Chapter 6 – The Grind

After that first experience with the case, we had gotten down to studying in earnest. The competitive sprit at IIMA was intense. There were 200 of us, but McKinsey was going to recruit only seven or eight. This was clearly the dream job for most of us. Only some admitted the fact and others did not.

Every day we would have three classes in the first half of the day – from 9am to 1pm. The other 20 hours of the day, we would be studying in the dorm, or studying in the library or studying in the computer center preparing for the classes of the next day. We did not sleep in the first term.

On the first three days of the week we would have Introduction to Quantitative Techniques I (QT-I) from 9:00 to 10:10, then Computing Techniques (IC) from 10:20 to 11:30; followed by a twenty minute coffee break and finally Process and Operations Management (POM) from 11:50 to 1:00 pm. The coffee break was not just a namesake. The institute served Tea and Coffee in an open area between the classrooms and the dorms. We would gather there in the morning sunshine and over tea or coffee, chat about the nuances of the case we had just finished, or wonder about how the Prof in the next class was going to handle the case. The second half of the week – on Thursdays and Fridays, we had Human Resources Management (HR), followed by Managerial Accounting (MANAC) and Organisational Behaviour (OB).

Professor Sudhakar had earned a PhD in OR from the US.
He spoke with a strong nasal accent which most of believed made it easier for him to look down on us. Questions asked in a condescending manner in a nasal tone can have devastating effects on under-prepared students.

The very first reading in QT was about decision making under conditions of uncertain demand. It was about a newspaper boy who sold a single brand of newspapers at a single location. His purchase price was Rs 1.50 per unit and he sold them at Rs 2 per unit thus making a gross profit of 50 paise. This newspaper boy had diligently measured his daily demand for the last 6 months and found that the average daily demand was 20 newspapers with a standard deviation of 1. Demand followed a normal distribution. The question was straightforward. How many newspapers should he stock so as to maximize his profit.

The first answer that came to mind was obviously – 20. But could it be this simple? An average demand of 20 newspapers did not mean that the demand was exactly 20. On some days it was less than 20 and on other days it was more than 20. Only the average worked out to be twenty.

The problem was, there was no way of knowing what the demand would be for the coming day. If the newspaper-boy stocked too few newspapers, then he was in effect giving up his profit on some units that he could not sell because he did not have the stock to sell. On the other hand, if he stocked too many and the demand was less, then he risked losing the cost price of Rs 1.50 on the unsold newspapers. Obviously, newspapers were a perishable product and any newspapers remaining unsold at the end of the day were worthless the next day.

Other than to try and guess the number that would be demanded the next day, there did not seem to be any solution. (*Footnote – for those interested in the solution, I recommend reading Chapter 5 and Chapter 17 of the book Statistics for Management by Richard Levin and David Rubin)

The reading was followed by a more complicated case about a company that had a number of products that they sold in a number of markets. The problem facing the management was that there always seemed to be mismatched inventory. In some markets they were running short of a particular product while there were unsold stocks of this item in other markets. The company was solving the problem temporarily ( and expensively) by shipping the inventory over from the region with stock to the region with demand. Sometimes when demand was urgent, the goods were shipped by air. Needless to say, the top management was getting worried with this state of affairs. Even if the primary problem could not be solved, was there a way to minimize the transportation costs?

The case went on to state, (like many others we would see in the coming months) that the top management of the company approached the professors of a Well-known Institute of Management in Western India (WIM-WI) for advise.

Professor Sudhakar drove his class brutally. He did not have any qualms about throwing people out of class. And that was going easy on the students. His other techniques were much worse, as he demonstrated in his first session with us.

