Dean's Desk | SPJIMR

Dean's address at the Annual Convocation 2019

Respected Chief Guest Mr Suresh Narayanan, Heads of our sister institutions, representatives from partner companies & guests, Chairpersons of our programmes, faculty colleagues, staff members, family members and friends of our graduating students, and last but definitely not the last, students from the graduating class of 2019, I extend a hearty welcome to each and every one of you to your graduation ceremony.

My talk this year is a little different because my role is to present not only the institute view, but also update progress in each of four programmes.

I do this on behalf of our programme Chairpersons: Profs Vasant Sivaraman; Prof Prem Chandrani; Prof Preeta George and Prof Ashita Aggarwal, each of whom are dynamic leaders in their own right, and I will make a humble attempt to do justice to the passion and concern they (and their teams) bring to their respective programmes.

As we get ready to start another year...

It’s been quite a year at our Institute. We have a lot to celebrate – in terms of new programmes and initiatives, collaborations, many firsts in areas as diverse as: the inaugural Sparc event, the first faculty-staff joint retreat, a fillip to the ‘R’ in SPJIMR with the launch of our first Fellow programme batch, the impending launch of our first (and possibly, the world's first) programme for returning women etc.

More than this, we should take heart from the environment that we are moving towards. It is an environment where someone with an idea feels free to take it forward, knowing that the Institution may question, but will question with a view to finding a way to say yes, rather than a reason for saying no. Initiatives such as the ‘secret Santa’, the quiz club, the SPJIMR-POMS conference, multiple events on the alumni front including a new, more inclusive Spandan, and others are possible due to this.

It is a concept of psychological safety. It is the freedom to express yourself in the workplace. It also means a sense that credit will be given where it is due.

Dean celebrates Christmas with faculty and staff at the SPJIMR campus

'Creating Heroes in Every Role'

Dr. Ranjan Banerjee talks on his role as the Dean of SPJIMR and looks to the road ahead for an institution that he says has a robust foundation, much like a banyan tree with strong roots. Here are excerpts from a long reflective interview conducted over multiple sittings

The following interview was published in the September 2016 issue of SPJIMR News

You have completed one year and well into your second. How do you assess your tenure so far…are you pleased with yourself?

There are things to be proud of. On the whole the answer to are you pleased with yourself is ‘Yes’. Is there more that we can do? Is there more that I have to learn? Is there scope for me to improve? Again ‘Yes’.

When I joined, it was a reasonably complex situation because you had a strong leader who was there for a long time. He was not there for a year, but I think he had started moving away before that. When I came in there was a lot of ambiguity, there was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of people sitting on the fence. I did know that at that point of time some of the faculty was considering whether they should stay with the institute, whether it had a future.

From the Dean's Desk (Feb 2, 2016)

It is now more than seven months since I began my stint at SPJIMR. It has been an interesting period, full of new challenges and constant opportunities to learn and grow. There is optimism, energy, a growing sense of teamwork and camaraderie, and the foundation for a new phase of growth. This is accompanied by the sobering realisation that our aspirations are large, and we still have in excess of 90% of the journey to travel.

We lost a respected and loved leader, Dr. Manesh Shrikant, in the past year. This was a difficult and emotional phase for the Institute and its well-wishers. We emerge determined to carry his legacy further, and as a simple gesture, have announced three initiatives to honour his memory – a Chair Professorship for Spirituality and Leadership, a memorial lecture in his memory to be held on his birth anniversary every year, and the naming of our new auditorium in his name.

At an aggregate level, the best way to take Dr. Shrikant’s legacy forward is to build on the foundations laid by him. I will use the rest of this missive to share progress on that front.

From the Dean's Desk (Nov 5, 2015)

I did not know Dr. Manesh Shrikant personally. However, there is a sense in which I can say with some confidence that I knew him quite well. During my first two months at the Institute, I had over 41 one-on-one meetings with my faculty team, where I listened, asked questions and got to know my team. Each faculty member had a story to tell - of how they were first attracted to SPJIMR, the impact that their first meeting with Dr. Shrikant had on them, the way in which he touched their careers and enabled them to grow. There was admiration, awe, respect and some fear. Academics tend to be easily critical, and the fact that the word ‘great’ came up time and again suggested that this was no ordinary leader.

In the period immediately post his demise, emotions ran high, and I had many a cathartic meeting with members of the SPJIMR family.

In sum, the picture that emerged was that of a man who supported his people through tough times, visited a senior faculty member in hospital and sat by his bedside for two hours, spent an hour explaining a concept on the phone to a new faculty member till he was confident that the faculty member was comfortable, shared books with faculty and discussed ideas with them, sat with students and pushed them to higher standards, spotted talent early and gave it the freedom to express itself.

Professionally, the picture that emerged was that of a visionary, somebody who had seen the best that Western education had to offer, and knew that India (and SPJIMR) could do better. A man who saw that management was a practice-oriented field, and hence realised the importance of recruiting for attitude and enhancing it, pioneered the creation of innovative non-classroom initiatives to strengthen attitudes and build skills, realised that wisdom came through reflecting on deep experiences, and then designed those experiences into the curriculum, who saw emerging market segments like the family business segment before anybody else did, who practised design thinking in his own Institute, well before the term became the flavour of the month elsewhere.

He created an Indian model of management education, a model based on authenticity, local relevance and balance between cooperation and competition, between profit and purpose, between East and West. In short, he was a thinker who was at least a decade ahead of anyone else.