Introduction
The Micro Organizational Behavior subject, was one that I was sure would be embedded into an MBA program. I however did not expect it so early on or rather I had no opinion on which subject should come when. I was open minded and expecting some subjects pertaining to HR specialization which would deal with the finer aspects of human behavior. This course has however taken me by surprise due to the amount of psychology and depth in which it goes into very abstract topics. I am astonished by the number of tools available to measure and gauge one’s personality and it has been
a rather enjoyable and fun experience in an otherwise fast paced program! I have always been intrigued by human behavior and psychology and my interest in this area has been rekindled and given more structure in an unstructured way with all the movies, book recommendations which comes along with it. I have made note of all these references and will slowly soak into them long after this course is complete. This subject also does come with its “assignments” which are harder in the sense that we had to let down our guard and any walls built around us and be open to feedback and criticism.

My Journey through this course:

I look at this course in its entirety and what I have learned, so it is difficult for me to write about each and every session. I will split my reflections into parts, I am sure that by the end of the course I would have reflected on all the aspects of the course.

On the first day of class we were asked to write what we expected as part of the outcomes of this course. The primary expectation which I had was to understand how to work across different generations in the workplace. The other interesting thing was that this question was asked only in this class since all other subjects had a fairly clear picture of what lecture was being delivered and what we would be required to do. I also wrote that it would be nice to do some “role plays” as part of this course, we got a chance to experience that too. Being an Executive program, our class was needing some ice breaking and we had limited time, MOB was the subject which broke the ice and we all started getting more comfortable as a class.

Personality Types:
It started with the MBTI test in which I got a result of ENFJ, over the period of three months we had all observed and created images of our classmates but did not really discuss it (I am a J  :)) . I realized that way back in the year 2000 when I was in class 8 , I had been thorough a crude version of MBTI during my schooldays in a Value Education class. I clearly recall that I was shy and mostly an introvert back in school, not that I was uncomfortable being one. I was alarmed to find that in 2019 I was being pegged at 3% Extroversion . However, even as a child I have understood that being an introvert did not help me in many ways and over the years my conscious efforts have been helpful to balance me out into an E. My MBTI results showed that my percentages in all four sections ranged from 3% to 35% and this resulted in not getting a chance to get up on stage when people with higher percentages were called for. This created more of a concern to me and I had to check on what it meant to have smaller numbers?? I later learned that these smaller percentages indicate that we are more flexible and can mould into any of the types and manage fairly well in all situations. I looked at this as a strength and was not concerned anymore….

All through this course we have been watching a lot of interesting videos and books and quotes, a very important one which caught me was “Structure alters behavior”. When I joined the Executive MBA I was still disoriented and not very student like, I was still working and trying to shift gears. I was also having a hard time memorizing information which was when we were asked to revisit our qualities. I reorganized my lifestyle including the furniture in my bedroom and made it more student like and I was able to manage both school and work in a better way.

Strengths…  I was asked to make my list of qualities which I was proud of and was not so proud of and was wondering how to validate it. For this, we were introduced to the “Reflected Best Strength” Test, it was the first time I was subjected to something like this in a long time and we had to reach out to our friends and family and get a list of our strengths. This exercise really helped me let down my inhibitions and learn a lot of things about myself and was happy to know that my perception about myself and theirs were almost more or less the same. I have been a self aware person right from childhood, while this course emphasizes on getting to know more about ourselves, I feel that being self aware is more of a bane, the more self aware we are, the more flexible and friendly and adaptable we are expected to be.  Ignorance truly is bliss.

Yet, in the corporate world it is important to know our strengths and play accordingly. By the end of this course, my mind started shifting towards playing to my strengths always but I am still contemplating this. In my opinion, in order to be a rounded professional one has to work on both strengths and weaknesses and hit the common ground. I am skeptical to play my strength all times as I feel it may make me unaware of my weaknesses and may catch me unaware! However, I do realize that playing to my strengths at all times means that I am more relaxed and performing at my optimum levels which keeps the flow, perfection, excellence and fulfillment cycle fueled.

Perceptions…A shocking in-class assignment in the case of Maya and Ezhumalai. Although I was pretty sure of who was good and bad, when I discussed with my team I was rather alarmed to note that there were differences in our opinion! I will not say that I went back on my decision, but I did try to convince them to see my side of the picture but it did not really go through, all the five of us stuck to whatever we had decided upon based on our individual thought. The whole idea that it was entirely our values which made us select what we selected was quite interesting to note.

