26th February 2014, a day worth waiting for, a day when TBLA result was announced. At 4:45 pm I got a call from Varun Sir and what I got? " Sorry dude, Your team is not shortlisted for the TBLA next round". That line was simple to say, but it gave me a hard blow really. So it is important first to discuss what basically TBLA is and why not getting shortlisted for this has given me a such a state of gloominess wherein my expressions were all of a sudden talking like Mr. Charlie Chaplin :).
TBLA is Tata Business Leadership Award and best description as given on its official page is:
The Tata Business Leadership Awards, first introduced in 2002, provides a platform to the sharpest young minds from the elite business schools of the country and from within the Tata group to come together to address the business challenges relevant to the House of Tata. TBLA, over the years, has grown to be a coveted prestigious award.
The ideology that governs TBLA is to invite the good people, develop the better ones and retain the best. This is done by putting the best people through the biggest challenges.
Over the past years, TBLA has been generating a great degree of excitement at top business schools & Tata companies, which is probably the highest for any national-level competition.
Format basically is:
Winning teams in the campus / regional rounds are invited to the TBLA National Finals in Mumbai where the final presentations are conducted and evaluated by senior leaders of the Tata Group and eminent academicians of the country. The winning teams are felicitated in a grand ceremony at the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers.
The competition involves preparing a business plan on the topic of the year, including an executive summary, The competition involves preparing a business plan on the topic of the year, including an executive summary, a presentation explaining the business case and financials.
The presentations are conducted on each campus and regionally for in-house companies and judged by a panel of senior leaders from the Tata Group.
Every year TBLA comes out with a theme and teams participates a lot. So we also started preparing for the same and "we" was formed with:
- Maninder Singh (Me)
- Sachpreet Singh
- Amandeep Singh
- Gourav Garg
And the name of the team was decided as "CUBICLE FORCE". I specially gave a logo to our team name and took help from my brother (He is into animation and all that stuff).
This year theme for the TBLA was:
DRIVING BUSINESS GROWTH THROUGH INCREASE IN CUSTOMER CENTRICITY
Today the customer is empowered more than ever. In a fiercely competitive buyers market companies are gearing up towards increasing their customer centricity and creating customer delight across all their interfaces with the consumer. Innovations in products and services, proactive and responsive customer management systems and changing business models are some of the levers that companies pulling to drive growth.
The challenge of this assignment is to analyze best in class customer centric approaches and use the learning’s to create business plans for Tata Group companies.
- Identify & analyze a best in class customer centric approach that has proved to be a game changer to the fortunes of an organization.
- Identify any one Tata group company and suggest a strategy to change the company’s growth trajectory by placing the customer at the centre.
So daily working for at least 6-8 hours just doing analysis, analysis and analysis! I have a folder named as research files which contains around 400+ case studies and analysis, which our team has really read to get ideas and deep insights about our topic. One time was that we were having a data which was being difficult to arrange into sheets, but somehow we managed to get it aligned with the theme. After doing research for 7 to 8 days we started aligning our data into a presentation. Wait !!!!!! I would like to share the responsibilities of the team members before proceeding further:
- Me - Presentation & data alignment
- Sachpreet - Financials, balance sheets etc.
- Amandeep - Facts, data application & global insights
- Gourav - Research summaries and analysise
So our plan was very aligned with the theme and responsibilities were well distributed. We used to fight a lot over some topics and which was obvious when you are working on some critical areas and consensus is required. We completed the PPT on 6th of February and now the proper presentation was required with some additions and subtractions. It took me 3 days to complete that and sorry I forget to mention that financial projections were still left and linkage between the main theme was missing. In one word, after doing the 80% of the work output was still zero. On 10th February, final submission was scheduled but it got rescheduled to 12th February and it was really a relief :)
So we decided to share our PPT with the 2011 & 2012 winning teams to get some expert advice. At first, their expressions were like "OMG! What is this? Are you guys crazy? This is not a game. This is a TBLAaaaaaaaaaa !!! They are not free to read your PPT of 70 slides, they need summary guys. GO and get it done within 15 slides." and we were like... SHIT! Two days left for submission and experts are saying that this is too long to understand. So next mission was not to submit but to make it a good and understandable PPT. We did the same and our PPT was of 30 slides on the day of submission. We know how hard it is to omit data when it took so long to find that after very rigorous research through the internet. For two and half weeks I was sleeping at 3:30 am and then going to the office at 8:30 am. Efforts were the need of the hour and we were delivering them.
On 12th February our team submitted the PPT at 9 pm and we were feeling very fresh. Amandeep confirmed the uploading of PPT two times (As usual, he does in his daily routine as well). So after the submission, wait for the results started and we were really dreaming for the next rounds as well.
Today when we are not among the shortlisted teams, we know that how disappointed we are individually. But at the same time when we recall the learning we get from such things, we feel happy and superior than others. Today when I see a difference in me in comparison to a guy before 20th of January (Day when we started our preparation), I know about global companies which I read, I know about finance sheets, balance sheets, 100+ companies of Tata group, Business plans, Datas and lots of other information as well. I am more confident than before. I think my team members also think the same.
It is always great to learn new things and it is greater to get selected in prestigious events like TBLA wherein you will get the chance to meet the CEO's of different companies of Tata Group, a managerial talks, Great hotels stay and a level of accomplishment. I wish the teams who are shortlisted for the next round will give their best and I hope someday in future I will be writing a blog sharing my accomplishment, not only of learning but my shortlisting and win as well :)
Stay Happy and keep learning!
#TBLA#BestLearningExperience#CubicleForce#TataMotors#2014
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