Recipe of a diversity curry

We had our first Designing Work Organization (that’s an awfully complex title) class. Professor Anjani Kumar is a former VP, HR dept of GM with 30 years industry experience. Bless his soul. We need more mangers and less academics as professors.

The first assignment is to cook a diversity curry i.e. a diverse team of ten members each that simulates a work place, come up with a viable project proposal and present it. As the author is a rare commodity, a south Indian in this northern city of India, he’s in a happy situation where three teams want to sign him up. At last he succumbs to the charm of Nitika-tikki-Nagpal.

What happens when there is an incentive for coming up with maximum diversity? I think we will all cook up a diversity curry in the coming days. Guys who have stayed put in Delhi, calcutta for a few months may become the ‘residents’ of those cities, guys who have done mechanical or comp science engineering may become manufacturing or IT buffs, guys who are aged 21 years,11 months may become 21 and those with 22 years 1 months, 23. Plus a host of innovations I couldn’t think of. Ah, how humans respond to incentives! (I read a book, Freakonomics recently. It talks of this theme)

I sometimes try to put a proactive face, but I am a lazy chap; too lazy to even apply for institute committees when it called for applications then. Now, I have responded to a couple of Expression of interest emails (industry interaction committee and media relations). It’s better late than never. And it’s better to get rejected than not try. I’ll bore you to death with more such clichés in the coming days.