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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, 2019. The two day event witnessed a presence of alumni from across the country and was coordinated by the IIM Indore EPGP Alumni Committee. The inauguration took place in the presence of Professor Saumya Ranjan Das, Chair, EPGP; Professor Dipayan Dutta Chaudhari, Dean, Faculty and Mr. Sumit Neogi, VP, HR, Reliance Industries Limited—as the chief guest.
Mr. Neogi spoke on the topic—‘Middle Management Issues.’ He mentioned that midlife crisis can start affecting you 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 realize you were in crisis when you are past the crisis’, he said. He said that the crisis starts with questioning decisions one makes. ‘As a solution, you need to speak – if not to friends, speak to a counsellor – nothing is wrong in it’, he mentioned. He also spoke that dealing with stress can made easy by reflection (writing a journal), working in communities apart from work (like photography club, marathon club etc). Mr. Neogi also stressed that recognizing your own EGO states can be good way of analysing self-behaviour. The guest lecture was followed by a cultural program where the EPGP batch participants 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 panellists included Professor Kajari Mukherjee, Faculty, IIM Indore; Mr. Rejath Nair, Nissan Digital India and Mr. 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 component without which the innovation will not be successful. The gig economy came in for special mention as it was felt that it would be the future of the industry. Finally, the experts advised the current batch to focus on up-skilling, for it is better to focus on learning new skills than to worry about saving old skills.
This was followed by a few leadership talks by the alumni. The first talk was by Mr. Sajeev Pathak from HP, who spoke about what he feels are the main attributes that a leader must possess: authenticity, humility, trustworthiness and self- awareness—as these attributes are difficult for others in the industry to mimic. The second talk was given by Professor Bipul Kumar, who spoke about the challenges of returning as a professor after being part of the programme as a student. He shared the unique challenges that teaching brings, including tackling difficult questions from participants and being evaluated after every course and even every day. He also touched about what he felt was the most intangible benefit of working in academia: the teacher-student relationship and the unique 2-way learning that can come from that. The last talk was by Mr. Manish Dixit. He spoke about the importance of emotional intelligence for a leader and how important courses in organization behavior are in shaping a future leader. He encouraged participants to take as many electives as they could in the area of Organization Behavior and HR to improve their leadership skills.
The meet concluded on Sunday—which proved to be an event of wonderful insights and learning and also helped in strengthening the already close-knit IIM Indore alumni network.