Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, IIT
Bombay continues its pursuit of knowledge with the inaugural session of Diksha
2011. The session was graced by Mr Thomas Kuruvilla, the
Managing Director of Arthur D. Little Ltd. (Middle East), and world’s
first management consultancy, specializing in strategy and operations
management, serving major corporations and organizations worldwide.
Mr. Kuruvilla has a Bachelors degree in
Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Kerala University and MBA from the
Melbourne Business School, Australia/Asian Institute of Management,
Philippines.
In this enlightening interaction session, the
speaker explained the various aspects of strategic consulting with
proper illustration of real life examples. The speaker straight away threw
the floor open for audience questions, and the students grabbed this
opportunity to engage in a truly interactive Q&A session. Answering to a
question, the speaker stressed that the basic purpose of consulting is
to identify, understand and align with the client’s problems and solve it along
with them. Here comes the need to be well acquainted with the fundamentals of
different functional disciplines of business such as finance, marketing, etc
and the need to be well equipped with people’s skills.
On a philosophical note, he discussed about genuine
consulting and about what we want. He suggested that a
successful consultant is the one for whom the primary focus is achieving the
objectives of the client, while working in a team environment. Describing
the corporate hierarchy, he elaborated how strategy is always decided at the
highest level, why delegating the same creates problem in the organization and
why at the same time it is imperative to align that target both vertically and
horizontally. He emphasized that a strategy should always be unique,
implementable and different across different geographies, industries, clients
and timeframe. Even after encompassing all these features if a strategic
solution is not accepted by the client then the reasons why the solution
was not acceptable by the client should be analyzed both from emotional and
practical aspects.
A detailed comparative analysis of how
the business environment in consulting varies across geographies provided
the students with a clear insight into the domain. The issues in handling
consulting assignments for Indian public sector and for cases related to due
diligence were well explained. Answering to a question about how a
strategy solution is evaluated, he suggested that a good strategy would be one
that does not make too many assumptions, and does not change according to change
in the underlying assumptions like regulatory norms for instance.
His views on the limitations of the
structured form of strategic consulting and the effects of mergers and
acquisitions in the domain were well received by the audience.
This enriching interaction session acquainted
students with the concerns, challenges and growth opportunities in the
Industry.
Contributed by,
Punam Agarwal,
SJMSOM Class of 2012
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