Sunday 21 August 2011

We too ran a business....

A few weeks back we were greeted with the news by one of our teachers, while in the HR class,  that we were to have a simulation classes. Waves of despair washed through us as we realized that we had to stay back the weekend for the so called "really good" class.We had this session on the Friday, Saturday and the Sunday.

We rushed off to break the news to the poor souls who has to stay the previous weekend for their other guest lecturers.  We tried to obtain some satisfaction from the fact that we weren't staying the second consecutive weekend in college and that we were not going to be attending a lecture.

As the D-day drew near,  we got more information on the program from the faculty. The faculty had already attended these sessions and they felt that the value add was really high and that we had to attend these sessions. Sentences that we heard here and there....."will be divided into groups."....."apply knowledge in all functional areas"..."need wi-fi and laptops the entire time"....."should have a strong background in finance"......"class from morning till night"....."software enabled..." swam thorough our heads.

I couldn't figure out whether to b excited or tensed. And so the D-day arrived and I trudged to class with my friends to make it in time for the 9.00 session. We found a list containing our group details when we reached the Group Learning Center (GLC). We were all divided into groups of five. So that was 12 groups of five each, where 6 groups were from Mars and six groups were from Earth. It was to be the same industries in two different places.

We had many small games and activities in between the main "Game". The main activity was "Running a Business". All of us were operating in the Boiler Industry and I am not going into the nitty-gritties explaining the rules and regulations and our small decisions.

My team consisted of four others - Shruthy, Sanand, George and Georgy. This was the first time I was in a group with them. We named our venture "EXCEL Ltd." In a nutshell, our activities consisted of making the vision, mission, strategy for our company.

We were working for, we were told, 10 quarters. So at the beginning of each quarter we had to set out each persons "roles", the forecasted demand for each segment, out production, the priorities for distribution, the market reports we wanted, the number of sales and after sales people in each segment, the advertisements in each sector, the R&D expenditure and even the long-term and sort-term loans. It seems quite a handful doesn't it?

Those three days....What can I say....Those were 3 amazing days. We worked together as a team, made many blunders, made loads of progress and got excited when we made profits. The intensity with which we discussed the numbers and took decisions, the adrenalin rush when we decided to go ahead with our decisions, the tensions that we had once we submitted out decisions and awaited the "quarter results"...Though I describe the moments, the intensity of all these emotions really cannot be explained.

The game was completed in 8 quarters and at the end of three days we wanted it to go on. We wanted to have more quarters in order to make decisions. We had long-term strategies that we wanted to implement. We wanted to improve our business. We wanted to be the market leaders in terms of customers, in terms of profits, in terms of margin and so on....We just didn't want to stop.

Those three days were really amazing and did add much value for all of us. The learning from the simulation game of  "EnParadigm Solution" was just too great. Thank you Veetrag and Ferzand for that amazing experience....Hats off to you guys(https://www.facebook.com/LearningCurveSimulation?sk=wall&filter=2)!!! Thank you Rajagiri for allowing it to happen, it was really amazing.


And last but not the least...my group mates.....Sanand, Shruthy, George and Georgy.....Amazing time guys...It was one of the best groups I have worked with. Working with you guys was a pleasure. I just wish we could have run our business a bit longer :) And yeah thanks Georgy and Sanand for not "firing" me when I made a colossal blunder :P. We are a great team guys and I hope I get the chance to work with you guys again.

3 comments:

  1. Yes it was indeed good fun... and the days just flew by :)....

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  2. It sure was...WIsh we could have one more session

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  3. We came first! :P hahaha

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