Announcement
I keep saying that each day is new. Each day ushers in new learning opportunities. Each day, hence, demands that you and I are at our ‘learning best’. It also demands that we do not become ‘learned’ ever!! There is no better time to visit this fundamental than the month of April, as new professional resolutions and goals are set and we begin a new chapter in our professional lives.
I am making a small shift that I have been promising myself for a few months now. The shift of communicating with you directly. I will do this in the form of a note once a month and this would be available to you at this location. I am addressing each team member who is a part of the CL journey. It means it includes all the business partners and their team members too. I sincerely hope that these articles will find some meaning for you as a professional, as a person who has personal and professional dreams, as a committed CL-ite and above all, as a person! Please do send your feedback to my email id without fail.
Today, I will talk about two subjects that have been new initiatives from us and you will be hearing about them soon through workshops, internal communication channels, Srijan etc. One concerns all of us - Clites, and the other concerns our customers (the students who come to us).
Part I Core Ideology
As usual, the first phase of CL was the entrepreneurial phase. In this phase, a few individuals ran from morning till sunrise (not sunset, mind you!) to convert an idea into a product or programme and then ran for three years to make their ends meet. The idea got established. They pushed for their dreams, got bold, took risky decisions for growth. They came through as well. CL has survived for over seven years now. I am saying survived…not thrived.
The growth phase has just begun. The entrepreneurial phase is over. The organization has taken over. The pluses and minuses of this ‘desirable problem’ are staring at us. And it is time to speak a little about our core purpose or core values.
Core Purpose and Core Values
What was a passion for Gautam Puri could be just a job for a new comer to CL if we do not share the core purpose. If a customer call at midnight was a whiff of fresh air for Shivku, it could be a nuisance for a customer service executive if he or she does not know the answer to one question - who do we exist for or what is our purpose?
At Career Launcher, we are at that critical stage, now. As an organization, we will make every effort to convert these core matters into something each one of us can relate with. At the same time, as an individual you owe it to yourself that you tune into the CL ideology voluntarily.
Core Purpose
Core purpose is what you and I exist for. This is what we get up in the morning for. This is where the energy comes from when you are dead tired and about to fall off.
Our purpose, when we began, was not to coach students but to “make their dreams come true”. There comes the crunch situation. If you are tuned in completely to the CL ideology, then there is no need to convince you about the purpose statement because you would have internalized it already. You walk this purpose from morning till night. Saying anything would amount to stating the obvious.
On the other hand, if you are not tuned in, no one can convince you. More importantly, you end up doing a job and cannot be an inspiration to others.
Core Values
As an organization, what is it that we would not give up at any cost? What are those habits that we hold with sanctity? Even if you were to be penalized for doing them, you would continue to do them. Think about these. Those are our core values at CL. You will hear about these shortly.
Just to update you, we have done two workshops in the past four weeks covering about 30 members from Delhi and Mumbai. More workshops will be conducted by respective leaders in collaboration with the HR department till we cover all CL-ites, including our business partners, by June 30.
Part II Student Outreach Services (SOS)
The other initiative that we will hear a lot about pertains to adding some value to our students in their career pursuit. All of us are aware that just about 20% or even a smaller percentage of our students make it to the top schools after their interaction with us whether for MBA or MCA or BBA or hotel management etc. The rest need greater help. Typically, they have exit options that lead them to second-tier institutes within India, colleges abroad or even job opportunities.
While we have been assisting them in this area informally, we have initiated the design of a formal system. We are calling it ‘student outreach seminars’. As part of these seminars, we play the neutral forum maker who helps students come face-to-face with management schools in India, universities abroad and even companies, as we go along.
These seminars are being planned in a way so that they help CL students at all our locations. In fact, we feel that the farther locations will see greater value in these interactions with colleges and universities. For example, a student in Patna or Kochi would be very keen to interact directly with an MBA college such as NM of Mumbai or IMT, Ghaziabad. While these colleges are known locally, the awareness is very low in other parts of the country. SOS seeks to bridge this information-gap.
In fact, the first SOS seminar was held in Delhi last month. We could not have started better. The seminar had Prof Debashis Chatterji from IIM-Lucknow, Prof Gangopadhyay from IIM-Indore and Prof KK Mehta, formerly from IIM-Ahmedabad and NITIE as the speakers. Creditable, isn’t it? There is more coming our students’ way.
Today, Career Launcher is in a situation where we need to write the rules of the game. We did it when we were a non-entity. Today, we have some standing. And it is easy to do as we know our core purpose - our students. All that enables them reach their goal is our job. And SOS is a significant step in that direction wherein we volunteer to do additional hand-holding for our students. Your participation is crucial to make it a success. We owe it to our students.
You will keep hearing more about this from our leaders in the network.
Happy waiting!
Satya