And then there were Managers !

I had a very very weird dream last night. I felt I was in one of the world's top Business Schools - lets call it the Institute of Management Excellence. I saw that the students there were supposedly highly capable and mature ( The dream was hazy but I am guessing that the school had some work ex requirements). Initially the dream looked all rosy. I felt strangely good about it. Soon cracks began to surface in the dream.

You know what the problem is with having too many capable people at one place ? They are all trying to book some space for themselves. They have forgotten the fact that getting to that top school itself signifies that they were achievers. But everybody seemed to be hell-bent on hijacking whatever little space was available and establishing how great they were. They were trying to be Leaders. But a good leader is a great listener. But the scene was so pathetic that I saw none of the leaders even trying to 'listen'. I happened to barge into one of the Club meetings. I expected some serious action there but all I saw was a desperate sales pitch. One of the people who was supposedly mature (considering about a decade of experience) was asking people to guess the salary as per the latest payslip. 

In one more club meeting that I happened to barge into I saw people arguing against including one of the spouses as a guest lecturer. Why ? Because she is not a student. They had a better idea - talk about themselves. Splurge on self-indulgence. They wanted to talk about what they had done - coming from people who have not even spent 5 years in the industry. I say c'mon, how pathetic do you want to get. 

In whatever I can recollect of the dream it seemed like a really big school. People were already divided into Sections. Then I saw all the supposedly mature adults clustering and ghettoing hoping their individual inefficiencies would probably be covered up by the group as a whole. I also saw some section meets happening. Only loud ones were having things their way. No effort was seen to include or even consider the opinion of others.  The right to decision-making hand been handed on a platter to these 'wise' people. Every thing smacked of politics and opportunism. Some of the people were even organizing night-outs in the town. Taking an initiative is great but then not taking it anywhere further is sad. Everybody is out there to score brownie points. I saw only the sensible people sitting back and waiting for all these wanna-be dudes and dudettes to settle down.  

And yes, they were supposed to be future managers - the leaders of their field - future leaders of a country of 1 billion people and cant even behave mature enough in front of a audience thats not even 0.001 % - forget about being able to actually manage anything. Chaos and opportunism seemed to be the order of the day.

By this time I was tired of my dream and luckily woke up. I am so happy that I am at Indian School of Business and not any Tom, Dick and Harry's Institute of Management Excellence. I hope people here not what I saw in my dream ! Dont expect them to be !