Nurturing Excellence with Stability and Change at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad: IIMs: Director's Role is Complex

Nurturing Excellence with Stability and Change at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad: IIMs: Director's Role is Complex: Director’s Job is Complex T. V. Rao Directors of any educational Institution have a complex role to play. Some times when I think of ...

IIMs: Director's Role is Complex

Director’s Job is Complex

T. V. Rao

Directors of any educational Institution have a complex role to play. Some times when I think of it, it is even scaring. In modern times it requires a superhuman being to be able to play the role very successfully. No doubt there are a few good examples but most people end up as average or even below average Directors. Normally it a couple of years after the new Director is appointed the previous one starts looking better. Most Directors get to be known as biased, have their own coterie, insensitive to faculty and students' needs and even competing sometimes with faculty to be seen as popular among one constituent or the other (Students, or staff or the Board of Management or local leaders, parents, government etc.). It is not their fault. The role requires management of different constituents or stake holders.: The Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, Management Committee where there is one including the owners and investors who have invested their money and effort, Parents, Community around them, local government authorities (including municipal corporation, income tax, service tax, other civic service providers, local professional bodies and industry etc.), new donors or potential donors etc. The Director cannot do justice to all this and to do this he/she should be a good delegator and should know how to sue different constituents appropriately. He should be able to sue his administrative staff deal with and utilise the local government and community for the good of the Institution. The most critical among the roles of the Director in my view include vision and direction setting and inspiring all constituents with the same; effective administration of the Institution and mainly the support systems with the help of the staff; inspiring, developing and managing faculty; utilising and managing the Board or the Management Committee including the owners, donors,  and investors; and linkages with the authorities that manage the education systems in the local or central government (AICTE, Sate or Central Government authorities etc. for accreditation and other matters.). Over focussing on some of these roles and under focusing on the others may lead to issues and problems. For example setting HR policies for staff or faculty without sensitivity to their needs, preferences and priorities may result in unrest visible or invisible and may have disastrous consequences. Similarly inability to sue Alumni resources and Board resources may be missing the boat. When I was Honorary Director of the Academy of HRD I have taken the help of many Board members to support the AHRD financially and was able to manage a good degree of funds through membership and Chairs. However I failed to sue a highly resourceful person on the Board the Chairman himself who donated land to the Institute.   It is with regret I look back how I and subsequent Directors did not cultivate the Chairman and use his popularity as well as services. In the five years of its existence in the same city of Hyderabad the Chairman never visited the Institution. In the beginning I used to think that he did not have interest. It is only latter I started getting the insight that we could not create opportunities for him to visit. Every Chairman who donates his time, money and effort would like to get something in return. The least that they expect is a good name or a great acknowledgement of their contribution. There could have been many forms of doing this but by failing to do this we lost a great opportunity of using the richness of the Chairman of AHRD. It is mainly the Director who has to be held responsible for this missed opportunity which will never come again.

Similarly Alumni of well established Institutions are a great source of strength. They need to be cultivated. Quite unlike the West Indian Alumni don’t always donate liberally to enable the Institution to manage itself financially. There are exceptions. However, most Alumni are more than willing to give their time, guidance and effort in other forms to support their Institution. Appropriate strategies need to be made. The Director may not be able to do it alone but take the help of other Faculty. In the ultimate analysis the Alumni do expect the Director to be present and continuously be with them to encourage and acknowledge their contributions. This is an important role he has to play with the faculty.

The most critical role is with the faculty. They are all knowledge workers and hence like to be heard. They like a Director who listens to them, empathetic, transparent, communicates, honours commitments, and supports them without biases in their teaching, research, administration and dissemination work. His style plays a significant role in managing faculty. Faculty are very sensitive to the moods, statements and actions of the Director. He is watched all the time and judged also. It is a tight rope walk. Information gets shared among the faculty and sometimes selectively. No one reports all the conversation he had with the Director when he or she visits him for an approval or discussion of any grievance. IIMA Director Samuel Paul used to have a small saying displayed on his table: “There are three sides to every story: Yours, Mine and The Facts”.  This is so true what get known is one side always and not even the two sides. Thus Director has to be extremely sensitive in saying what he says as it could be presented differently and rumours started. If he is transparent and communicative the scope for such distortions gets reduced. Hence it is very important that the Director should be open and communicative.

In addition setting a personal example is always an important one.  Only yesterday I was told an interesting incident of one of the Chief Ministers of Gujarat. When he appointed a Deputy Chief Minister the Dy CM wanted that he should be given a red light car like the one the CM had. As there was no rule permitting the Dy CM to have such car, it needed the permission of the CM. A note was put up and the CM write on the note withdrawing his own red-light car and permitting any Minister interested in having a red light car to be free to have it. Apparently when the order was issued no other Minister asked for it.” One of the Directors of IIMA used to travel by his car from Residence to office which a few hundred yards of distance. As no other Faculty were doing this, he also started walking every day. This has got him to meet other faculty and feel one among them. To develop the feeling of one among the equals is a highly desirable quality. If the Director is coercive or critical to faculty or not available to faculty or staff it sets a whole lot of dynamics among them and vitiates the academic climate.

