around as he explained as to how they reduced their defective parts per million as a result of quality improvement. He stressed on the importance of transformational leadership and fostering the need for change, productivity and innovation.
The last lecture of the pre-lunch session was taken up by Mr. D. Ramesh, VP-R&D; (Global), Wipro Infrastructure Engg. Ltd. He made the audience realize that almost every body has ideas, but it is only a select few who are able to complete them into action. Discoveries, innovations and inventions have always been the results of various ideas in human history. What is needed is the passion to follow them. With time, the world has seen changes in material, men, method as well as machinery as today’s world has enormous impacts of technology and computerization. He gave a good example of the Six Sigma processes as to how even the basic management methods have changed over time. Before he summarized, he stressed that problem solving is the key to success and a combination of idea, knowledge and passion leads to action.
The post-lunch session witnessed insightful lectures from Mr. Deeepak Dheer, CEO-Stampings, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Executive Director-MUSCO Steel and Mr. K. Vishwanathan, Vice President, Corporate Relationships, AXIS Bank.
As the evening approached and the lecture series eventually came to a close, the in-charge faculty, Prof. Adya Sharma thanked the speakers for sharing their insightful experiences with the audience, commended the students’ organization committee for a good job done, especially commending the good job done by the students-in-charge, Rohit Joshi & Rohit Pajni, and thanked the director of SIIB, Dr. Rajni Gupte for her un-ending support. Until next year.