He leaned against his desk in class and asked in his nasal tone “Have we all read the case and attempted to solve the problem? Is there anyone here who has not read the case?” Nobody was about to raise their hand and confess. However, years of teaching have enabled Professors to spot the face that is just a little less confident and is giving away the lie silently. He picked on poor Sudhir up on the sky deck who was avoiding his gaze. He read the name off the plate on the edge of desk before Sudhakar, “Yes. Mr. Sudhir. Could you please come down to the board and help us through your solution for today’s case.” Sudhir fidgeted. He had had made a feeble attempt to read the case but not much had made it through into his sleep deprived brain. Sudhir tried to protest and make some excuse about not being sure of how to tackle the case, but Prof Sudhakar would have none of it. He insisted that Sudhir come down to the blackboard and show us the solution to the extent Sudhir had managed – even if it was incomplete, “We are all here to learn,” he had drawled in that nasal tone. Sudhir had no choice but to pick up his casemat and drag himself down to the board.
He had no clue about the case and decided to confess, “I am sorry sir, but I have not read the case.” He thought that this would cause the Prof to throw him out of class and end his misery. But Prof Sudhakar already knew that Sudhir had not read the case. He had other ideas. He said, “ Well you can start reading it now then.” And he settled down and got comfortable in the seat Sudhir had just vacated.
He made Sudhir squirm at the board for the remaining 55 minutes effectively wasting the entire session. When someone tried to help poor Sudhir out, he asked the other student, “Would you like to take his place at the board?”. Sensing the threat in the tone of the question, the other student wisely backed out. The class just watched Sudhir in pin drop silence. Prof Sudhakar had made his point. For good. You do NOT come to this class unprepared.

The rules were clear. You can’t win. You can’t break even. And you can’t quit the game.

A number of students took a dislike to this professor. He was ruthless. He was especially gleeful when we had an especially tough case and even the better students in class could not make much progress. On such days he would take some pity on us and walk us through some of the next steps towards reaching the solution.

POM - I

Professor Amar Kalro walked into class for the first session of Process and Operations Management. He was the acknowledged God of POM. He had an innate ability to explain complicated concepts in extremely simple terms. I had read somewhere, in a book by Issac Asimov I believe, that the true test of whether one had understood a subject was to try and gauge whether one can teach the subject matter in simple terms. Professor Kalro was the master of simplicity. The examples he chose were always real-life and elegant.
I remember distinctly, the topic he discussed with us that first day. Quality. “How many of would agree that a Mercedes Benz is a ‘better-quality’ automobile than a Maruti?” he asked. A large number of people raised their hands. I could sense by looking at their expressions that the others believed the statement to be true but sensed a trap.

Prof. Kalro then went on to explain, “Very often, we equate quality with a higher price or more features, or durability or longevity. We believe that the Mercedes is a better quality product because it costs ten times as much as the Maruti. Or because it has a more powerful engine, or leather upholstery, or ABS (Anti-lock Braking System). Or because it lasts longer. However we would then be no different from the untrained salesman who tries to defend the higher price of say a certain type of fabric just by stating it to be of ‘higher quality’ than another.” He paused for a few seconds to let us think about this and then continued,

“Quality is not a function of selling price, nor of the number of features that the product is embellished with. Actually quality is a fairly straightforward concept. Quality implies consistent conformance to promised standards. Let us go back to our example of the Maruti and the Mercedes. Let us say that the Maruti 800 has a prescribed service interval of 5000 km. This statement makes an implicit promise. That a user who takes his Maruti in for service every 5000 km, can expect trouble-free motoring during the interval between two such service events. Let us presume for a moment, that the Mercedes has a prescribed service interval of 20,000 km.” He paused again to see if any of us could see where he was leading with this line of argument. “If the Maruti 800 does indeed provide trouble free motoring for that interval – 5000 km, and if the Mercedes also provides trouble free motoring for its own, much greater, service interval, then they are both good quality products. The Maruti will not be judged against the promise made by Mercedes or vice-versa. It will only be judged against its own promise. Similarly, durability and longevity cannot be indices of quality either. How would we then ascribe quality to disposable products – with an intended and specified life of one use only. We do not say a paper cup is of poor quality because it did not last for years. We do not expect it to. The promised standard for disposable products is one use. If they conform to that promised standard then they are good quality products.

We were listening in rapt attention. Most of this was perhaps not new to some of us, but the way he explained it left no room for doubt. He had made an indelible impression on our minds. We would never again confuse quality with price or features.