Normally I have observed how so ever good a Director may be his ratings with the faculty decline as the time passes. This is because every year there will a few added to his hate list- not those whom he hates but those who hate him or critical of him. One faculty or staff whose requests are not granted or who ahs been treated with slight neglect becomes a rival. Thus all Directors like the HRD Department in a corporation run the risk of creating enemies from within. Hence the competence of interpersonal sensitivity and tact become essential. Ravi Matthai used to be known for this. He used to use every evening to reflect on the transactions he had with every single faculty and other visitors, evaluate himself and take necessary steps make everyone involved and inspired. Even if he had to disagree he would give long enough explanation. Often the explanation was good enough to get the other party to retrieve. Like once I am told when the Senior faculty expressed their unhappiness over only Juniors being sent to Harvard to do their Doctorates, and a team of faculty went to meet him, he sent them back smiling without granting their wish. He apparently told them that as senior faculty they should go and teach at Harvard rather than go there as students.

This kind of interpersonal sensitivity is difficult to get. It plays a critical role in managing the most important constituent of the Institution.  A good way of ensuring these qualities and effective management of an Institution is by seeking 360 Degree Feedback once a year from all possible constituents. This needs a specially created tool for the same. However in my experience I am yet to see a Head of an Institution to seek such 360 Degree Feedback.

I have summarised in the enclosed appendix the Roles and qualities of the Director of an Institution particularly with reference to IIMA when the Search for the New Director was set in motion 2012.

Roles and Activities:

1.       Articulating or developing vision for the Institute along with Faculty and other stakeholders and driving the institute towards the same.

2.       Maintaining Excellence and improving on the standing of the institute locally, nationally, and globally in terms of education, research and innovative management theories and practices. This can be done through orchestrating various processes in the institute and working very closely with faculty. Identifying their talent, projecting their talent and creating opportunities of them to make an impact.

3.       Balancing traditions and at the same time initiating and managing change with stake holder involvement.

4.       Protecting the faculty autonomy and maintaining peer culture and ensuring technological, financial and administrative support available on a continuing basis for faculty to work.

5.       Mobilising and managing finances and financial autonomy of the Institute by liaising well with the Industry, Government, Global institutions, other business schools, Board, Society at large,

6.       Inspiring and developing faculty to do excellent work- ensuring balance of teaching, research and dissemination.

7.       Ensuring safe, and motivating environment in the campus- infrastructure, technological support,  facilities management etc

8.       Respecting faculty for their work and projecting them to the outside world and ensuring that the outside world uses faculty resources for mutual benefit.

9.       Seeking 360 Degree Feedback, sharing results and showing change.

10.   Faculty recruitment and Development- investing time and effort on the same.

Qualities:

1.       Communication skills- willingness to communicate and use communication to t=enthuse and motivate faculty, staff and visitors,, tact and articulation and presentation skills

2.       Respect for faculty and staff – ability to trust them and engage them to be accountable

3.       Respect for systems and processes

4.       Openness to ideas – including willingness to receive feedback and criticism and reflect on it

5.       Willingness to change impressions and not carrying biases about faculty and staff

6.       Networking skills- network with various agents and agencies and sue the same for the benefit of the Institute

7.       Resource mobilisation- funds, faculty and other resources

8.       Empowering attitude

9.       Transparency

10.   Time management (his term is only 1825 days and approximately 20,000 hours).

11.   Credibility, character and values are the most critical things. Credibility may be gained on a continuous basis by his own actions and exemplary conduct.

Directors Job is Complex. I have written this article also for everyone to reflect that it is difficult to get a person who is next to God to head an Institution. The Directors or Heads of Institutions should have or at least try to cultivate as many of these qualities as they can to manage the Institution. If for some reason some of them are lacking in the Director, the faculty and other constituents (the Board) may need to plan and work out mechanisms for creating the circumstances that take care of what is lacking rather than spending all the time of tenure of the Head criticizing and cribbing. I don’t know if this is a distant dream but can we make this happen by thinking about “How to manage your own Director?”

