Chetan Pal is an IIT Roorkee and IIM C alumnus, who has been taking an entrepreneurship case study every year. He was with us last week. Fortunately no one from the Bulls Eye team was available at the center – and Chetan ended up doing some kaizens which are worth sharing with you. He told students to form groups of 6. Students themselves then maneuvered the 24 chairs into 4 circles of 6 chairs each. The case was distributed – and after some reading and thinking, 3 people were asked to speak in each group – one would introduce the case, the second would analyse it and the third would conclude. Chetan in the meantime was moving around checking who spoke and who did not.

One of the introducers was called out to the front of the class. She was made to give her pitch to the class. Two more introducers followed. After this the class had a discussion on who gave the best introduction – and why. One interesting thing emerged – having a paper in front of you when you talk – reduces impact. The third introducer was a paperless guy – who appeared to be more spontaneous. The other two introducers were called back – and this behavior change was reinforced by asking them to re-introduce the case without papers.

The groups were made to go back to the drawing boards – and in the next set of discussions, it was made mandatory that the 3 people who would speak now – were the ones who had not spoken in the first round. Feedback was given by the other 3 – and noted. Chetan again used this feedback to immediately ask for behavior change. The most interesting part of the case is that it is an autobiographical one, with a special charm that works out when the moderator reveals that he himself is the protagonist. The session ended well – and Chetan left us with one more interesting idea. He found our students had been either left unmoved by our training efforts or over-trained, which was leading to either a hesitation to participate or too much of verbal diarrhea. He suggested that a future GD should be held in a katta or a canteen over chai, so that we can stimulate the discussions to have a natural flow. Worth trying?