OB 3

Personal Learning Paper

Vipul Puri
HRM 2015-17
Roll H15058

Q1. Reflect and identify an instance from your life wherein the final outcome was not a desirable
one. Based on your understanding about stakeholder analysis, develop a different approach
through which desirable outcome can be achieved. (Hint: consider the stakeholders, their
relative power, differences in inducements and contributions and resulting conflicts, presence of
different coalitions, cognitive biases etc. that might have resulted in undesirable outcome
initially. Now you need to rework on all of them to get a desirable outcome)
One of the most disappointing instances from my personal life was when I was unable to crack
the JEE examinations for admission into the prestigious IITs. I gave the exams twice, and both
times I landed a rank in the extended list, thus not giving me a chance to study at these
institutes of national repute.
The first time I attempted JEE was in the year 2007-08, the same year that I gave my XII board
examinations. I had a good start to the preparations. When I had completed Class X, based on
my performance in the entrance tests, a private tutorial of national repute, with a name which
sounds similar to the exam itself, had given me a 75% scholarship for a regular course for IIT-JEE
over the next two years. That indicated that I was well prepared for a crack at the JEE, and my
basics till Class X were extremely solid. There were just two other people who got a similar level
of scholarship, so apart from the monetary savings, the scholarship brought a lot of confidence
and prestige. The place I am from, Bokaro, is a small city, where parents are extremely
dedicated towards education. Plus, the fact that I was studying in the best section (based on X
board marks) of the best school of the city, gave me the belief that the target was very much
achievable. I started the coaching and the schooling well, but then I got bored of the coaching. I
felt that the courses started from very basic level to make the course clear to everyone. But, I
felt that for a large part of it, I was wasting my time listening to things I already knew. So, along
with a friend, I decided to skip coaching for a few days, and see the results. But, this practice
continued, and I felt that while I was prepared enough, there were a lot of tricks and shortcuts I
had missed out on, which proved to be a differentiator when I gave the exams. Also, the fact
that I got a little complacent in the end hurt me bad.
Looking back, I would like to say the major stakeholders in the entire process were1) Myself
2) My parents
3) Friends
4) School Teachers
5) Coaching Teachers
In the below table, I examine the various impacts and contributions of those stakeholders
towards the explained process.

Stakeholder

Relative
Power

Inducements

Contributions

Bias/Conflict

Myself

Huge

Graduate from a Studied for the exam

prestigious college

Parents

Quite big

Prestige
in Financial
Allowed
me
immediate family, Contributions, Moral freedom to do
wider society
Support, Love and care my own things

Friends

Medium

Co-preparation,
Shared notes, Tutorial
Continued
role, Reminded me
Friendship, Batch when I was slipping
pride

School
Teachers

Medium

Good
board
results,
competitions come
secondary

Coaching
Teachers

Low

Good result to Competition Syllabus, Too

much
enhance institutes Tricks
detailed learning
brand
to
cater
to
everyone

Overconfidence
Bias

Consistency
bias, not always
honest for they
felt I would mind

Course syllabus, but Biased towards

not enough material boards exams
for
cracking
competitions

If I were to re-visit this period of life, I think I would probably give more stakeholder power
to the teachers at the coaching institute. Also, I would give more stakeholder power to my
friends, who then would have the trust to confide in me if I had been slipping somewhere.
A combination of these two factors, achieved by a single activity of attending the coaching
classes with my friends could have made a lot of difference at the end. Also, I feel with the
power I had over the entire process, I could have had thought of far more inducements,
such as the fear of staying out of such colleges, while my close friends made it. It would
have made me more conscious of end goal and made me more driven for the goal. Also,
feel that that over-confidence bias that I retained for the early period made me extremely
closed in in terms of attitude, and that is something I will fix.
Stakeholder

Power

Inducements

Contributions

Bias/Conflict

Myself

Huge

Graduate from a Studied for the exam None

prestigious college, with more dedication,

prestige
among and a tinge of humility
peers, fear of
missing out
Friends

High

Co-preparation,
Shared notes, Tutorial None
Continued
role, Reminded me
Friendship, Batch when I was slipping
pride

Coaching
Teachers

Huge

Good result to Competition Syllabus, Too

much
enhance institutes Tricks
detailed learning
brand
to
cater
to
everyone

Note: Only the possible changes to the table have been shown, and the changed elements are italicized

All these changes can create a more favourable outcome, and having done the stakeholder
analysis, it becomes extremely clear. Although there is not a lot of regret, there certainly is
an understanding that mistakes were made, and humility is something that has naturally
come into my behaviour as a result of this chapter.