Boards of IIMs

Boards of IIMs: Roles and Responsibilities

T. V. Rao

The Board of IIMs are the Chief custodians of the Management of these Institutions. The vision, mission, goals and objectives of IIMs are well set.  It is the Faculty and staff that make sure that the Institution strives to achieve its vision, mission and goals under the leadership of its Director. The Chairman and Board are non-executive Governors of the Board. They don’t execute though they are termed as having the role of executive body. They enable the Director and his/her team to execute and carry out various activities.  They meet once a quarter and at best for a day each time. With four days on inputs in a year we don’t expect the Board to make the institute achieve its goals. They are not comparable to the Boards of Directors of companies. There is a lot of difference between the way corporate Boards function and the Boards of Educational Institutes function.  The Board provides  linkages between the Institute and the environment or the society at large, interprets the environmental needs and opportunities and provide direction for the Institute and its faculty to review, launch and re-launch their programs including teaching, research, dissemination or change management  activities. They also review the performance of the Institute and its Director from time to time and approve the budgets and balance sheets.

The Boards are normally thought fully constituted to represent the outside society or environment so that the IIM can have maximum impact and achieve the purposes for which they are set up.  The members of the Board normally include representatives of the Government, Industry, other stakeholders and the Society at large. For example there are normally one representative of the MHRD and one of the State Government and in addition one each nominated by the Centre and the State. In addition two eminent people to be nominated by the Board from Alumni and three to nominated by the Government to represent different sections of society (education, industry, government and or special groups that need attention). Two represent the faculty, and four members representing the Registered Society if the Institute is a registered Society under the Societies Registration Act like the one at IIMA.

The Board members have both an individual and collective role. Individually each member has a role to play to represent the interests of the group for which he/she has been nominated/appointed.

Individual Responsibility:

For example the Faculty members on the Board are the active voice of the Institute and ensure that the other members are informed about various activities and concerns of the Institute, its needs, accomplishments, challenges etc. and seek solutions or give policy inputs.

The members representing the Registered Society(under 1860 Societies Registration act)  has the responsibility to represent the society’ views to faculty, build bridges between the Institute and Society members, expand membership, collect views and inputs from the Society and present the same to the Board to be translated into policies and practices. For this they should be constantly in touch with the other members of the Society.

The MHRD or Central Government and State Government representatives have the role to play of informing the National and local priorities and guide the Institute to serve the National and local (State) level needs and interests.

The Alumni have the responsibility to represent the alumni interests and ensure that feedback is available to the Institute from alumni so that changes that help the institute move towards better curricula and better programs can be made available and also ensure that the alumni contribute to the financial health of the Institution.

The other members representing special interest groups like Industry including women, SC/ ST, or sectoral groups like Banking, petroleum, education etc. depending on the reasons for their appointment) should draw attention of the Board and Institute to National concerns of the groups as and when an opportunity arises.

Collective responsibility:

The Board should normally transcend their individual points of view and collectively work for the good of the Institution all the time. Sometimes there could be conflict and in resolving the conflicts they should be able to rise above the specific individual interests and work for the good of the Institution. Team work is the most essential part of the Board. If the Board’s divided view gets communicated to faculty, it affects the excellence and does not give right direction to faculty. It may leads to politicization of the issues. The Board is there to support faculty, lay down broad policies and guide the faculty to govern themselves well. The Board is not an Executive Board. It is also not an Advisory Board. It is a mixture of both and in Academic Institutions the Board should remember that they are helping a group of highly knowledgeable scholars who get disturbed and de-motivated if they are not given proper support for their teaching, research and other academic work. The Board therefore does not get into individual cases and does not also get into decision making as far as possible. The only time they get to play active role in decision making is when they appoint the Director to lead the Institute or establishment of new centres which require big funding and their interventions. Other times include some exceptional cases of termination of faculty services or some financial norms, incentives have to be fixed, or big funds are to be accepted   etc. They could direct the faculty to start certain type programs or step up certain types of activities or scale down others etc. so as to serve the purpose for which the Institute is set up.

By virtue of its constitution the Board members may have different points of view. It is the role of the Director to present the Institute views and interest and take the help of the Board. The Chairperson has a very significant role to play in harnessing the different points of view and driving the Board to consensus make intelligent decisions or formulate policies. He should ensure that no vested interests develop nor any one section by virtue of its roots or origins dominate and twist the discussions.

During Mr. Naryana Murthy’s time at IIMA he had to play a very significant role when some differences arose with the government and the Alumni representatives played even a significant role to sort out the matters.

Chairman, Board and the Director:

These three play a keep role and their chemistry decides a lot of how the Institute develops. Their interrelationship should be one of trust and mutual respect. Trust can be built through continuous communication. Such communications from the Chair should not be seen as interference on the part of the Director and the Chairman could set a positive and non-threatening agenda for such communications.

