Getting associated with an organization that
stands for ethics, business-excellence and integrity was a reason enough for
me to look forward to my 8 weeks of stay in the city of steel – Jamshedpur, the township
of
the Tata’s that houses the oldest
mother plant of Tata
Motors Limited.
Exploring the 580-odd acre plant of Tata Motors Jamshedpur plant in one-go was definitely not an easy task for
anyone. Hence, the first week was spent understanding
the whole system of the organization –
spending innumerable hours
at the especially dedicated Tata Management Centre that houses a
huge library of many a
journals, books and magazines.
After a week of careful analysis of the
work- requirement at
the
Jamshedpur plant of the Tata Motors and considering my profile, I
was drawn into the domain of Innovation Management that is handled by the HR department of the organization.
The project details were doled
out. I was pretty
excited to explore the whole scope of
my assignment and immediately put on my thinking cap on how
to
go about the whole project since
it was a whole new
field of research for me.
‘Experimenting
with new
work around’
and ‘wanting
to come out of my comfort zone’
was my mind-frame.
The assignment mainly dealt with
gauging the motivation levels of the work-force in the plant as regards to innovation, scanning
the organizational climate with the lens of various
innovation based frameworks being
adopted by the
company and hence gives suitable recommendations based on
the need-gap analysis.
Cut to a certain flash-back : Tata’s had started an annual event titled ‘Innovista’ way back in 2006 to reward and recognize the various innovative products rolled
out in the various
Tata Group of Companies with none other than
Mr.
Ratan Tata rewarding the winners himself
at a
gala function
that takes place every year in
Mumbai.
It was in
2009 that
the
innovation
drive was decided
to be adopted in the Jamshedpur plant of Tata Motors as a derivative
of the main event.
The theme being the
same: rewarding
innovation
at various levels -
be it innovations at the
preliminary stage,
promising innovations or
innovations that looked good
on paper but somehow failed while execution.
Cut to week 3: I was already travelling across the huge plant-works in the shuttles deployed to
carry people from one division to another
within the plant meeting the various divisional
innovation co-coordinators and gathering my data.
The fact that I came from an engineering background but having never worked in a typical engineering firm prior to this (due to
my sudden twist of interest
towards advertising) made the experience all
the
more intriguing for me. Regular reviews with my mentors
and faculty member made
me fine-tune my works
and helped me maintain
sustained motivation and encouragement.
My co-interns were a great source
of learning
reservoir for me,
bringing
diverse skills and interests to the fore-front and making my
internship a truly enriching
experience.
Cut to the D-Day: Reports were
submitted. Presentations were given. A warm hand-shake of appreciation and acceptance of the set of
recommendations I had
given were reasons enough for me to take back a set of experience that
was truly rewarding in every sense of the word.
The equations and camaraderie I had forged with
my
mentors and co-interns will always be remembered.
To conclude, I would
like to share these nuggets of
lessons hidden
in
these
8
weeks of
my
summer
experience with the Tata’s: one must look for quality projects
to enhance one’s profile – something that suits
and interests them. One should also try to come
out
of the comfort zones sometimes and try to
experiment
and add extra dimensions
to one’s profile in
the initial stages (and maybe later as well) of one’s career as a
means of
continuous learning
exercise.
By:
ISHAAN RATTANPAL
PGDM-II (2012-14 Batch)
IMI-Bhubaneswar
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