CORPORATE INDIA GOES TO SCHOOL – NIA SEE

(National Insurance Academy School for Executive education)

(NIA SEE is Afro-Asian Revolution in the making – an idea whose time has come.)

While not every executive wants to row his way to success, more and more agree that executive education can help foster smart, flexible managers. The surge in executive education isn't only about gaining an edge in the market. Companies are using it as a tool to win back the loyalty of the troops after years of downsizing. In a market short on top talent, many also are offering access to education as a lure for new hires. ''Companies are substituting education for security.''

Along with rising demand, however, have come rising standards. Companies are no longer passively accepting what universities and others spoon-feed them. CEOs and other board-level executives have become far more involved in program planning. Beyond standard general management courses, they're demanding real-time, ''customized'' programs tied to issues such as entering a new market or developing an Internet strategy. Some have even more ambitious goals, such as changing executives' notions of competition.

In this crowded arena, which schools best meet the needs of Corporate India? Focusing exclusively on the end user- we asked heads of human resources and management development at 394 companies to rank their top choices in executive education. We received 120 responses, a rate of 30%. To round out the survey, we also asked the heads of 35 leading executive education and 61 executive MBA programs to assess themselves and their rivals. The results of the survey gave National Insurance Academy School for Executive Education (NIA SEE) the top slot. You think, you have discovered yet another hype, yet another lie. No, this survey is for 2007 and the best way to predict the future is to plan and make it. That is insurance and risk management all about. NIA has done this for last 25 years.

Now, NIA offers more open enrollment programs targeted at people with similar needs, for new general managers with risk management responsibilities. The specialization trend is evident in other ways. Case studies are losing ground to real problems that bedevil students back in the office.

Come a downturn, the trend may well accelerate. ''The strong will thrive.'' ''The weak will die.'' The pressure has forced schools to do what they've preached, but seldom practiced: listen to the customer. It's a lesson they might have learned in B-school.

Although B-schools still control a large chunk of the executive education market, they don't have a monopoly on good ideas. Some of the newest approaches to executive education are coming from companies' in-house programs, which are on the rise. A case in point is Citibank's Team Challenge program, created in 1996 by CFO Victor J. Menezes as a way to develop promising leaders while solving some thorny internal issues. The program invites several of Citi's best young managers to spend a month working in teams on real problems facing the bank.

In 2004, we challenge the educational establishment by creating totally flexible, no-nonsense, real-world, MBA program that offer you academic freedom: the power to totally control how, where, when and what you will learn.

Have you heard Stanford Business School Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer's widely publicized 2002 article, The End of Business Schools? His article, based on 40 years of research, was highly critical of how traditional business schools force students to study obsolete curriculums that waste thousands of hours of their students' time on irrelevant courses. In his own words:

"Little of what is taught to students in business school prepares them for the corporate workplace. You have to question what goes on in the two years it takes to get an MBA, if someone can virtually be equivalent in two or three weeks. What that suggests to me is that if you take a smart person, and give them a relatively short course, a mini-MBA, if you will, they basically do as well as the MBAs."

"One of the problems is that much of the business school curriculum has remained unchanged since the 1960s. Business schools rely on outmoded teaching methods and do not afford students an opportunity for practical experience."

Our mission is simple. We want to maximize your success in your business and personal life. From the very beginning, we designed every element of our programs around these goals.

Our faculty of CEOs, consultants, executives, best-selling authors, and entrepreneurs have helped our students receive promotions, earn raises, find new jobs, become CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs who started new businesses, consultants, or become the authors of books or other publications.

If you want extraordinary results from your efforts, our programs are what you are looking for.

If you do not set big enough goals, we will tell you so. We will then ask you to think big, to think outside the box. We believe your dreams have a better chance of coming true with a creative strategy and intelligent work.

Our professors will provide you with a good role model for business and personal success. They are extraordinarily accomplished individuals. Many of them are published authors. Others are (or have been) consultants, entrepreneurs, or corporate executives.

Our faculty will coach, mentor, tutor, advise and inspire you. They have been chosen for their real-world business experience and their high level of successful intelligence, not just their academic degrees. Their experience as corporate executives, consultants, entrepreneurs and authors will help them, help you, achieve business and personal success, as they work with you.

At NIA you can study accounting and finance with the author/editor of a best selling book. If Strategic Planning is what you want to learn, then you can do no better than taking Professor, who has executed such planning in a few dozen global corporates. To learn about consulting is to walk in the cabin of one of our successful consultant professors. Who would you rather study Time Management with than Professor, who takes his daily exercises despite giving 24 hours executive time equivalent in 8 hours?

You can also study with these other NIA professors using the books they have written or work with any of our faculty by doing any of the hundreds of other courses we offer.

