IIM Bangalore’s Advanced Management Programme – Realize Your True Potential

When a sense of stagnation and redundancy started hitting many of us in our professional lives, we found our paths leading us to the Advanced Management Programme (AMP) at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB). Just like a product matures over a period and ultimately experiences decline, unless reinvigorated with a dosage of innovation, senior executives too, after a point of time, need to reinvent themselves to escape stagnation. According to Professor Vasanthi Srinivasan, one of our professors and co-founder of AMP, the very genesis of the AMP was based on this need. AMP is designed to get senior executives to reframe their lens and make a fresh enthusiastic start in their career, ultimately leading to higher success.

With a 16 percent acceptance rate, IIMB’s AMP has quickly risen to be among the most sought-after professional courses for senior executives. In an increasingly virtual world, IIMB, with its focus on high quality, practical, and interactive learning, continues to patronize the classroom learning format. It is among the very few premium educational institutions in India to offer a classroom-based programme for senior executives.

While virtual learning platforms enable convenient and efficient ways to gain knowledge from few masters, an AMP acts as an effective peer learning platform to harness the collective wisdom of professors, participants, and guest lecturers. Prof. R Srinivasan, one of our course Directors, who is also the Chairperson, Executive Education Programmes at IIMB, shared that a lot of effort was made to create a diverse cohort so that the classroom sessions serve as an effective medium to stimulate different perspectives. The 11th batch, for example, consisted of 40 plus individuals, who with an average experience of around 20 years were senior executives from different domains across various industries. We had international students too, who added extra texture to our discussions. Ruifeng Guo, Managing Partner, eTail Consultants Private Limited, for example, regularly shared his perspectives on the Chinese way of conducting business.

Sessions were facilitated by professors who have themselves had glorious industry careers in the past and now continue to consult corporations on different strategic assignments. We had sessions from eminent professors such as Jean-Noel Kapferer (HEC Paris), renowned for his ‘Brand Identity Prism’ and fintech professional Abhishant Pant, the ‘cashless man’ who urged us to create a ‘Brand called U’ and carve out our own identity, independent of the corporate identity.

The AMP has been designed for self-motivated individuals who are eager to take the next important step in their career. It focusses on five elements: personal mastery, functional leadership, strategic decision making, global business awareness, and strategy and leadership. While textbooks and reference notes are available to guide the participants, the approach to learning is quite different.
The course is not designed to teach management theories from scratch as most of the participants, who come with an average of 20 years’ experience, are already exposed to different elements of that. Instead, what the course does is makes us rethink and challenge the assumptions that have formed the basis of what we do and how we do it. That’s where the true value lies and that’s where we as tenured professionals can maximize our contributions to our existing jobs and careers. Ahila Krishnamoorthy, Managing Director, Daramic India, for example, feels that the programme helped to kindle our thoughts and shake us out of our equilibrium. She attempted to apply concepts of luxury management to her traditional fiber business to investigate whether some of their product lines possessed perceived qualities that could elevate it to the luxury brand status.

The programme urges participants, who have spent a good part of their careers trying to carve out a niche for themselves in their respective fields, to take a more holistic view of the situation. As Prasad Diwakar, Director, South Asia, The Heico Companies LLC puts it, “The course can be instrumental in catapulting a middle manager to senior leadership as it helps one to connect the dots and see the organization as a whole, rather than in parts.” This he believes has helped him bring to forefront his entrepreneurial skills and expand his company’s presence in South Asian countries. Similarly, Prakash S Kayal, Senior Director with Biocon Ltd., who has a background in Sales and Marketing, felt that his horizon has broadened from the Macroeconomic teachings of Dr. Chetan Subramanian (Professor and Chairperson of the Economics & Social Sciences area, IIMB) and the International Finance perspectives provided by Dr. P C Narayan (faculty from the Finance & Accounting area), helping him take a 360-degree view of the situation and helping him add more value to his organization.

Globalization is here to stay. Although we are constantly bombarded with news about the US economy, another important market – Europe, is often missed out. Our international immersion with HEC Paris, a globally recognized management university, brought to the forefront how European Union as a combined entity exerts significant influence on the global economy. Several industry visits in Paris helped us appreciate Europe’s contributions to the global economy and also France’s technical prowess and innovation bent.
Our ‘AMP-ites’ felt that the programme gave them the confidence, the necessary tools, and the extra nudge to not just think about ideas, but also translate their ideas into tangible outcomes. After every module, participants would come back with stories of how they managed to positively influence their organization based on what they learnt here. Alok Dubey, Chief Executive Officer, Arvind Lifestyle Brands Ltd., for example, took back learnings from Professor Avinash Mulky’s (faculty from the Marketing area of IIMB) marketing session on maximizing ‘Lifetime Value of Customer’ and applied it to their flagship brand US Polo Assn. His team identified key customer segments and leveraged their loyalty program, ‘Royalty Club’ to maximize share of wallet and retention.

Rewards from the immersive programme also started showing early and not surprisingly we started seeing the ROI during the course itself – with several achieving career progressions or making career shifts to professions of their choice. For some, it also lay the initial seeds for entrepreneurial ventures. The N. S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), designed for budding entrepreneurs, along with the large pool of mentors and alumnus network, can be instrumental in kickstarting one’s entrepreneurial journey.

Building an efficient and effective network is one important learning that AMP focusses on and lays the foundation for it at the campus itself. Alumni across batches and programmes are connected over various social networking platforms, and are always willing to lend an ear and support to take your ideas forward.

While we joined the course to identify our true calling and introspect on ‘What Next’, a common feeling that each one of the AMP-ites walked out with – is a renewed sense of purpose and a much clearer view of our strengths, and what we want to accomplish from our professional life. Although our true calling might not be apparent to us at this stage, the AMP has equipped us with the right set of questions to introspect, and with tools that are essential to make a smoother transition into our chosen area of passion.

Lincy Therattil

The writer is a management consultant with a reputed firm and attended the 11th AMP batch at IIMB. These are her personal views.