Q2. What are the features of your preferred culture? Does it automatically indicate a preference
for organic/mechanistic structure? Will it result in some cognitive bias while working in an
organizational context? Are these biases useful / counterproductive always? Explain the possible
linkage (or absence of it).
Distinct organizations have different types of goals. Some organizations are set up to derive
highly efficient operations, some to generate exceptional customer service, some to innovate
day and night, some to conquer moonshots, some to disrupt sectors and areas, some to cater
to lives of the underprivileged and then some to do many of these and more. Depending on
how and what these organizations are set up to do, organizations settle upon a working
environment, dubbed 'culture', to make efficient utilization of the resources in a way it sees fit
to enhance the organization's goals.
Consider an organization which has just started to grow up. This is of course the first stage of
the Competing Values framework, and no systems are in place. The organization has no idea
what culture is needed in the organization, and how to shape it up. Instead, it lets the
organization move towards one. It knows the organizational goals, and lets employees settle on
a work environment conducive to those goals. Of course, negative traits such as misogyny and
violent behaviours might arise, which in the organization's best interests needs to be avoided,
by putting up certain checks, but more or less, culture is allowed to grow.
But, now suppose that the organization has achieved its first level of successes, and is in a
relatively stable environment. About the environment that permeates within the organization,
it could have two different views. Either it could feel the current environment makes perfect
sense, and would want to continue with it, or it could decide to bring in a more refined version
of the same. Then, with this view in mind, it could bring in external help or hire people to make
subtle changes to tweak the culture within the organization. Similarly, over the entire
organization cycle, there might be interventions needed from time to time to herd the work
environment in a certain direction to aid the goals of the organization.
With this in mind, while the question asks us to list the preferred characteristics of our
'preferred' culture, the context for the same is not mentioned. Without the context, namely the
industry, the value of the company's offerings, the geographical location, the cultural
environment, the leadership, the time period and so on, the question is relatively moot. In this
scenario, there might be different 'preferred culture' for different contexts. To discuss within
the space afforded, but also with this constraint in context, it makes sense to evaluate at least
two different sectors, say for their breadth in Indian industrial landscape, the IT and the
manufacturing industry, settle upon a favourite culture for each, and then critically evaluate
each. Because employers can have either strong control or loose control over their employees,
the cultures within organizations automatically reflect either a mechanistic or an organic bent,

although both may co-exist in an organization at a time. So, for example, the research lab of
Samsung will operate differently from the fab manufacturing unit at Samsung, even though
they might share a lot of common values and policies. Now, we look at the two broad cultures.
IT
An organization in IT sector is moderately de-centralized, hence empowering the lower level
employees, giving them precise responsibilities, but giving them freedom in the way they want
to get things done. There are flexi-timings at work, neat facilities, a 360 degree feedback
performance appraisal system, moderate levels of compensation, and a relatively relaxed
working atmosphere.
Terminal Values: Low turnover, Committed Workforce
Instrumental Values: Employee Loyalty, Employee Empowerment, Teamwork
In an IT firm, the culture is extremely comfortable. As with any large organization, if the
employees have larger control over how they work, it is basically an organic structure and so is
the case here. Because the culture is highly organic, and individual accountability high, the
biases, even though succinct in nature may have amplified consequences. For instance, if a
certain person holds a certain bias against someone else, the bias may cause more impact when
one is being judged solely on his individual work, as is the case in organic structures. Also,
certain biases like proximity bias, framing bias, self-serving bias, and horn and halo effect are
more common in organic teams more than the others.
These biases are normally counter-productive, because as biases go, they hinder decision
making on the basis of rationale. But, if we look at cases where a certain helpful worker,
devoting extra time to his companions work gets behind in his own work, the halo effect
generated by his selfless actions holds him in good stead. Also, during performance
measurement, anyone with self-serving bias can actually help the company get rid of the flab,
and thus help productivity at the company.
Manufacturing
An organization in the manufacturing sector is usually centralized, hence empowering the
management, and specifying the how and when of the job to the employees, thus giving them
extremely strict responsibilities, without any freedom in the how they want to get things done.
There are extremely strict timings at work, sometimes very odd hours, the facilities are
moderate, and the usually bell curve based performance appraisal system is top down, with
manager given entire control over ratings. There are moderate levels of compensation, and a
certain tension in the working atmosphere at the site.
Terminal Values: Continuous Production, Disciplined Workforce
Instrumental Values: Discipline, Cost Reduction, Teamwork

