So I think after spending about a decade and a half in your professional career, there's a lot of operational ... what do you say? Operational fatigue that kind of tends to come in. You start operating in a way ... It gets very standardized the way you work, the way your thought process becomes. I think it INSEAD Leadership Programme  is a great platform, and that's what we read about when we had to enroll for this program, I think it's a great platform where if you have to take a leap to your next stage in your career, it gives you the relevant inputs, it challenges your thought process. It just makes you ready to take that next leap in your career. That's one of the reasons why we looked at a course, something like ILPSE and probably not regular MBA programs, because you really need to think that what is an executive edge education going to add versus a regular MBA. I think that was one of the reasons why we looked at ILPSE as a program and we wanted to enhance our skills.

And secondly, I think it will be resonated across that NCR is a very strong brand to associate with yourself. Having spent 15 years into an industry, if you have a tag like NCR, I think it just adds to the core value. And when you become a senior manager or you go into the senior management, there's a lot more acceptability factor. So brands today do add that value. And I think that was the entire reason why I personally looked at ILPSE when I was kind of selecting my future education course.

I think you have to be very clear why you're joining ILPSE. If you're joining ILPSE, that the moment you're going to pass out it's going to give you a very fancy job break, that's not going to happen. So the impact, if you look at the true impact that's happened personally to me, I think it's really given me a fresh mindset. The way I look at very technical issues today are backed up by my professional ... there is a framework behind it. You take examples. I would love to give these examples because I think these were some of the things that you come across daily in your professional and personal life, but you had handled it very ad hocly. But I think with ILPSE coming in and with the kind of education we got, we're now able to put a framework and a structure behind it and there's a very methodical thought over approach that you take in order to solve those problems.

Examples would be decision-making, negotiation, how you handle people, how you react with people and the actions you would get from them. So we thought it just happens at random. No, if you really drill down and if you really think through what's been taught to us, there is a method to mechanism. There's a method to the madness. And that's what we are inventing when we are going deeper into the ILPSE program. So that's been the impact.

I think we have become very structured in our approach. We use a methodology in addressing each problem and I think we are becoming aware of what would be the outcome because of the framework that we're using. I think it's very enlightening the way we are addressing.

So the strongest point of our ILPSE education has been the faculty and the peers that I'm getting exposed to. So if you talk about the faculty, I don't think we could have got a better face time with the multicultural faculty that we are getting exposed to. They're very well researched. Most of them are consultants today in different spheres and the kind of knowledge they're imparting to us, I don't think you would have gained this kind of knowledge if we would have continued with our regular professional work. They're very researched topics and most interestingly, they're updated topics. It's not that we are learning traditional stuff that was being taught in the B schools about 10 years back. It's thought over, they have added recency to it, and I think that's where they create that value. So I think that's the best part of getting educated from the B school.

When you talk about the peer set, like I just said, when you keep operating in a specific industry over a period of time, there's a lot of latency that comes in, complacency that comes in, but when you interact with your peer set, which are from different industries, different mindsets, they had their different set of challenges, it just opens up your mind. You become very reciprocative on what they say. So it's a great value addition. In fact, I think there've been instances where at my workplace, I take instances, both, this is not how that industry works, this is what we need today. They set different benchmark standards and you yourself are very aware of what is happening as an ecosystem as such. So, there's nothing more that could have happened better. I think that's a great value addition when it comes to courses like this.

I think the transformation experience for me would be really the way you address every problem. I think we were very erratic and we were very emotional when we kind of took an approach to whether a technical issue or a people's issue. Today there is a structure to everything. The way we are handling people management is a science. You cannot handle people based on your emotions. And again, emotion has a science behind it. So these are the kinds of things that you're learning that if you are able to manage, if you know what you're heading to, whether it's your personal thing, whether it's a professional, whether it's people handling, people management, I think it just keeps adding a structure.

The most important thing is that you are aware of what you're doing. You're aware of the consequences, you are aware of the route that you're taking. And you're also aware of the problem because the biggest problem is when you're not aware of what you're doing. They say people don't know what they don't know. This goes and the education and exposure to a curriculum like this actually mitigates what you don't know. And that's been the strongest transformational insight into this.

So my advice is that you need to come up with an open mind when you're coming for a course like this. You need to be very clear in your head that what is the reason that you want to undertake an educational course like this. Like I've said before, if you're thinking of getting into a course or an educational experience like this to get out of it and immediately get a pay hike or a designation hike or a very fancy job in a fancy company, that's a repercussion of this, that would eventually happen. But if you're kind of looking to have only for that, then my advice is don't do it. But if you want to change yourself personally, which would then start impacting the people around you, your organization, you're able to add more value when you are going into that senior level, then take this course up. This is the input and the education you would get to get to that level is what this could provide. So my jewel advises do this if you want to transform yourself, if you want to get inputs to change the way you look at the environment and the ecosystem. Don't do it because you're looking at a monetary return out of it.

Aditi Sood