A very significant role gets played by the Board at the time of selecting the Director. Normally it is good for the Chairman to keep himself out of Search Committee as he always had a lot of say at any point. When the Search Committee is constituted consisting of eminent people, they are likely to be respected for their suggestions and also they do consult the Chairman.  Chairman taking active role in the Search creates some times gives wrong perceptions that he may be favouring some one or the other and leads to politicisation. Even if he/she is a part of the Search, if the Search Committee is constituted with people of stature, is above Board and does not have any interests or preferences for particular candidate, it creates a healthy atmosphere. They should have the single most important objective of finding a good leader of excellence who can help achieve the Objectives of the Institution and take it to newer heights.  

Director’s job is a bed of thorns. How so ever excellent he or she may be some negativism does get generated and academics are very expressive of their unhappiness. The Search Committee or the Board should be able to listen, decipher the reasons and guide the Director where necessary and provide healing touch where possible. I have recommended an annual 360 Degree feedback for IIM Directors initiated by themselves. I am yet to see any Institute implement this. Once when Mr. Narayana Murthy asked me about his role as Chairman of IIMA, I suggested that the most significant role he could play is that of guiding the leader through a 360 like he developed leaders at Infosys. A 360 feedback annually or at least once a while helps the Director to be sensitive to the impact he/she is making. A 360 taken in early years of tenure can save a lot of negative energies that get developed.

If the Board get into delays in decision making it leaves the faculty guessing and runs the risk of starting new politics of alignment and realignment. It disturbs the academic culture and diverts the attention to other issues. It happened once when one of the Director’s appointments was delayed. There were letters to MHRD and the Faculty got divided and ended up wasting their time. It also made the life of the Current as well as the newly appointed Director difficult. In my view it took a long time to heal the wounds generated by the delay. It made an excellent Director less effective as he had to spend his time undoing what has been done and in the process he ended up hurting many more people.

(The thoughts here are personal and based my own experiences and narrations by those like Ravi Matthai,  Udai Pareek and others from whom I learnt)

Nurturing Excellence with Stability and Change at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad: Who Creates Excellence at IIMs?

Nurturing Excellence with Stability and Change at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad: Who Creates Excellence at IIMs?: WHO CREATES EXCELLENCE AT IIMA T. V. Rao “IIMA tops in Indian B-school rankings and continues winning more recognition and accolades a...

Who Creates Excellence at IIMs?

WHO CREATES EXCELLENCE AT IIMA

T. V. Rao

“IIMA tops in Indian B-school rankings and continues winning more recognition and accolades as a Global B-School.””

IIMA in Top 10 position: Financial Times Masters in Management 2012 Ranking “

IIMA’s PGPX maintains top position with FT Global MBA Rankings 2012

IIMA moves ahead in The Economist MBA Ranking 2012 IIMA PGP-ABM retains number 1 Rank

Source: (http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/institute/about/external-ranking.html) downloaded on 27^th February, 2013 (details at thee end)

The above rankings are one of the indicators of IIMA’s excellence. I am associated with the Institute for the last forty years. When I ask myself this question the first answer that comes to my mind are its Founders- not those founders who financed it: They certainly deserve credit- Government of India, Government of Gujarat, Ford Foundation, a few Industrialists who contributed to its funding  and a few others Industrialists who took risks in employing their graduates of first few years.  While each one of them had a role they are not responsible for Excellence. It is those Founders who created the Culture of Excellence at IIMA from day one: Dr Sarabhai along with his team of Faculty, Ravi Matthai and his team of Faculty, Samuel Paul and his team of faculty and I can go on naming all the Directors. But my list will stop with the first two Directors but continues with the Faculty. The first symbol of Faculty that comes to my mind is Professor Madhavan a silent Professor who devoted his life to teaching at IIMA. To me he symbolises IIMA. He remained bachelor all through his life, and even today you can find him in the corridors of IIMA walking silently and always in a reflective mood, smiling and wishing back if you wish him.