In the manufacturing firm, the culture is extremely loud and tiring. As with any large
manufacturer, if the managers, or the higher ups have larger control over how workers are
supposed to work, resulting in a centralization of power, it is basically a mechanistic structure
and so is the case here. Because the culture is highly mechanistic, and responsibilities high on
the managers, the biases can very much creep in managers when dealing with their underlings.
For instance, if a certain manager holds a certain bias against one of his employees, he is more
likely to be found culpable for any failures of the unit. That said, biases are more or less absent
between workers themselves, unless negative relations develop between them, because there
is a team emphasis, and everyone is sailing on the same boat.
Certain biases like projection bias, fundamental attribution error, over-estimation bias, selfserving bias, and Dunning Kruger effect are more common in mechanistic teams more than the
others. These biases generally hinder decision making because one is not thinking on basis of
logic anymore. Sometimes, a bias about over-estimation of demands might turn out to be true
after all, and the company makes a profit there, though this bias may lead to subsequent
failures in the long term.
So, while generally counter-productive, we do have situations where our bias helps us take
worthy decisions because the sub-conscious mind tends to balance our understanding of the
situation. So, while our rational mind may set conservative targets, out over-estimation bias
may help set more realistic targets. If the biases, and the mindset match out, it can lead to
some really fruitful decisions.

Q3. Identify a stage/time in your life wherein you were very creative. Reflect on the contextual
characteristics that helped you to become really creative during chosen stage/time. (Hint 1:
While concepts from chapter 13 may be really useful, feel free to use concepts discussed during
the entire course to answer this question. Hint 2: Those who are not able to identify a
significant creative incident from your life, may write about the possible contextual
characteristics preventing you from being creative/innovative)
I have never been a very creative character, bubbling with ideas. But, there was this time that I
came up with extremely inventive stuff. This is when I was the President of IE-CSE, the technical
committee for computer science during my engineering days at Manipal. Although, we had had
a good year in terms of events and participations, I wanted to top it off with a mega event. So,
the entire board comprising of my batch mates decided that we would conduct a technical
festival, especially for Computer Science. While we used to have technical festivals at college, it
was only one college run technical festival throughout the year, and was common for all
committees.
Once we had decided that we wanted to conduct one exclusively for Computer Science. We
knew that we could attract significant online participation, but offline participation was a
challenge. The first year students usually shunned these events, and the final year students had
much more pressing matters to attend to. That left us with 250 Computer Science students,
each from 2nd and 3rd year, and 100 Information Technology students each from 2 nd and 3rd
year, for a total base of 700. We expected only 20-30% of these would attend, 40% if a lot of
publicity was engaged in. Also, there were other nearby engineering colleges from where
students could join, if the events were properly publicized. We realized we had our task cut out
in terms of publicity, and it was going to be extremely important to ensure a nice participation,
which was extremely crucial for the success of the event.
With this in mind, we conducted a few brainstorming sessions to generate new ideas of
publicity. I was lucky to be part of a really creative team who brought up immense ideas, which
we discussed and argued upon, and then chose the ones which made a lot of sense, and were
within our budget. I think it was the leadership position that I held, and the responsibility that
brought across, which made me extremely active at that time. I would sit for all these
discussions, we would order food, create a nice environment for discussion, and go for a noholds-barred talk over the various options that one could come up with.
We had a few rules:
1) No idea would ever be scoffed off

