Study group in action

As I promised last time, this post is about my study group. The ISB folks have put great efforts to create study groups with people from diverse backgrounds. My group has five members and we have just gone through one weekend of assignments. I'm still quite far away from being able to classify them in an enneagram chart but I have got a fair idea of the team's working styles and group dynamics already.

First in the team is AP. He is a commerce graduate from Calcutta and has an equity research background. All through my life numbers have been just measures of quantity. I have been involved in lot of data interpretation when managing projects but this guy has dazzled me by generating mind boggling inferences looking at data. May be it is equity research background but my engineering mind, even though comfortable with numbers, needs helluva lot of training from this guy to get to this level.

Next comes AB. Well..well..He has no connections with the AB's from bollywood. But he easily brings the greatest amount of diversity in the group. A second generation entrepreneur, he started and ran his own polymer based doors business. Even though he cashed in on Mumbai's real-estate boom, this guy felt that in the long run he must trust structured business analysis skills more than gut feel and instinct. He is the practical guy and has an uncanny sense of humor. Girls have already branded him the "whacky" guy of our batch.

Along comes SI. A kind of journalism/writing back ground. He has been content developer for travel related websites. A fantastic team player, an idealist(Capricorn's usually are) and a down to earth demeanour would explain him succinctly. He brings out the most genuine and earthy ideas on to the table and acts a beautiful moderator whenever our marketing plan discussions become really heated.

Then comes SK. This guys comes with loads of business development experience in the financial products space and already has an executive MBA under his belt. A go-getter he is easily the most aggressive member of our team. Has a really sharp wit and the ability to make people listen to him. He played excellent host over the weekend arranging a luncheon for our study group.

Finally yours truly comes as the IT pro next door eager to learn from all these guys. This idea of group work is really fantastic. Taking it a step further, I think ISB can also shuffle study groups after every term. I think this will serve in making people better prepared to work in different teams and will also foster networking within the batch.