Professor T.P. Ramarao taught us IC. In the first half of the term, he concentrated on showing us the power of modeling problems on spreadsheets. I had flipped through the IC casemat before the first class and I remember harbouring the impression that this was going to be a course on XL features. I could not have been more wrong. Most of us had used Microsoft Excel before, but Prof. Ramarao took it to another level. He would start with a case or a problem and show us how to model it on a spreadsheet and work with multiple scenarios. He could really make a spreadsheet come alive. He showed us how to work with large datasets on spreadsheets, the biggest one involved about 50,000 rows of data, and how to appreciate the power of What-If Scenarios. How, if we had modeled the problem elegantly, we could run large analysis modules rapidly. He taught us to implement conditional computations and If-Then-Else constructs. Among the more powerful techniques we learned to execute on spreadsheets were Linear Programming (and by extension, Quadratic and Integer Programming) and Multi-Variate Regression. He showed us an extremely powerful technique to get XL to solve for Quadratic Multi-Variate regression – this possible only with a neat way of modeling the problem that was truly elegant. Prof Ramarao laid a fair bit of emphasis on the elegance of the solution. Use of brute force computing did not impress him much and he would make his displeasure known in the grade sheet.

Prof. Ramarao was a very soft spoken person who used to bring his laptop to class, plug it into the LCD projector and walk us through the multiple ways in which the case could be modeled. He would then tell us how one method was advantageous for certain types of analysis and how another was better for a ‘quick and dirty’ back-of-the-envelope calculation. It struck me, that to these Professors, even a back-of-the-envelope calculation meant pretty serious number crunching on a spreadsheet. This was definite insight. There was zero tolerance for seat-of-the-pants decision making. 'Quick and dirty' was not an escape route. The numbers had to be done. 'Quick and dirty' only implied a willingness to sacrifice some degree of accuracy for the benefit of speed.

To use the LCD projector, Prof Ramarao had to switch off the lights in the class room and have the curtains drawn. This was a blessing for some of our batch-mates who would take this opportunity to catch up on some sleep in the resulting darkness. Others used to solve the crossword puzzle in class ( I don’t know if they carried flashlights to class – I did not notice any.)

I truly believe, to this day, that these idiots missed out on one of the best courses at IIM-A. These guys are still going around presenting grand strategies on PowerPoint slides and hoping that the IT departments or someone else within their companies will get the number-work done. Fortunately, they were a minority. Most of us paid attention in this class simply because this was the key to survival. Prof Ramarao was showing us techniques that would enable us to model and solve problems in hours instead of days.

In the second half of the term, Prof Ramarao scaled up the complexity rapidly. He got us to work in groups to model business problems on XL. He agreed to let us work in groups not because he believed in the power of teamwork. He was well aware that in any team there are some who do the work and some freeloaders. He allowed us to work in groups because the complexity and size of the problems he was getting us to work on were beyond the time available to one person. Of course, there were still some freeloaders in some groups.

To this day, every time I connect a spreadsheet to a large back-end database to run some analysis for one of my clients, I say a “Thank You” to Prof Ramarao. He showed us the Power (with a capital P) of what one can do with a spreadsheet connected to a database. He showed us how we can now model and solve problems in hours, that can take the IT departments of most companies weeks to build software for.



HR was a half credit course, and would end by the mid term. Thankfully. Of all the subjects I have studied at IIM-A this was perhaps the only truly worthless course. It taught absolutely nothing at all that was of any value. The Prof conducting the course did not help matters. If anything, he was the cause of this feeling among most of the students.

Prof Chinappa had studied in England. He was tall, rich and handsome. He owned some 200 acres of coffee plantations in Coorg and a couple of apartments in London. Rumour had it that his wife was a former Miss India. Once when a group of students were undertaking a market research project on consumer behaviour and the buying decision process for shoes, they tried to get Prof. Chinappa to be one of the respondents. He tried refusing very politely on the grounds that he had rather large feet and could not buy shoes off the shelf. He had to get them made. This group of students pressed anyway and asked where he got his shoes made to order. His answer – “There is this store on Bond Street.”
“Bond Street?” asked the students. There was a quizzical look on Prof Chinappa’s face.
“Bond Street.” He said again. “London.” The group of students quietly closed their file and left without a word.

He had an amazingly gracious style of teaching – never raised his voice, never got excited, never perturbed, and he took all questions in his stride – no matter how tough.