Dr. C Rangarajan, Prof. V. L. Mote, S. K. Bhattacharya, S C Kuchhal, M N Vora, Samuel Paul, G S Gupta, Dwijendra Tripathi, G. B. Shah, Amar Kalro, Sasi Misra, Pradip Khandwalla, V S Vyas, Girija Sharan, Labdhi Bhandari, Pulin Garg, Udai Pareek, Ishwar Dayal, Kamla Chowdhury, John Camillus, C K Prahalad, Vijay Govindarajan,  K K Anand, Taren Sheth, N R Sheth, Bakul Dholakia, Arun Monappa, Mirza Saiyaddain, T P Rama Rao, Prof Sreenivasa Rao of WAIC fame, A. K. Jain, J L Saha, Meenakshi Malya, K Balakrishnan, Mohan Kaul, V S Vyas, C Gopinath, P S George, Nitin Patel, Jaikumar, Gaikwad, Shingi, Ranjit Gupta, V K Gupta, Nitin Patel, Paul Mompilly, Subhash Mehta, J. K. Satia, K R S Murthy, Subash Bhatnagar... and the names go on of faculty of yester years . A few of them continue to be associated. The current faculty great teachers like , Prof. Jazoo, Mukand Dixit, V V Rao, Rekha Jain, Deepti Bhatnagar, Neharika Vohra, Abraham Koshy, Mukund Dixit,  Prof. Jazoo, Ravi Dholakia, Sebastian Morris, Anil Gupta, J L Verma, Samir Barua, Manikutty, .. and so on I can put every single faculty member who is currently teaching and many visiting faulty who occasionally come and teach a course or two connecting the students with Industry.   Perhaps IIMA is the only Institute where most of its Faculty if you include the ex-faculty  have got Padma awards (there are around half a dozen of them). Excellence was not possible but for the culture created by these faculty in a culture of excellence conceptualised by Sarabhai along with his Faculty and nurtured by the early leaders like Matthai and Paul along with their faculty teams. The next that comes to my mind is the able staff specially the Secretaries and Officers that keep supporting the faculty to do their work well- categorised as administration. People like R C Chib, Rajagopalan, Ganapathy, Santhanam, Ravi Acharya, N V Pillai, Partha sarathy, Kuppuswamy, Gurumurthy, Bhaskaran, Ravi Kumar, Revathy, Harindran etc to name a few. The next in line is always the current students who follow the culture and norms of IIMA without protesting and use the IIMA platform to learn and nurture themselves and grow alter as great managers and keep visiting the Institute to pay their tributes along with a little Bonn homie. The fourth in the list are those alumni who have made a mark in the place of their work by virtue of what they have done and accomplished. Recently IIMA recognised about forty of them and these are just symbols. There are perhaps  a few thousands of them. Not all have brought excellence label but most of them by their conduct and accomplishments. After this comes in my list the Industry who dared to recruit IIMA graduates and offered them roles with tremendous faith in professional management. People like Prahalad and Govindarajan have got credit to the Institute not as alumni of it but more as Faculty of it. Both of them served on the faculty and VG was not even an alumnus. Both were sent to Harvard by IIMA under Faculty Development grant. Also those who get credit to IIMA are the large number of IIMA Faculty who head other Business schools and make success out of it: KRS Murthy, Amar Kalro, Devi Singh, D Nagabrahmam, Pankaj Chandra, Shekhar Chowdhary, Ravichandran, etc. and the alumni from the Fellow program who teach at other business schools.

Where does the Board come in and where does the IIMA Society come in and where does the Government of India come in.  Government of India contributes to IIMA excellence it is through their financial support and encouragement of autonomy by letting it govern itself. Letting the faculty decide their own curriculum, research, teaching methods, admissions, recruitment processes, performance evaluation, etc.  and lay its own learning culture.

The Board comes into picture by periodically reviewing its activities and continuously supporting its work by way of ensuring that autonomy is protected and right kind of leadership is made available and the institute is protected to manage its financial autonomy. In early years Ravi used to use the Board to raise finances. Later years as IIMA achieved self sufficiency the Board’s role has become either one of protecting its autonomy and at times negotiating with MHRD to have polices that support excellence.

The IIMA Society has been less of a significant player. The only function it served is by supplying some sensible members to be on the Board and reviewing the activities once a year and approving the audited statement of accounts and budget.

Thus in my rankings of contributions to Excellence at IIMA my ranking goes as follows:

1.    Leadership and Culture built by the Founding Directors and their Faculty and their support teams

2.    Competent  Faculty who designed new courses and taught courses, offered consultancy, published, and administered various programs and nurtured the culture of academic excellence at IIMA

3.    Directors, Deans and Academic Administrators and the Institutional processes that governed IIMA. These also came largely from Faculty and staff.

4.    Current students

5.    Alumni who conducted themselves so well and proved their competence at every step added to the IIMA Brand by their own successes. It took over the first two decades to have known Alumni who made a mark. It is only in early nineties Alumni started adding to the Brand IIMA. Several faculty like Mote, Ishwar Dayal, Kamla, S K Bhattacharya, Paul, Vyas,  Rangarajan, Murthy, Pathak, GB Shah, Kalro, Bala, Udai Pareek,  Pulin, Mohan Kaul, Shukla, Khandwalla,  Satia, Gunvant Desai, D K Desai,  Bhandari, Vora have made a mark in India and also globally and built IIMA Brand even in seventies and eighties.

6.    Industry that employed IIMA Graduates and provided them opportunity to experiment and use their talent.

7.    IIMA Board for reviewing Institutes activities periodically, providing linkages with the environment, influencing its priorities in academic programs, protecting its autonomy and getting best people to Lead the Institute through a  good search process and guiding them to be good Directors.

