To Sir, With Love

I think one of the privileges in my life has been to have very good mentors and teachers. I am writing this specifically to mention one such teacher who inspired and continues to inspire me.

Prof.G.P. Rao, or Geeps as we called him behind his back, was a special teacher who made management education very interesting to me and I think my classmates would agree whole heartedly. His classes were always interactive, unexpected and interesting. He was very kanjoos with his ratings, but if we got an A, believe me, we would float in a cloud of happiness for the rest of the week. He was a professor who inspired his students to excellence and always pushed us to think for ourselves, as he did in an interactive session last week. Sir, I loved this class too!

I am going to sum up here some of his tenets which I found very interesting in class and that have proved to be of immense practical use to me.

1. Think Basic :
One of the problems with being a management student is this continuous need to spout high sounding stuff and I have heard many friends say `These MBA types, na! They love jargon'. But Geeps' class was entirely based on `Think Basic'. What he meant was to state the basic problem or premise and then build the layers of complexity on it. If the basic is not identified properly, the rest of the layers are pointless. This is universally true, in all situations. This sounds basic, but often it is not very easy. And of course, it isn't conducive to building attitude! But it works very well, as I have found from experience.

2. Professional attachment,emotional detachment
This is the one topic I would have argued the most against in my student days. Obviously, Geeps would not agree and would just leave with an enigmatic smile which was very,very infuriating. But experience is not as kind and has taught me the meaning of this statement fully. My earlier argument was that passion leads to commitment leading to performance. So if you are emotionally detached, it means you are dispassionate and thereby would limit your performance. What I understand now is that passion is equal to professional attachment, it is the need to achieve, the need to perform, the need to excel in whatever you are doing. Emotional detachment is equal to reasoning and objectivity. The two co-exist and are not in conflict with each other, as I earlier believed them to be.

3. Aim for Perfection and Achieve the Optimum
As an idealist, this is the best maxim for practical success that I have ever come across. In any situation or decision, imagine the perfect result and aim for it. But don't forget that there are other variables as well as other people and their interests involved. Wholistically, the best you can hope for is an optimal result. Narrow the gap between the perfect and the optimal continuously. Curiously, perfection is not completely achievable since that is a changing target as well as a relative value. Hence you can achieve the highest level of optimisation which is closest to perfection. But the basic assumption here is that you set the highest standards for the perfect goal and keep improving your achievement optimisation. But NEVER compromise on the quality of perfection. Then the whole system collapses as there is no more impetus to excel. The second assumption is that your perfection is a target that is significantly out of reach at the moment and hence you stretch yourself to reach it. But NEVER set yourself a goal that is outlandish and ridiculously out of reach. Then you are bound to fail.

This what he taught in class and these are teachings which apply both to life as well as work situations. But there are also lessons I learnt from him by example

1) He never gave us an answer, because he believed that there is no one best answer. The best answer changes from one person to another depending on his circumstances, values and needs. But he gave the tools which are above based on which you can make a judgement of what is the best answer.

2) He was open to suggestion and discussion. But he was always focussed on the outcome. One class was dedicated to a particular result. It had to be achieved within that time.

3) He was able to raise the bar of quality,he pushed all his students equally and was patient but relentless.

It has been 10 years since I passed out of his class and I lost touch with him. But recently he came to Chennai and met his students for a short interactive session and I found that I still enjoyed his class as much. He is a teacher I am proud of and one day I hope he will be proud of having taught me.