My “Second MBA”

Sharing insights here on how to make a committee made up entirely of volunteers pull together despite other commitments to gel and excel.

It almost feels like a second MBA, working with a fine team of people — Rajan Pandey, Husain Kagalwala, Inder Bedi and Charu Jain — on building up a strong sense of community and connectedness amongst the alumni of SP Jain School of Global Management — Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore & Sydney here in Singapore.

It has been 3 years since we conceptualised the 4 pillars that our activities would be based on — knowledge sharing and professional development, sports and health, service to the community, and simply fun informal socialising. We also identified the values that drive us collectively — continuous growth, collaboratively. Over the years, we held numerous activities, with the support of the SP Jain School of Global Management — Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore & Sydney, in particular Anu Madan.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to rethink our activities, and it was back to the drawing board just as we thought we had created for ourselves a winning formula that we could then replicate.

“If we don’t try, we will never know”, was something we repeated to each other, as we tried new formats.

And this could only have been executed because of the strength and trust that had been built up among the committee, and indeed the engagement we had with the alumni community and the alumni office of the college, in delivering relevant activities, and refining it based on ongoing feedback.

The committee worked like the 5 fingers of a hand, — each of us different from the other, and because of that, synergising and creating different strengths. We had the organiser, the driver, the deep thinker, the uniter, and the quiet leader who unobtrusively aligned us all. Committee — if you’re reading this, you know which you are :)

We worked autonomously, but in unity. This did not come about naturally at the start, but through a process of “storming” before the “forming”. Bruce Tuckman’s Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing model: (https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_86.htm) perfectly describes what we went through.

Of course, casual down time, over good food ( pancakes!) and coffee, and getting to know each other as people was what we thought was periphery, but later turned out that we all looked forward to our committee meetings as a breadth of fresh air, good company, and a chance to create something that is a contribution to society in our small way.

In the later part of the term, I also played the role of adviser in the creation of S P Jain Angel Network (or SPAN for short) , working with such go-getters Mustafa Rasheed and Vivek Agarwal.

This journey was also very interesting because people joined us on a project basis, and after enjoying the work and doing so much of it, ended up becoming co-opted into the committee as office holders.

The work on the committee began with an end in mind. We knew our destination and were 100 percent committed to getting there. Pride was a part of it — in a good way — no way was I going to allow myself to say “I didn’t make it happen”, especially since this is something that isn’t out of my depth, but simply required tenacity, and teamwork.

What I didn’t expect was the mentorship I got when I took up this role. I’m so glad I did it because of the learning, the mentoring, and the community building that happened, which created opportunities for others in the process too.

My term as Communications Head and Vice-President had recently ended, and I had decided that my next step would be to run for President, because that is just outside my comfort zone, but not out of my depth.

It’s a significant step up in responsibility, but I look forward to the growth that will come with it.

Thank you to the team for making this work so fulfilling.