News, Facts and Fiction: New IITs and IIMs and the Toyota recall

(IITs, Indian Institutes of Technology. IIMs, Indian Institutes of Management) 

Shillong, 25, 26, 27 August 2009.

I am anchoring a workshop on Accelerated Learning in one of the b- schools when the reports appear in the media.

Toyota recently announced the recall of 688,314 vehicles produced in China though no injuries or accidents have been linked to the recall. The recall amounts to more than a year's sale of vehicles.  

Dream:  I am waiting in front of my b-school which I graduated from in 1981. There is a huge crowd of alumni waiting for registration. The b school has a great reputation and have discovered that there have been some major glitches in all their graduates throughout the school's history. The graduates have been responsible for systemic failures of grave dimensions affecting the very survival of the planet. They  are waiting to register for a remedial programme. Their licences to practice have been revoked.  I wake up from the dream with the fear of losing my job to realise that I do not have a job to lose. Thank god, it is only a dream.

We share our dreams and news in the morning. The general consensus is that we need to have rewards as well as punishments. The Toyota quality issue is insignificant in comparison to what the top of the pyramid does to the bottom. (It is part of their programming to think of the world in terms of pyramids, or sometimes as a flat one reflecting their own inner landscapes. They perceive themselves to stand on the apex of the pyramid and from where they are rest of humanity is down there). They don't just leave it at that. More questions follow: What is Indian about the Indian institutes of Management? Are they B-schools or M- schools? If they are catering only to business why are they called management institutes? Is business not capable of meeting their own demand for managerial talent or otherwise?  Why should government indulge in this business where it has no competence to talk about? Do US seeds germinate and take root in the Indian soil? Can copies be better than the original? Which Indian academic in management working in India has the highest recall rate? Why is it that we don't even have a single technology or management breakthrough of world class scale and size in proportion to the scale and size of the country? Why are we so hung up on numbers and blissfully unaware of quality? You said quality, quantity and time goes into setting of standards and that standards though essential can also breed conformity and compromise on outstanding achievements when you don't have any standards of your own?

Is there a moral to the story? Accelerated learning and making people to ask questions is a tightrope walk? One cannot indulge in it without taking a position on some of these issues.