Until MOB, I was unconsciously attempting to debate and argue and make people change their mind or force them to see it from my shoes… From this experience, I learned that people decide things for various reasons, we can probably try to show them our perspective but it is almost impossible to change their perspective or force them to believe that what we say is the most appropriate answer. This habit has slowly started creeping into my personal life as well and I can feel the changes as I have become less argumentative, prefer more constructive debate and enjoy remaining in my state of calmness and not having to fret over who is right or wrong.

There was a exercise named Johari-Window in which I got to know my publicly known and not so known qualities, it has more or less matched with what I had in mind in terms of my perception of myself.

Ikigai ..
This was a concept which was new to me but not unheard of. I have always known that sense of purpose is enough to make people be happy and successful at what they do. I have learned this by seeing a very elderly uncle in my neighbourhood keeping himself alive just for the same of his sister who was of ill health, believe it or not, soon as his sister passed away, the uncle also left us within a matter of 6 months, it was clear to me that such events are not just random occurrences but rather a case of grit and divine intervention which when combined together can make people do unimaginable things. In my personal life I have always believed that I was born for a reason and I will make this planet a better place during my time here.

In this course, we were forcefully put into new groups, and also allowed to get into new groups if we wanted. It was surprising to see that most people had created a comfort zone for themselves within just three months! I on the other hand was looking to explore and navigate and was happy to be plugged into a new group for the case study. In fact, I went out of my way to get into a third new group (for my poster) in order to break the monotony. The new groups which we formed were also coming with their own challenges and we went through the stages of forming, storming, norming, performing which was also fun! From our case study I learned that human behavior can be understood and diagnosed differently but it takes the team to bring everything to the table and come to a consensus on what is a reasonable assessment to the case and present that with conviction.

My beliefs mostly come from the teachings at home, my schooling and my habit of extensive reading. I read only to learn or for pleasure and not to get into serious debates. My Ladder of Influence is very strong as I have been through a lot of experiences (sometime purposeful, but mostly situational) and I have had a lot of experiential learning. In fact I enjoy experiential learning so much that I sometimes find it hard to learn out of books. I believe that putting in the effort will lead to results in whatever we do, however it is important that we know our limitations and we need to build our own guard rails so that we don’t get derailed. My self belief in second chances has always been strong and I have reiterated the importance of it during this session. In my life, a lot of people have given me second chances and that has helped me get where I am today, as a result of this, I think I do have a tendency to give people second chances and room for introspection.

Authenticity..
A missing factor in today’s superficial human being is the lack of authenticity. I firmly believe that for any engagement to work, be it personal or professional, authenticity is the base on which everything else is built upon. In this session I learned to differentiate between these factors which can create some turmoil in the human mind…go through these and decide for yourself:

* Morals are personal, it can differ from person to person
* Professional Ethics is defined by the organization, every employee sticks to a single code

Tragedy of commons is the practice of each person violating workplace ethics at their own will which creates a summation effect which can spiral out of control and severely damage the culture of the company. If we are ok with small infractions even at irregular intervals, it simply means that we are unaware of our surroundings.

Decision Making
It was quite unexpected that a subject such a Micro Organization will have a lab exercise! By this time I had almost decided that we had seen it all, but no! We had a lab exercise with simulation software which gives us the feeling of a being part of the top brass and our decision influences a lot of lives, financial situation of the company as well as economic impact on the society.
During this simulation, we, a group of 3 members had to align and take major decision and we decided to go with majority votes in each case. After two or three levels of difficulty, our perspectives and values were coming in the way of our decision making. We spent more time unearthing the different view points and bring it all to the table which was a stressful exercise because all are valid points. However, after investing money twice and leading to failure I was convinced that this situation was not going to improve and took a stand that we will not invest further in the company. This turned into a lengthy debate and finally came to a close when it came to a moot point “Why don’t we try investing and see what happens, its not a real company or real cash“. At this point we decided that we will treat it as real life situation and do due diligence. It was a hard decision to come to terms with this because it was against our nature and always try to play with software or the market and keep testing out luck in hopes for a humongous win.

We exit after two rounds since it was a non-performing product and received positive feedback for our decisions.

