SUBMITTED BY,

Swathic Baby
FT174091

PERSONAL LEARNING PAPER 1

Organizational Behavior

During my tenure as a test engineer in Infosys around a year back, there was an unusual buzz in the
campus associated with the arrival of our CEO and my inspiration, Mr. Vishal Sikka. As I watched him
address the audience from the podium I found myself thinking as to what Mr. Sikka would have done
differently to become this successful, in spite of starting off as an IT professional like me, among
thousands in the nation. Soon I found that he achieved this by exploring and empowering himself
through learning. And as a matter of fact, I am writing this to reflect the great learnings I have gathered
from Great Lakes life and how it has transformed me. One could argue that two months is a very short
duration for any kind of Personal transformation. But I would say its not.
After coming here there were multiple occasions when I thought MBA was not my cup of tea. And now I
truly understand this is what I destined to be and this transformation is because of the experiential
learning and transformational leadership thoughts instilled in me during last few months. Our life in
Great Lakes kick started with a 2 day visit to Tapovan. Oh that was indeed tiring. It made me realize MBA
is not something that can be learnt overnight by reading text books. Out bound training was clearly
envisioned to provide an experiential aspect to it. By engaging in a wide variety of activities as group, I
learnt how to handle situations which we were not exposed before, as a team. This was the first time I
realized, I have the ability to come up with innovative ideas and convince others. In my work life, what I
was doing was purely mechanical and did not need any out box ideas. When I uploaded a rope walking
picture of mine in Facebook profile my friends and relatives had only one question to ask, What kind of
MBA are you doing . I replied them quoting Uncle Balas words, Yes, we are different and thats how
we make the difference .

When I got the mail to collect course books, I immediately went to library with a curiosity to know what
I am going to study. Thickness of the books made me think that was for the whole year. The moment I
grasped it was just for term 1 which is hardly 2 months, I thought of packing my bag. But the figure 18
lakhs flashed through my mind and the thought of going back was immediately cut off. After that, when
I checked email, Inbox was overflowing with TCSION alerts. I went through the course outline, then I
heard someone whispering in my ears, Welcome to PGPM. Pre-reads, additional reading, pre-videos
and what not. The plot becomes far more interesting day by day. Coming from lousy engineering days, I
went to class overlooking the pre-reads. When I attended Financial Accounting, the lecture seemed to
be in Arabic or some foreign language. Thats the point when I realized pre-reads and preparation are of

utmost importance. Soon, I was habituated of preparing for lecture and then I understood how effective
can be the lectures if we come well prepared.

After few days I get used with the tightly packaged lectures and then came the next major threat for a
peaceful life Group Assignments/Projects. It was one heck of a ride. New faces, representing various
states of India with totally different cultures, and in short that was group 13. They are my best buddies
now. Never imagined this would be like this when we all meet up and discussed our first case study
Mother Diary . We all had different approaches and it was in deed hard going. As the deadline was fast
approaching, we all transformed into a mode in which we respect each others thoughts and appreciate
it. Soon we started liking each others company and the projects that followed were done with an added
enthusiasm. This was very well reflected on the end results too. Jim Rohn once said, You are the
average of the five people you spend the most time with. If this is the case I am very optimistic that I
will be soon transformed into a greater person in all aspects since I am spending most of my time with a
bunch of brilliant, innovative leaders. The peer group learning experience here is something that
transforms our thought process into a more refined and systematic form.

One activity that made me ponder more about life, humanity and compassion is Karmayoga. This
experience was absolutely different and new for each one of us. I wonder even though an overwhelming
majority of people in the world find pride, contentment, and a positive sense of self from doing good ,
there is no substantial improvement in the life of deprived class. Karmayoga showed us what difference
we can make in lives of others by sacrificing nothing other than just few hours. We played with the kids,
taught them English and conducted cleanliness awareness programs. We were able to spread smiles. I
took leadership of few events directed in the village and I believe it polished my leadership competences
which I always considered as my strength.

The write up on Personal Learning in Great Lakes will not be comprehensive without Organizational
Behavior lectures. Honestly, I did not think through it seriously because it seemed to be an attempt to
verbalize human behavior in various situations through theories and jargons. I do not know whether it
was for the content of the OB course or the way Professor took the class that ended my initial
impressions off beam. I will start with one exciting exercise titled MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)

that we did during the lecture which revealed personas I was absolutely unaware of. I understood OB is
not just about knowing others, it is more of knowing myself which sets the platform for knowing others.
MBTI was a questionnaire based on theory proposed by Carl Jung using which introspective self-report
can be made. After responding to questionnaire and computing scores I fall into the type named ENTJ
which belongs to Manager Type. This was a totally pleasing experience for me as I took a career choice
that matched with my core competency which is managerial skills. In addition to this we did another
introspective assessment tool called Big Five Locator. Analyzing results, I understood I have vivid
imagination and excellent ideas and this constituted a high score for Openness to experience. The
results showed I am more of an extrovert type. My agreeableness was middling and emotional stability
scores was on the higher side. Conscientious score disclosed I am flexible enough. Both these tools gave
me more insights about how I react in contrasting situations.
Above all Organizational Behavior course is the reason why I write this paper which was a true
introspection. All my life I studied and wrote papers about famous people, science, history and many
more. It may sound strange when I say this is the first time I am writing something that reflects my own
feeling and thoughts. And now I think I have the power to see myself which would definitely aid to fulfill
my leadership and executive potential.