I was just going through the old photographs on my hard disk and I came across the photos of the HR Continuum during my days at SOM. I want to pen this down right now so that it remains a memory with me forever.
What I learnt at SOM:
1) People are seldom what they seem: Actually , I mean this in a positive way. I mean I worked with people I hardly knew. Frankly, they were their own group and I was kinda the outsider. But then, I guess I gelled pretty well. So what I knew about them from just knowing them by name and their behaviour in class was totally different from what I realized they were once we got working. Pretty amazing public 
2) Different people – different perspectives – same goal – mission accomplished: What everyone else wanted was placements – what I wanted was to put SOM on the HR map – the challenge of a turnaround if you will with unfortunately, no focus on placements – the middle ground was one hell of an event
3) Push the topics along with the event: Another difference between sys conti and HR conti and one thing I to some extent had to face the flak for – the thing was the system continuum poster said “IT – The Road Ahead” and left it at that. While the HR poster included was the topics that were going to be discussed. It ended up making the poster looking a little messy cos of that , it still was the single reason that we got the attendees.
Just a by is that we got the topics very much bang-on. It was not the usual crap – we had topics that were pertinent but seldom discussed. Given that while the topics to some extent differed from what we had put up in the poster (due to operational reasons) they were 1)Important 2) Fresh 3)SELDOM DISCUSSED
4) Discuss, involve , share !! The key differentiator between system continuum and the HR continuum – we decided to push our concept documents and all updates down the chute of the SOM ‘06 mail group – encouraged transparency, discussions, and critiques and comments over lunch, dinner et al – a lot of times they pushed us to the limit !!In terms of deadlines, budgets and all that – and finally, we got all the support we needed to push the continuum to the level we reached.
Another and the most important result of this was that we were able to contact 2 Ph.D. guys who were primarily responsible for the high quality of speakers that we ended up getting
5) People who can screw you will: It’s simple – the mistake I made – i freaked out cos there was not enough time to get the posters and the invitations and I made enormous commitments to the printer bastard in terms of the cash for the posters. Am i pissed with him ? Of course not ! He did what he should. I messed up and it has been one of the most important lessons I have learnt
6) Practicing alchemy: Basic funda is turn horse shit into gold. We had huge problems of delivering the posters through couriers since they (posters) came out pretty late. Thus, we had no choice but to deliver some of the posters personally. However, this turned golden cos of the approach of personalized and individual invitations.
7) Call the girls, the guys come free : K, this works for only sex-starved areas like IITB. One post about where we were expecting public to come from and BOOM !! IITB was there
NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER EVER EVER GIVE UP: All caps and for a reason. I guess the lowest point of the entire process was getting rejection after rejection after endless chases and ending up with sudden dead-ends. I am talking about sponsors. The primary reason why the poster came out late was that 1) No title sponsor 2) No associate sponsor 3) No media sponsor – So u can understand how crazily miserable we felt …. but quite frankly, we had no choice and had to go on….not that we suddenly got major gold as such .. we landed SBI as title sponsor ( they would sponsor simply to have a relationship with us rather than for HR Conti), no associate sponsor and a media sponsor I have never heard of till then called Human Capital ( based in Delhi ) but then having a sponsor with a name like that did give us credibility tho’- this relieved us of quite a lot of tension and got us working in full force and with complete enthusiasm
9) Chase !! : Yeah, that was one thing we had to keep doing. Some targeted cos. was to be handled only by the placecom and we had to constantly chase these guys to get the job done. Even in another case when we got missed calls (inquiries) in class, I went down during the break to return every single one of those calls . Net result : The VP (HR) of Essar Oil came as a delegate, and almost 90% of the people whose call I returned ended up coming
10) The old way of doing things is not the best way of doing things: One of my most important lessons. We had a lecture by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar a month before we started work on the Continuum and one person asked them “If this spirituality sessions are so important, why are you charging for it?. After all, yours is not a for-profit organization.” Pat came the reply: “If I don’t charge for it, people do not value it enough.” That one sentence kept reverberating in my head like some kind of hip-hop beat and for the first time in any continuum, we actually charged for attending the seminar (obviously differentials for industry candidates and students). That alone attracted attention to the symposium and made it a success.
). Work till around 1 a.m. and then head down to the 24-hour cafe nearby for some awesome hot espresso and maybe some grub. Felt like heaven even without a Raymond’s suit. I mean, I remember me and my colleague went out at around 10 pm for some soul-searching….(actually, it was spirit-searching, the one you find in a Signature bottle) and all we could see was a wall of white! Somewhere in the distance, we finally saw some lights and some vague shadows of people. First law: People+lights+fog+10pm+Friday night = Theka ! And we were right ! But we took 20 minutes for the walk back cos’ we had to keep straining our eyes to find the silhouette of the guest house. And well, nothing and I mean nothing beats the hot tea, the Maggi noodles or the occasional sutta (I really mean occasional) at 11 am when we took a break from some seriously brain-numbing work !!
