Saturday, September 29, 2012

At the apogee of corruption... Where to look for signs of change?

Extent of Corruption in India, Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao

The potholes on road, over crowded public buses and trains, politicians looting the national assets, lack of service in the government office and  ridiculous policies changes such as limiting LPG cylinders, hiking petrol price every quarter, defining the below poverty line as person whose earning is less than Rs. 32 per day etc. we have suffered in India. If one person understands another's suffering because of these, then one expects at least the private bodies to be not corrupt? But, that is not so.

My concern is of the hospitals which are looting people and yet not delivering proper care. During my recent interaction at a major A hospital in Bangalore, I saw the indifference the first hand. Some of those I am sharing with you to spread awareness:

a) The hospital took a diabetic and post-major surgery patient into emergency and made the patient wait for two to three hours without even checking whether why the patient is there (apparently the visit was to verify the dosage was right or needs change) and without giving any food to maintain the glucose level. The doctor had to be requested to come and visit the patient in the emergency ward where the patient was kept!

b) At the billing counter of the same hospital, the staff ensures the all the charges that can be claimed from insurance whether the services are provided or not, are billed.

c) At the time of discharge, there is no doctor to assist the patient and guide what post operative medications are and what type of care is needed. But the ambulance assistance keeps pestering that they are waiting for you to start. How can a patient leave without getting any instruction after a major surgery was performed?

d) All operated patients stay in the same hall called ICU where the bed are separated by a plastic screen. The patients have to listen to agony of fellow patients after a big and painful operation.

e) At the pharmacy, the pharmacist is busy taking personal calls while the people attending the patients wait in line for him to resume drugs dispensing.

f) The doctors do not give the correct advice based on the patient's condition, but based on statistics and revenue stream for the hospital.

g) The nurses leave the dispensing units for hours together by the patient's bed and sometimes forget to take it back all together also!

h) The pharmacist's snide - what is free in this hospital, when you give them back unused drugs so that a needy a can get it for free.

i) The nutritionist at the hospital gives oily and spicy food to the patient when the doctor has strictly advised against it.

j) The attended and janitors do not respect the doctors, instead they tell the doctors to report to the management that they did not do what the doctor told.

As I see, one of the scared institution has also become very corrupt. The purpose of highlighting this to ensure you do not suffer what I have seen and fight for your rights. Perhaps the corruption is at its apogee, but we all need to fight when we can and not stay a mute spectator to it.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Is MBA necessary? Post MBA thoughts.

Feedback on MBA program, Is MBA valueable, Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao

Management is about making decisions so that a right course could be set to accomplish something. The decisions making and directions setting are fairly straight forward, if one is familiar with the situation. For instance, if you are planning to take a daily route to the office on a regular day, your decisions regarding the mode of transport and timings are straight forward decisions. If the day happens to be one  when your regular routes are blocked for some unforeseen reason, how will you manage to get to the office in time? For someone who is new to a locality, making decision at this time requires some learning about - newer routes, other modes of available transportation, times taken to reach the destination, etc. But, for a taxi driver, this information may be already known and the decision becomes commonsensical. Likewise for some people decision making is commonsensical and MBA is not necessary.

Within an organization there are different functions - Marketing & Sales, Finance, HR, Logistics, and so on. Each of these functional organizations manage one specific aspect of the company. What these organizations manage and how they manage is non-commonsensical to most of us. If one wants to bridge this gap, an MBA will help. This can also knowledge gap can also be acquired through work rotation and reading relevant books. But the time period of learning between these two approaches differ. For most of us, the non-MBA approach takes longer because of the commitment level.

For those who have decided to pursue an MBA program, there is a dilemma whether to invest the money or not in a full-time program. In my opinion, any investment in your education is never a waste, but the pay-off periods may differ. If you can manage your educational funds without being a burden to you and your family, go for a full-time program. A part-time may not be as intensive in training as a full-time course, but the interactions among candidates (from Sr. VP to front liners) exposes you to practical aspects of decision making better. 

Before I started on this journey, a question to myself was - does that lead to CEO, if not what is the use?  Perhaps I have found the answer to this - having MBA is not enough. The preparation for this role is a self-learning journey the way of Jonathan Livingston in Richard Bach's book. An MBA provides a starting point for the take-off, the rest of the journey is on the individual...