Your writing and other related communication skills, not your test-taking ability, determine your success in business. Because you will choose topics that are relevant to your career and personal goals, your writing will have also have a practical application. Unlike examination-based courses that result mostly in short-term learning, our program offers a more efficient and interesting method of learning. Studying and writing on topics related to your goals will increase your creativity, problem solving ability and practical skills.

If we believe you have the potential to pursue an MBA or Master's program because of your previous formal educational studies, or your work experience, you may enroll in our MBA program.

Your writing, more than anything else, will show employers or customers that you are a serious thinker. Your program will set you apart from your competitors.

As you go through the process of writing your papers you will become aware that you are gaining new attitudes or mindsets. You will become more confident of your skills, your experience and your ability to market and promote yourself.

Learn at your own pace, on mostly your own schedule, not at someone else's speed. You may learn from anywhere in the world as you use our version of the proven and internationally renowned method.

You will spend about 400 hours on NIA Campus and about 1200 hours for self-audit skilling and Capstone. We have adopted many of the classical methods and combined them with modern tools such as email and the Internet. Our system allows you complete freedom to learn from anywhere on the globe.

If you need to take a break from your studies at any time, there is no problem, as the credits you earn never expire upto a period of five years.

We believe that you should never stop learning. In other words you should continue to learn throughout your life, not just when you are seeking a degree. We also believe that you need to be responsible for your own learning. You do this by deciding for yourself what you should learn and when you should learn it.

The requirements to earn each of our certificates provide you with the flexibility to design a totally custom program.

Programs at business schools concentrate on the development and evaluation of analytical/memory intelligence and use examinations to determine grades. To succeed, you need more than analytical skills. You need to increase your creativity and communication skills. Our emphasis on writing on meaningful topics will help you do just that.

"All creativity begins with the breaking of an assumption that you normally make and exploring the consequences of doing so. That's all it is. The creative act is always an act in which you identify an assumption that you have made which prevents you from seeing alternatives, removing that assumption, and exploring the consequences. Is this an important concept in the education of a management student? That's a problem with most business curricula. The curricula are designed to tell people what the faculty knows, rather than putting together a design that helps people understand how to be effective in a managerial position. That's another part of the problem with the educational process. Schools kill creativity because they teach students to give answers that are expected, and an answer that is expected can't be creative."

At NIA SEE, you will not have to study material that you already know or do not need. You will spend your time on subjects that will help you reach short-term and long-term goals.

If you miss NIA SEE then we recommend you as follows only for next five to ten years:

GENERAL MANAGEMENT

1. Harvard

2. Stanford

3. Michigan

4. Northwestern (Kellogg)

5. Pennsylvania (Wharton)

CUSTOMIZED PROGRAMS

1. North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)

2. Virginia (Darden)

3. Duke (Fuqua)

4. Pennsylvania (Wharton)

5. Northwestern (Kellogg)

FINANCE

1. Pennsylvania (Wharton)

2. Chicago

3. Columbia

4. Harvard

5. Northwestern (Kellogg)

GLOBAL BUSINESS

1. Thunderbird

2. INSEAD

3. IMD

4. London Business School

5. Harvard

MARKETING

1. Northwestern (Kellogg)

2. Columbia

3. Pennsylvania (Wharton)

4. Virginia (Darden)

5. Indiana

HUMAN RESOURCES

1. Michigan

2. Cornell (Johnson)

3. USC (Marshall)

4. Columbia

5. Penn State (Smeal)

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

1. MIT (Sloan)

2. Carnegie Mellon

3. UCLA (Marshall)

4. Harvard

5. Stanford

MANUFACTURING

1. MIT (Sloan)

2. Carnegie Mellon

3. Virginia (Darden)

4. Penn State (Smeal)

5. Northwestern (Kellogg)

R&D/TECHNOLOGY

1. MIT (Sloan)

2. Carnegie Mellon

3. Stanford

4. Penn State (Smeal)

5. Northwestern (Kellogg)

QUALITY

1. MIT (Sloan)

2. Northwestern (Kellogg)

3. Stanford

4. Harvard

5. Penn State (Smeal)

Five to ten years down the line one will prefer to miss a year than to miss NIA SEE for any one of the Ivy leagues stated above in any of the areas. The participant who said this also said, “My grand father never believed – man can land in the moon but my daughter thinks it trivial for man to land in Mars.” Let us live the life of our contemporary and carry the pride of NIA SEE with us to that glorious day of reverse carry over as they say in marketing. Great John Mathai was more known as Pandit Nehru’s Steno but directed the destiny of India’s best-known global business school. All those who studied improvised management enjoyed the reverse carry over of the school as it emerged in the world. This is to bring home the concept of reverse carry over to aspiring participants than to make necessity a virtue. NIA SEE is only a secure branch of the great NIA TREE.

NIA

National Insurance Academy

NIA SOM

School of Management

NIA SEE

School of Executive Education

NIA SPD

School of Producer Development

NIA PRI

Pension Research Institute