2) Do not interrupt when one is speaking

3) Everyone had to participate
4) One idea at a time
5) All ideas had equal worth
These rules ensured that while we stayed on agenda, we had diverse opinions coming in.
Unknown to us then, we were engaging in brainstorming. We discussed some really wild ideas
like a helium balloon tied to the ground, featuring our fests name in big bold letters (ruled out
due to feasibility issue), designing a mascot, and dressing someone in it (ruled out due to time
constraints), advertising in local TVs (ruled out as no-one watched it) etc., but we finally ended
up with a few of them.
As mentioned earlier, I contributed heavily to the discussions, and my suggestions were
incorporated in some of the ideas that we finally ended up doing. Now, we had to bring those
ideas into execution. Most of the ideas were conventional, such as banners and posters at
prominent places on the campus, and sending SMS to the entire college base to inform them
about the events. The more non-conventional ideas included an IPL screening at the college
center spot in the evening hours (this was the first IPL after Indias World Cup victory), with two
big infomercial desks on either side to inform the campus about the events. We also put our
smartest people at those desks to ensure commitment from people who had come to see the
matches to participate in our festival. Then, we also had small events like darts, ping pong and
other small games you find at fairs all over the country. Nostalgia stricken students participated
en-masse in these games, which helped us publicize the fest. Other ideas included a rainbow
indicating our fest name at a certain height in front of the main academic block, which looked
extremely spectacular.
One of our briefs was also to publicize outside the campus. While we had thought of some
rather innovative ideas to do that, we were restricted by the campuses from doing so. We
turned to more incremental thought process, and did two campaign runs in NIT Surathkal and
NITTE each, which had banners and posters and games running through 1.5 hours in the
evening. A great offline participation from outside confirmed that we had done a great job with
this segment.
While the creatives was one part of the puzzle, another that needed a huge amount of
creativity were the events themselves. We had always done only 4 events for the college fest,
but since this was our own fest, we certainly needed a bit more. So, we gave all the members of
the committee 2-3 days to think over it, and then we had a brainstorming session on this too.

We decided on a total of 9 events, of which two were my suggestions. And, there was no bias
during the entire process. Each idea, whether suggested by a board member or by the juniors,
was judged based on its merits and demerits, and only well-conceived and practical ideas were
selected. We also took a lot of care to ensure the events were non-overlapping in nature, i.e.
they were very distinct from each other. While some events were related to time constraint,
the other needed extreme levels of team skills. Some tested proficiency in different coding
languages, others gave a new language altogether to code in. There were also two online
events added to the mix to cater to participation from different geographies. We had worked
really hard over the entire fest, and we were really satisfied when the hard work reached
fruition.
Since this was the fest done by an independent committee, we had to face a number of
problems, both administrational and logistical. We strived for unique paths at each of these
challenges, and thus managed to set forth an impressive platform for future events to take
place. A lot of the steps were incrementally building upon things that we had always done to
publicize our events, while some were entirely novel in nature.