8.    Ministry of HRD by supporting financially and protecting the autonomy

9.    IIMA Society  by providing the support to the Board and providing the legal cover the Board requires     

 Structurally the MHRD and the Board may be on the top. Their main responsibility is to create conditions for excellence and make the actors of excellence attain excellence. In terms of the time and real responsibility for excellence it is the Faculty and staff who make it happen. They are workers, they pilot the aircraft and through accountable self governance they reduce the burden on MHRD and Board to govern. If any of them falter the other party has to raise their voice. In institutiosn like the IIMA, B and C which have a long history and Alumni base, the alumni start playing a positive support role to maintain excellence. It is also in their interest to protect Brand IIM.

Conclusion:

If excellence has to be continued each of the above stake holders need to continue to play their role extremely well. There is no need to redefine the roles and interfere with one another. An overplay of their roles may endanger the autonomy of the Institute. For example if the Alumni wish to take over the appointment of the Director or decide the course curriculum at the Institute or the Board wants to decide what programs to offer and   the Ministry decides to override on the autonomy and self governance norms developed at the Institute excellence may suffer in the years to come. If the players also don’t play their roles well the excellence may be affected. For example if the Board does not respect the culture developed over the last few decades and tries to overrun, or neglect its role of timely appointment of the Director by extending the search process, or communicate to faculty in any way that it does not respect its internal talent,  excellence is bound to suffer. If the MHRD or the Government of India does not respect the excellence built over the years and brings a new bill and changes the rule of the game midway after establishing excellence, the excellence may suffer. Similarly if the faculty start sharing their discomfort with some of the internal processes with the press the excellence may suffer. The alumni don’t conduct themselves as they took oath t the time they took their degrees excellence may suffer over a period of time.    

Annexure 1.

“IIMA tops in Indian B-school rankings and continues winning more recognition and accolades as a Global B-School. IIMA builds on over fifty years of leadership in management education. Having consistently remained the premier business school in India, IIMA has also grown to be one of the leaders of applied management education and development in Asia, and one of the finest institutions for management education in the world.

International Rankings:
IIMA in Top 10 position: Financial Times Masters in Management 2012 Ranking The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), has been ranked 10th in the Financial Times (FT) Masters in Management 2012 Rankings. The FT report ranks the top 70 programmes in general management that do not require students to have prior work experience for admission to the masters programme (pre-experience Masters Degrees). IIMA is the only Business School from India to feature in the ranking once again this year. After creating its place in the reputed international FT ranking, and maintaining its top 10 position, IIMA continues to be a part of the distinguished top group of Masters in Management providers globally. In addition, in Placement Success Rank IIMA is at number one position and at number five position in Careers Rank.
For full ranking details, please visit: http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/masters-inmanagement-2012

IIMA’s PGPX maintains top position with FT Global MBA Rankings 2012
The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), has been ranked at the 11th position in the FT (Financial Times) Global MBA Ranking 2012 in its top 100 list of B- Schools. IIMA’s rank once again establishes its position as the top rated global business management Institute as its One Year Post Graduate Programme for Executives (PGPX) maintains its international rank. For full ranking details, please visit: http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mbarankings-2012

IIMA moves ahead in The Economist MBA Ranking 2012

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) has been ranked 56th globally in The Economist full-time MBA programmes ranking 2012 (moving up from 78th position last year). The Institute has made it to the 5th position in the Asia and Australasia 2012 regional rankings moving up from its 9th position in the previous year.

IIMA is the only Indian B-school to get ranked in the Economist full-time MBA programmes ranking since the last three years. The Economist reports, "The Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad- IIMA (there are several other IIMs at various locations around India) is reckoned to be the leading business school in the subcontinent and also the toughest in the world to get into".

Details can be found at: http://www.economist.com/whichmba/full-time-mba-ranking

IIMA PGP-ABM retains number 1 Rank
The Post-Graduate Programme in Agri-Business Management (PGP-ABM) of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) has retained its Number 1 rank in the Eduniversal Best Master's Ranking in Agribusiness/ Food Industry Management for 2012-13. It was ranked Number 1 in 2011-12 as well.

IIMA’s PGP-ABM finds a prominent place among other globally renowned programmes like Cornell University’s -Master of Science in Food Industry Management, University of California- Berkeley’s -Graduate Programme and PhD Agribusiness Programme, University of British Columbia’s -Master of Food and Resource Economics, to name a few.

For more details on the top 50 programmes, please visit: www.best-masters.com/ranking-master-agribusiness-food-industry-management.html

IIM Bill

IIM Bill: Should it be for All IIMs?

