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The Family Grows!

We have a little more than a month to go before the ISB Mohali campus welcomes its first batch. Institutions usually grow, but do so contiguously; however expanding into a different geographical location is not a small achievement for a school which is only about a decade old. In my opinion, this could very well be the inflection point for how the ethos of ISB develops.

I have been the only child of my parents and have never known what it means to have siblings. Cousins are good, but you meet them during vacations and don’t really compete with them for the affection of your parents. My friends tell me that it was fun being the youngest of Brothers & Sisters Inc. and was character-shaping if you were the eldest. We need to look at the next few years through the lens of this analogy. What could be the challenges that alumni, administration and the students of the ISB would have to face in ensuring that our vision of “One School – Two Campuses” is achieved and the family stays together?

When the Hyderabad campus started operations, Gachibowli was a desolate area. For all practical purposes students had the entire area to themselves and therefore student activities could be planned and executed without paying too much attention to external stakeholders – because there were not many around. However, over the years Gachibowli has become a thriving business district, residential complexes have been constructed and even within the campus the size of the residential community has grown. This is akin to the growth of human civilization itself where as the size of the clan expands there are certain rules that have to be followed taking into account the greater common good. This is probably the dilemma that faces the student community today when high decibel levels are not looked upon favorably and the moot point that often comes up is that if people before us could then why not we? It is probably because, for them the external context was different. In this case, what must not be overlooked is the fact that a certain culture was fostered over a period of time and probably we could not anticipate that things would change. Therefore, the student body and the administration need to capture these learning and shape the culture of Mohali in a suitable way so that when the external environment changes a sudden change of norms is not required.

The other challenge of growing up would be that of two siblings staying apart. It is but natural that each campus would try to evolve a distinct character of its own but given the geographical distance how could this uniformity be best maintained? The first steps towards doing this have already been taken – in terms of having identical academic and co-curricular processes and maintaining parity in terms of the infrastructure deployed. But we all know that an organization is defined by the set of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ assets that it has. The latter are usually difficult to replicate and transplant. This impact could probably be attenuated by frequent trips of students from the Mohali campus to the Hyderabad campus and vice-versa – probably over weekends. This could be dismissed as an outlandish and expensive proposition but frequent interactions promote a free flow of ideas and disseminate similar cultures. But like I mentioned even if processes are identical each campus will develop a unique identity – this happens even in organizations with manufacturing plants in diverse places across the country. The question is – to what extent can such characters be different?

Finally, I would like to dwell on the aspect of career opportunities. Helping nearly 800 students find a suitable career will be challenging. But I guess this is where the alumni network has to pitch in a very vibrant fashion. The greatest flaw of a one year MBA program is the absence of a roll-over period between two batches where traditions are passed on and adequate support systems are created. This will hurt us most as the batch size expands. Today, we have around 4000 alumni in different industries. Even if 20 percent of them were to act as mentors for the students coming in and help them understand what the real picture is and how one needs to tailor one’s expectations according to one’s backgrounds and skill sets we could help students make the right career choices.

As a family grows times can be difficult and painful. But if bonds are strong and the vision is clear the experience can be beautiful.

- Shreerang Godbole, Class of 2012