IIMIKON, the annual alumni meet for the One Year Residential Full Time Post Graduate Programme for Executives (EPGP), was held at IIM Indore on August 10-11. Alumni from across the country attended the two-day event, that was coordinated by the IIM Indore EPGP Alumni Committee. The inauguration took place in the presence of Prof Saumya Ranjan Das, Chair, EPGP; Prof Dipayan Dutta Chaudhari, Dean, Faculty, and Sumit Neogi, VP, HR, Reliance Industries Ltd, who was the chief guest.
Neogi spoke on the topic ‘Middle Management Issues’. He said mid-life crisis can hit people in the age group of 35-45 years. “Midlife crisis is applicable to anyone and leads to emotional and mental stress; and the sad part is you realise you were in crisis only when you are past the crisis,” he said. He said that the crisis starts with questioning the decisions one makes.
“As a solution, you need to speak – if not to friends, speak to a counsellor – nothing wrong in it,” he said. He said dealing with stress can be made easier by reflection (writing a journal), and by working in communities apart from work (like photography club, marathon club, and so on). Neogi also stressed that recognizing your own ego state can be good way of analysing self-behaviour.
The guest lecture was followed by a cultural programme, where the EPGP batch performed for the alumni. The second day of the meet started with a plantation drive, followed by a panel discussion on the topic ‘Industry 4.0’. The panelists included Prof Kajari Mukherjee, Faculty, IIM Indore; Rejath Nair, Nissan Digital India and Karan Chatrath, Marketing & Strategy, Aspiring Minds.
They shared their belief that analytics translates to cost savings and that any innovation in the Industry 4.0 era needs to have an RoI (return on investment) component without which it will not be successful. The gig economy came in for special mention as the future of industry. Finally, the experts advised the current batch to focus on upskilling, pointing out that it is better to focus on learning new skills than to worry about preserving old ones.
This was followed by talks by the alumni. The first talk was by Sajeev Pathak from HP, who spoke about what he felt are the main attributes that make a leader: authenticity, humility, trustworthiness and self- awareness — as these attributes are difficult for others in the industry to mimic.
Prof Bipul Kumar spoke about the challenges of returning as a professor after being part of the programme as a student. He shared the unique insights that teaching brings, including tackling difficult questions from participants and being evaluated every day and after every course . He touched upon what he felt was the most intangible benefit of working in academia: the teacher-student relationship and the unique two-way learning that can come from that.
The last talk was by Manish Dixit, who spoke on the importance of emotional intelligence for a leader and how significant courses in organisational behaviour are in shaping a future leader. He encouraged participants to take as many electives as they could in the area of Organisation Behaviour and HR to hone their leadership skills.