I think a lot has changed in recent years regarding the autonomy to IIMs than what Times of India reported today. To the best of my understanding the Ministry of HRD has already given a lot of autonomy to older IIMs and support to IIMs and particularly the new IIMs. They have encouraged the older IIMs to mentor the new ones and have supported the new ones with a large heart in terms of Infrastructure and other support. They also have a lot of freedom to make their own programs and courses and appoint faculty etc. This is largely due to the work done by Chairpersons of IIMs like Mr. Narayana Murthy, Ajit Balakrishnan, Mukesh Ambani etc and also due to the perceptive and forward thinking Ministers and Civil Servants in MHRD. The MHRD even allowed IIMA to have its Society and Board play a more significant role than before in the selection of the Director and other matters. The problem of MHRD interference that existed a decade ago does not exist to the best of my knowledge. When there was an attempt to interfere during Mr. Narayana Murthy's time a large number of Alumni and Faculty protested and a lot was written at that time about the interference by the Ministry. Consequently a lot more autonomy was earned by the IIMs.

However the fear that the new bill attempts to undo what good has been done in recent years is real. This is because with change in Ministers and Bureaucracy periodically, there is no guarantee that some of them could tamper with Institutions of Excellence. This is what needs to be protected. The bill legitimises the path to tamper with autonomy and kill it excellence.  The MHRD always has access to question the IIMs on matters of excellence. Every IIM has accountability to its stake holders. Such accountability has been amply demonstrated by institutions like IIMA, IIMB IIMC and IIML which have 25 to 50 years of existence. The other IIMs are also on way to the same as they are all emulating the experience of the older IIMs. 

The contributions of Dr Vikram Sarabahi and Ravi Matthai have been the guiding principles for accountable- autonomy in all these institutions. It is this self imposed accountability coupled with autonomy that increases excellence. The autonomy has been used so far in creating courses of excellence, programs of excellence and relevance not only to corporate sector but also to other sectors. For example over 8,000 research reports have been done at IIMA alone for the Agriculture field. Because a large percent of their research is in Agriculture and is meant for India's consumption it does not get published in foreign journals putting IIMA behind other International Institutions wrongly structured International ratings.   Autonomy was used by IIMs to have their own Personnel policies (not compensation), academic programs, administrative and governance structure and processes for faculty and academic culture that encourages innovations and relevance. There is a well designed and debated faculty work planning evaluation system in the IIMs. The price IIMs had to pay for this is not to have a Degree granting status.

Dr Sarabhai, Ravi Matthai and others at IIMC in mid 1960s have recognised this and promoted the PGDM as equivalent to MBA. IIMA resisted even Harvard’s attempt to call it a Indian Institute of Business Management as IIMs had larger vision. They carefully resisted the attempts of Government to give them a degree granting status as the price they had to pay is in terms of excellence. I am told once by Ravi Matthai that Pundit Nehru appreciated this and has not insisted on a bill to be passed in the Parliament. The PGDM has become such an acceptable thing in twenty years, thanks to IIMA, B and C; the new AICTE under the New Education Policy in 1986 had to mandated themselves as the agency to recognise the PGDM courses offered by all other institutions. Given this history it will be very unfortunate if MHRD takes a retrogressive step to get IIMs to give degrees and take away the route to excellence that has been built over the years. I hope good sense prevails among those who started this initiative. Of course on the part of IIMs they are required to demonstrate constantly that they are accountable. As Ravi Matthai said once autonomy has to be earned every day. So far IIMs  have done it well and that is what makes the bill redundant. 

Even if it has to be done for the sake of new IIMs why destroy the excellence of old IIMs. Most faculty there have joined them looking at the freedom to excel and it should not be disturbed by a few who don't seem to have an understanding of what it takes to build excellence in the country.

Leading Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

IIMA Director: 2013-2018

IIMA Offers Rs 1 crore to the top job!

When I read the news item this morning several thoughts went off my mid. I am penning below some of them.

First when I saw the headlines I thought placement has begun and this is the first offer to a student. As I read I was filled with surprise and sadness. First of all it has taken ten months for the Search Committee to find a Director for IMA and they don’t seem to have finalised yet. IIMA itself supplied Directors to various other institutions (IIMB, IIMC, IIML, IIMI, IIMK etc.) in the past. Any day it boasts of having Director material for any of the IIMs and other institutions. I strongly believe that it is true. History speaks for itself. Almost all of them from IIMA made very successful Directors at other Institutions. Some of them who could be great Directors are not interested in sacrificing their academic and other work for becoming a Director. IIMA itself had its Directors from within and the only exception was Dr. IG Patel. He was Governor Reserve Bank and came to IIMA for the name it had and to do some good to IIMA. To the extent I know he was not paid any higher salary for taking this job. Ravi Matthai always used to maintain that the highest point in the Institute should be library and the highest paid in the Institute should be a Chair Professor. He maintained that tradition as long as he was Director. If the new Director is paid a crore I am dreading the day when faculty would ask the Director to do things himself and refuse to do anything other than teaching. They will either start demanding equality and rat race for salaries may begin to spread to faculty. From a Faculty Governed Institute it will become a Director governed institute and it will be the first big blow to IIMA’s excellence.