The Marshmallow Experiment!
Beneath the cuteness of all the kids watching or eating their Marshmallow there lay a huge lesson for all of us, worthy of being discussed by adults in a management programme. I firmly believe that I have been blessed with everything I need and more, as for the things which I yearn for, well maybe it wasn’t meant for me or maybe the time just isn’t right. The sweetness of a reward after much delay may actually be much sweeter than getting it early on, the silver lining being that this can happen to anybody, even Leonardo! I would relate this directly to my Executive MBA programme, after writing different competitive exams and even managing to get through some of them, I still did not take up post graduation education and this has been bothering me for a decade! Would you believe it? I graduated in 2009 and since then been trying for Masters in different formats to suit my personal situation, a lot of people around me encouraged me to keep at it while a lot said if I didn’t do it 5 years after graduation, I probably wouldn’t do it! My personal thought was that I will do it only when I feel there is a programme which is worthy of my time and effort. During these ten years, I have been doing my usual routines and not slacked or become dejected with life. Now, I am totally enjoying every minute at IIT Madras and thankful to Almighty that my patience has paid off. This is the same I practice even at work, I am a strong critic of any rat race or being opportunistic. Be it business travel, promotions or salary hikes everything will come to us at the right time, if we are willing to wait, the reward will only be bigger and sweeter.

On Rumination…
The TED talk by Guy Winch was really insightful to understand that we are not taking care of ourselves, in fact, in Indian homes it is a common sight for one or two individuals to become martyrs of the entire family. This behaviour definitely extends into the workplace where the term “SME” i.e, Subject Matter Expert is taken a tad too seriously and rechristened by managers as “GO-TO Person” , “Key Resource” which entails them to call people whenever they want, get them to do any work on demand. These feelings of dependency on a person while in the initial days may given them a high, with onset of fatigue they get into a vicious cycle of rumination due to the unique circumstances which come during critical issues. I try to plan my work and distribute my knowledge and do not see dependency as a trump card to get what we want, rather it is a showcase of bad planning. However, at work or otherwise, we all have our bad days and may end up ruminating about something or the other. I have learned that the two minutes of diversion or distraction is enough to clear our thoughts and get to do something more constructive.

Motivation…

I firmly believe that people need to motivate themselves and that we cannot push anyone to do anything, this has been reaffirmed during this course. However, it is a relief to know that we can nudge people in the right direction even if we dont succeed in motivating them instantly. This has been an immense learning, I have not capitalized on many opportunities to nudge people in the right direction and I have already started practising it. This is one section which you need to read and decide to practise:

How to motivate disinterested team members:
* Show them “What’s in it for them”
* Bring out the meaning and aspiration in what we are trying to achieve
* There are different drivers for different individuals
* Identify the needs of the individual and strive to satisfy that

In most occasions, people who are fairly self-aware will know that someone is being kind to them and try to extend their best self in order to make things work. I am seeing the effects of this already at my workplace.

External Activities!
The most exciting part of being in IIT Madras is the awesome campus and in this course we thoroughly enjoyed the maximum. This was the first course which explored the campus .. We were fortunate to explore:
* The Students Activities Centre
* IC&SR Building for Poster Presentation
* Panel experts from companies like Caterpillar Inc, Cognizant, PeopleFirst

The out-bound activity with Colonel was a fun learning experience with our class. I have attended the Service Selection Board, 2AFSB Mysore so I knew we were in for some challenging times. I really enjoyed the Caterpillar Walk and Minefield. The new experience was with Falling from a height and trusting your team to have your back. Even though we had sore knuckles by the end of the exercise, I feel that this game was new to each one of us and we really bonded over it.

Same goes with the Poster presentation where we picked the topic of Dabbawalas to depict our idea of true cohesiveness and organisational behaviour. Adding some pictures of these events, these are close to all our hearts 🙂 . Thanks for creating memories….

Creativity
In the Creativity session we had some really tough questions on how to become Creative.. We even got some procedure to become creative.. However, this did not resonate with me primarily because I am a creative person and totally agree with the ideology that creativity cannot be taught!

In my life and in general I am an artsy person with fairly good sense of art, culture, colours, designs, imagination and this is an intrinsic nature of how I live my life. I have striven not to lose my imagination and child-like thinking capability because I am sure that every adult yearns to have that capability. It is something I treasure and maintain so that my best work comes out with a dash of creativity which will sweep people of their feet!


Creativity comes with the culture and upbringing of the person, put together with who we meet, what we see, where we travel, how we give, even, how we receive. It is an integral part of the nurturing received by an individual as a child.

Conclusion:
On the whole, the Micro-Organizational Behaviour course has been a whirlwind which has hit me. In my experience it more of a psychology subject than an MBA subject! It has taught me how to work better, live better, also to be more receptive and engage in two way dialogues even during turbulent times. I understand this is precisely why this course has been added to MBA. The experiences gathered as part of this course are invaluable and will be cherished for years to come.