Practicing Classroom Concepts through Event Management - IESMCRC

“Hi Mary! How are you?” said Lily to her best friend Mary who was sitting in the lobby of her Business School. Mary did not reply to that. Lily was worried she asked Mary again, “You are looking stressed, Mary! What’s the matter?” Mary replied, “I am worried”. “Why?” asked Lily. “I am managing our B- Schools, Annual Research Conference and since I am the Student Convener, I have lots of responsibilities and hence I am stressed that all should go well tomorrow” replied Mary.

Lily smiled and calmed Mary, “Are you aware of the fact that ‘Managing events’ is considered as the fourth most stressful activity? The other three activities that precede are armed force management, firefighters and airplane pilots! ‘Events ‘ may sound simple to conduct; but managing them to its final successful end needs a lot of your skills and thereby, is looked at as one of the best tools to impart management lessons to budding managers” .” Lily continued, “Mary, you are indeed privileged to lead this event, I am sure you must have learnt a lot through this?”.

“Yes”, said Mary, “I learnt many practical aspects of my classroom concepts”. “I learnt the most important ‘Peoples Skills’ since during this event I had the opportunity to work with varied people, right from the top level corporate executives to the students and support staff. I was able to agilely resolve conflicts, be a confident but fair negotiator and it also enhanced my networking abilities”. Lily was interested to know. She further asked, “Tell me more Mary. This is interesting”. Mary got so exhilarated that she went on, “Lily, I learnt how to be flexible and adjust to the people and environment around me, I had to settle many large and trivial issues to ensure that the Research Conference gets completed successfully and I did all this silently, calmly and efficiently”. “Most essentially Lily, I got more organized and I learnt how to do Multi-tasking, which helped me in the smooth planning and faultless execution of the event. I also learnt how to prepare a checklist to ensure that nothing skips my attention so that whilst I focus on the Big event all the little details that are required to make the Big event successful do not skip my eye. This made me put my classroom teaching into practice- To have an eye for detail”.

“Lily most importantly, this event has taught me how to manage my time efficiently and communicate effectively in a clear, precise manner so that there is no scope for any ambiguity”. “ Lily, what is exciting is that I actually became decisive, I had to take so many decisions, all at the same time and some of them at times needed to be taken really quickly, I also had to stand by all of those decisions that I took and always have a backup Plan-B ready.” 

“Lily I have lots to tell you about my learning’s from this event, but right now, I think, I need to get going for my event which is tomorrow to give the final look at the checklist, whether all is done and ready, but I must admit Lily, I felt nice talking to you, I felt charged. Let’s meet you tomorrow after the event to share more of my learning and experiences. 

“I too am enlightened listening to you, Mary. All the best for tomorrow” said Lily.

Dr. Svetlana Tatuskar
Associate Professor, IES’s Management College and Research Centre, Mumbai.
Ph.D, Masters in Commerce (Financial Management), Accounting Technician, (ICAI), M.Com