In my view IIMA has enough potential Directors among its faculty. None of them would want such big salary jumps. To Direct IIMA would be considered by them as a mission and not a job with a crore salary. If the Search Committee appointed by the Board were not able to find, then I would fault the Committee itself and not anyone else. The Committee perhaps is a wrongly composed committee or it is searching for a lost ring (if any) at the place where there is light (USA and UK) than where it can be found.

Any search Committee would want to do a great job and find a great Director for IIMA. To this extent the Committee seem to have noble intentions and thought. However they seem to be unaware or unappreciative of the fact that delayed decision making creates a large number of new issues and makes it difficult for the new Director to handle them after they appoint him. On one occasion when the Director was appointed several months late and filled with controversies he ended up spending a lot of his time undoing the damage that has been done during the delayed period. The damage has already begun now with unrest among the faculty which was avoidable.

The newspaper reports say that there is no consensus among the Committee. I am not sure if this report is correct. If correct or incorrect it does its damage. Any committee would have differences of opinion, and I am sure they work with institutional interest in mind. However not being conscious of the consequences of the delay is a surprising thing. The Committee has significant number IIMA Alumni in it, and, I am not sure if all of them have been socialised to appreciate the Institute governance processes though they have been for long on the Board. The Institute is essentially a Faculty Governed Institute using consensual decision making processes. It banks heavily on what Ravi Matthai used to call “Upward delegation”. In this process the Faculty are supposed to take a lot of academic and administrative roles and decisions. They lay down the processes. The Board only supports them and links them to the external world and helps the Institute find its finances and maintain its leadership position. The Board rarely interfered with the internal processes which are very string and continued for long years. When the Faculty feel issues can be decided by a committee they delegate them to the Committee and the committee delegates to the respective Chairs, what they feel can be decided at the Chair level (PGP, FPM) etc. All activities are chaired by Faculty and the Institute functions smoothly. The Board which meets four times a year cannot govern the Institute day-to-day, but offer its guidance in governance by reviewing activities and making suggestions, by understanding vision, mission and aspirations and providing support to achieve the same. Without faculty governance IIMA would have never achieved the excellence it has achieved. The Faculty therefore have to be given their due.

The Search Committee at present did that by having a number of meetings with them. However by not speeding up their action, and in their eagerness to find a good Director which will being name and value to them and the Institute, I believe they have begun to falter. They are perhaps underestimating the impact of their delay on the health of the Institute. First it gives rise to unnecessary apprehensions and aspersions. These include baseless rumours like the interest of the Current Director to continue, or, attributions about the vested interests of the members of the Search Committee including the Chairman, the possible government interference etc. IIMA believes in case analysis and its faculty are fully immersed in dealing with any situation like a case study. It is this knowledge that they have given to the students and also the Industry, they apply to their own situation. Understandably they will apply this to the Search Committee and base their analysis on the information they have. For example if the position of two Deans is not filled at this point of time, and the Director has not appointed new Deans so that he does not saddle the new Director with his choices or he was not able to persuade any new members to take up the position at the end of his own term, it may get interpreted as the interest of the Current Director in continuing. Delays are attributed to the current Director although he may have no role to play. This affects the health of the Institute. Delay in appointing new Deans gets interpreted as the Current Director’s interest in getting another term etc. It is not people are political but it is that they are accustomed to case analysis and keep exploring alternate hypothesis.

There are also rumours that the Search committee is interested in getting a Harvard professor to join as Director. While this is a good idea on the face of it, it is not a workable idea, unless someone is ready to take this up as a mission and willing to resettle in India.  The soon the Committee realises it the better it would be for them and the Institute. Those who are Professors abroad have gone there for good and are not likely to enjoy the Directorship of IIMA. To be an IIMA Director needs the ability to deal with Ministry of HRD, AICTE, State Government of Gujarat, The Administrative staff, The aggressive faculty, ever growing student body and so on. It is complex administrative job and no committed intellectual from abroad will enjoy. Anyone who takes up the job with one crore salary will be looked at with suspicious as Stalwarts in the past who became Directors had high qualifications from abroad but are committed to this country and IIMA and never demanded higher salaries. They considered it a great opportunity and privileged to serve IIMA than for the salary they get.    The idea of getting a professor from abroad is a misplaced priority and misconceived notion beyond a point. The sooner the Committee realises this and speed up the process the better it is for them and for IIMA. Leading IIMA should be considered as a mission than a job.