Q4. Choose any organization of your choice (other than what we discussed during course) and
explain about a major change it has gone through. What was the outcome of the explained
change: growth or decline? Identify the reasons and possible interventions based on learning
from the course.
As I have seen Airtel as an organization from close quarters, I will be talking about the changes
it has gone through. Sunil Mittal, the founder of Bharti Airtel, started the business of
assembling and selling push-button phones in India in 1984. Earlier, these phones were
imported from a Taiwanese company, and local manufacture thus replaced the traditional
rotary phones that were popular in India then. Soon enough, Bharti was a major manufacturer
of fax machines, cordless phones and other telecom gear and operating under the name of
'Mitbrau'. The company was nascent at this point of time and the structure of the organization
was yet to be formulated. Network structure was followed for most activities with a number of
activities being outsourced. The culture in the company at the time was very entrepreneurial
and the flexibility it afforded, helped the company take risks. Mittal felt that the country was
going to see intensive growth in the mobile telecom business and was one of the first Indian
entrepreneurs to invest in this Capex intensive business. In 1992, he won one out of four
mobile phone network licenses being auctioned in India. A consulting firm he hired at this time
said that the deal was not going to be profitable, and envisioned a maximum of 5 lac customers
for the company by 2005.
Mittal got into a deal with the French telecom group Vivendi to fulfil the criteria of the bidder
for Delhi license to have telecom operator experience. In 1994, the plans were finally approved
by the Government and Bharti services were launched in Delhi in 1995. The brand name chosen
for the services being provided by Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL) was AirTel. The company
achieved its first major milestone when it crossed the 2-million mobile subscriber at the turn of
the century. Bharti used the brand name Indiaone and significantly brought down the STD/ISD
cellular call rates in India.
Throughout the last decade Airtel grew inorganically by acquiring a lot of companies. It largely
focused on geographical expansion and sought companies with similar culture and spirit. The
IPO for Bharti Enterprises came through in 2002, giving it substantial funds to stave off the
challenge from Reliance. In 2003, a rebranding exercise was completed with all telecom
operations being brought under a single Airtel brand.
Airtel went ahead with related diversification maintaining its entrepreneurial spirit intact and
launched "Hello Tunes", becoming to the first operator in India to do so. The Airtel theme song,
composed by A.R. Rahman, was the most popular tune for that year.
In May 2008, Airtel looked into buying a South Africa-based telecommunications company, the

MTN Group, which covers 21 countries in Africa but the acquisition fell through. In 2009, Bharti
forms a strategic alliance with Alcatel-Lucent for the management of its network infra for the
fixed line business.
Airtel then went for an international diversification strategy when it launched its first
international mobile network in Sri Lanka. Next year it acquired the African business of Zain
Telecom and thus obtained operations in 17 countries of Africa as well. Airtel has its data
business, voice business, global business, DTH business and the upcoming Airtel money
business as well. Recently Airtel also became the first telecom operator in India to offer 4G
services.
Currently Bharti Airtel Limited (Airtel), is the worlds third largest mobile operator with
operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. It is Indias sole international connectivity
provider, i.e. it has laid down the submarine cables connecting the continents and helps other
operators provide the service using these cables.
Couple of years ago, AirTel underwent a major restructuring where many hierarchical levels
were removed from the organization and the structure was made flatter to retain the
entrepreneurial spirit. The culture in the company is really vibrant and fast moving. With the
technology evolving fast, the company needs to stay on its toes and promotes fast skill
development and is flexible in allowing its employees to move amongst various verticals.
Organizational structure-wise, the company holds 20 licenses in India but the operations are
divided in 13 circles. Each circle has its own CEO and top hierarchy. The corporate office rolls
out policies while the implementation of policies is up to the circle heads, who are considered
as CEOs for each of the zones. Hence, there is a matrix relationship between the circles and the
corporate branch. A product division structure is followed amongst the relatively newer
businesses like Airtel Money, DTH and global businesses, while a matrix division structure is
followed in voice and data services.
The company has been on an upward growth trend, and is the largest telecom player in India,
holding 32% of revenue market share while its next competitor, Vodafone has 23%. India
accounts for 70% of Airtels revenues. In this last quarter, Airtel surpassed Vodafone in postpaid
sales as well, for the first time ever, making it the market leader in all fields of telecom. The
main reason behind the phenomenal growth of the 50,000 crore big company is the correct
strategic decisions taken up by Sunil Mittal in the companys starting stage, appropriate
organizational structure which keeps the company moving forward and a clear and focused
vision of providing uninterrupted, uncompromised customer experience. The company has
maintained an entrepreneurial spirits, and intrapreneurship is looked at favourably within the
company.

The company has a very comforting culture, and hierarchy matters little to the company. The
spirit of the company has enabled it to quickly move to new products and markets irrespective
of success or failure. The company also has a Shared Services team which looks after various
support requirements of the businesses, and makes it a uniform policy enabler within the
company. Targets though are ruthlessly run after and internal talent is promoted. The above
characteristics have helped AirTel become the third largest telecom company in the world.