I had read the readings assigned for the first class and prepared the assignment – on a single sheet of paper. I could not bring myself to write any more drivel. As soon Prof Chinappa walked into class and introduced himself, before he began the class, I shot the question – which I still remember verbatim – because my batch-mates have never let me forget it. They still pull my leg over this one. “What is the point of giving us an assignment to do even before we have been taught anything in this subject - one could understand an assignment in something like Quantitative Techniques – in which at least some of us have some background?”

I think I asked the question in a slightly haughty tone of voice, because as soon as I had asked it, I could almost hear the class pull in its collective breath. There was a stony silence as people waited to see how the Prof would slaughter this insolence.

If Prof. Chinappa did not expect this, he did not show it. I was expecting him to take me on like Prof Ravichandran had indulged Brijesh in the first introductory lecture.

Prof Chinappa merely looked at me for a second and then raised his right hand above shoulder height and waved it in a wide arc slowly from his left to his right across all the students; “Would someone like to react to that?” he spoke slowly. That was it. The class let out its breath. This was a damp squib. Through the rest of the term, as far as I remember, Prof Chinappa did not teach us one single thing. No matter what the case, what the question, and who had asked it, he would stand tall in the well, wave his hand across the class and ask – magnanimously – “Would someone like to react to that?”

The one thing I learned in this course was this – You can remain cool and unflustered if you do not intend to do anything. You just deflect the problem to someone else. No accountability. No responsibility. No problems. In general this has been my view of HR and it has been corroborated by the behaviour of HR personnel in most companies. They do not have any real work to do. They contribute neither to the top line of the company, nor to the bottom line. They have just one primary objective – justify their own existence.

After the first couple of sessions of HR, I stopped reading the casemats. I had figured a brilliant way out of this. I would skim through the case quickly, read just enough to be aware of the story line, so that I knew the name of the company, the location and the names and designations of the protagonists. I would highlight these with a yellow magic marker. In class, if the Prof picked on me, I would make a couple of statements about the problem or about what I thought was the attitude of one of the characters and then deflect the question entirely to someone else by saying something like, “Just yesterday, I was discussing this case with Shalini and she had a rather interesting view on this matter. I do not agree with her point of view at all, but perhaps she can explain it first.” Then I would pause and look at Shalini who felt compelled to respond. This was fun. I could pick and choose which person in class would get it. Sometimes I even volunteered to open the case discussion. After all, I did not have to prepare for this. I just had to make some statement and then say “Kaushal has a rather interesting way of looking at this, I believe.” And toss the ball into Kaushal’s court.

Either the Prof did not figure out my gambit, or he didn’t care. But the students were definitely brighter. They figured this out and some of the ones I had picked on were waiting for revenge. One day, later in the term, when I was particularly bored with this HR mush, I decided to have fun once again. When Prof Chinappa entered the class and asked who would like to initiate the discussion, I raised my hand and picked on Brijesh and handed him the problem. Brijesh had probably been waiting for something like this to happen. Unfortunately, he had even prepared for this particular class along with Shalini – who was an out and out HR person. Brijesh looked at me, and then at the Prof, and said, “ It is interesting that Apte should state this. This case is clearly about misuse of power and then shirking of responsibility. The way Apte just did both, misused the power of being the first to speak in class and shirked his responsibility by handing the problem to me is almost symptomatic of the way in which the Operations Manager in our case has been behaving.”

I have to admit, I had not seen this coming. I knew I had been pulling too many peoples’ legs and that I was going to get it sometime.

Prof Chinappa had moved his gaze back at me to see how I would respond. In a momentary flash of brilliance, I knew what I had to do. I put on a solemn expression, raised my right hand, and swept it in a slow wide arc from my left to my right and asked the class; “Would someone like to react to that”. The class roared in laughter.
The Prof was taken aback for a second, but to his credit, he took it in good spirit. He smiled and then laughed.

Class Participation (CP) was a significant component of the total grade for any course. The only downside of all my CP in HR class and opening the discussion for all those cases, was that the Prof believed that I actually worked for this course. I got a rather good grade in HR. This was dangerous. If I kept this up, people would actually start to believe that I was good at this nonsense. Banish the thought. I could get branded as the “HR type”. The moment this thought occurred to me, I changed tack. I stopped reading the cases entirely and stopped “putting” CP in HR.