What the IIM-A gained from me and the other participants of the 2017 3TP SLP (Senior Leaders’ Programme)

Now that the headline has grabbed enough of your attention so as to get you reading, I will do my best to elaborate on the same.

Recently I had the privilege of attending a residential management course meant for Senior Leaders at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). Reams have been written already on the benefits of such a course for a participant like me and I totally agree with them.

What caught my fancy was the reciprocal benefits that might be accruing to the IIM-A itself from taking us in into their fold. As every successful transaction would entail, all the relevant parties thereto would be going back happy thinking that they got a good deal. Given below is an attempt to decipher what that ‘good deal’ might mean to IIM-A in the case of Management Development Programmes (hereafter referred to as MDP) such as the 3TP SLP.

Monetary benefits

MDP offer a lucrative way of boosting the finances of the management institutions (hereafter referred to as MI). Relative to their other programme offerings, the MDP generate better returns vis-à-vis the associated costs. One reason for the same is the possibility to charge at substantially higher rates than those for the regular programmes, since the participant pool comprises of senior management backed by organizations with deep pockets. Secondly, such programmes help the MI even out the troughs within their resource capacity utilization plan.

Non-monetary benefits

MI and their alumni sustain a symbiotic relationship in which both the parties draw and build upon each other’s reputation, network, power and wealth (duly deserved in a majority of the cases IMHO). The MDP serve as one of the instruments to maintain this relationship. With a sizeable pool of senior management personnel, both from the private and public sectors; national as well as international, drawn to these MDP, the MI significantly increase their odds of being an alma mater to individuals who one day could end up being respected authority figures in their chosen discipline. Another benefit is that the relevant faculty of such MDP (and thus indirectly the MI as well) get a chance to test market their new ideas & theories as well as challenge their pre-conceived notions amidst an audience that is diverse and closely connected to the application of these ideas, theories and notions. Last but not the least, the MDP offer a means to meet the social objectives laid down for the MI.

Key takeaway

It could be said that both the monetary and non-monetary benefits are equally important to the MI (without money, they cannot sustain and conversely sustenance without reputation, network and power would kill the very thing that differentiates them from the other run-of-the-mill institutes that generate managers by the dozens.) Having said that, I believe that the MI would possibly rate the non-monetary benefits as first among equals. Do you share the same opinion too?