IIM-B gives executives world-class view

The Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B) has been collaborating with global universities like INSEAD, Lancaster, McGill and three schools in Japan for over a decade to train senior executives in management techniques that deal with mindset orientation rather than focusing on usual MBA subjects like marketing, finance and organisation behaviour.

Branded as the International Master Program in Practicing Management (IMPM), the course is designed to be a 'next generation' course which combines management development with management education. The programme is structured around managerial "mindsets", one for each module.

As part of the programme, 30 are chosen every year, participants travel to all the mentioned universities for five modules of 15 days each within 16 months.

The course opens in Lancaster (London) with managing in general and the reflective mindset in particular. Then it moves to McGill (Canada), where attention turns to managing organisations and the analytic mindset. Bangalore (India) follows with managing context, the worldly mindset.

In Japan and Korea, IIM-B takes up managing relationships, the collaborative mindset. The programme closes at INSEAD (France) with managing change, the action mindset.

"We try to teach people to execute and practice their management skills, rather than just teach them the skills. They benefit from the fact that they travel across the world so they can learn the management practices around the world,"says Oliver Westall, the cycle director of the programme and head of the management school at Lancaster University Management.

When the students are not at the universities, they can go back to work at their respective companies where they are encouraged to put the knowledge gained to practice and write a paper on it.

This year, the course had executives from companies like Lufthansa, Maersk Line, Fujitsu, Sasken, Tata Steel and Posco. The participants visit the universities as a class and are encouraged to learn more from each other and from their diversity than from the faculty.

At IIM-B, the course focuses on developing a worldview amongst its participants. According to Rajiv Gowda, a module director for the programme and an associate professor at IIMB, the module is based on the assumption that being exposed to other parts of the world brings insight into one's own world, thereby making a person more worldly-wise.

At IIMB, the module is taught by academicians as well as industry leaders like Air Deccan MD Capt Gopinath, who is also a graduate of the programme and Santosh Desai, former president of McCann Ericksson India and Manish Sabharwal, head of the staffing company Teamlease.

"Our participants are fairly senior people in their own companies and we look for people who can add to each other's knowledge rather than us teaching them in a classroom. In India we try to show them how firms work and this year we took them to Titan to show them how the company works and we also take them to NGOs so that they get a wider perspective," Gowda said.

According to the students, the course makes one to look outside their own world. "We are exposed to management practices from around the world and it adds more dimensions to how you see things,"says Dennis F Jacobsen, an area sales manager with the Sweden-based Maersk Line.

"In India, I think MBAs give people a lot of knowledge, but it doesn't tell them how to put it into practice. I think that is the main difference between education in western countries and India,"he adds.

Fees $50,000 per participant

Master degree fees $6,750

Travel Student pays

Living expenses around $13,000 (company pays)

Eligibility Over 35 years in senior functional or general management positions

London General management, Reflective mindset

Canada Managing organisations, Analytic mindset

Bangalore Managing context, worldly mindset

Japan, Korea Managing relationships, collaborative mindset

France Managing change, action mindset