Ask the Right Questions

It's been a few weeks since I boarded my return flight from Delhi to Indianapolis. As I sat on the plane with colored dye on my skin and in between my fingernails from celebrating Holi a few hours earlier, I tried to make sense of the past two weeks I spent in India.

Working with CORD and speaking with a range of inspirational entrepreneurs has provided me with the motivation to further work toward constant self-improvement. Although several of the women we met dealt with numerous hardships throughout their lives, not one of them allowed their personal challenges to stand in the way of learning a new skill, earning additional income or being a role model for other women. With roughly one more year remaining at Kelley, there is still much more I hope to learn from my professors and peers. Thus I must not forget the fortitude, determination and unbridled energy that nearly every woman had when sharing their future dreams because I too hope to be as fearless when chasing my dreams.

Beyond inspiration, I learned a great deal about managing a consulting engagement. One of the most valuable lessons I experienced while in India has been the importance of asking the right questions. I understand that the right questions sounds very subjective, but what I mean is asking questions that will allow you (the consultant) to unearth the real problem at hand. Sometimes a client will say, "I would like you to address this problem..." However, after gathering some data, one may realize that the client's idea of the problem is not exactly the problem that needs to be examined. This was certainly my experience in India. For example, when first speaking with our client, my team and I were told that there is a supply problem with two of the retail shops that CORD facilitates. As our team understood, there was not enough product in the retail shops. Nonetheless we thought the problem had to do with forecasting demand. However, when visiting the Guru Dhara store in Tapovan, we discovered a well-stocked store. It was only after digging deeper and asking a range of people throughout the local community a number of questions that we began to discover that the real issue had to do with women who receive formal training in stitching or weaving who then decide not to produce any items with their newly developed skills. So only a handful of women entrepreneurs are providing the majority of product for these retail outlets.

Four days was not a sufficient amount of time to solve the above problem, but I do believe that our team was able to provide some short-term recommendations around recruiting future entrepreneurs and training these same entrepreneurs to be successful businesswomen that will make a positive impact on the communities of Himachal Pradesh.

Needless to say, there is so much I learned from my experience in India that have greatly impacted my MBA experience. Yet one doesn't need an MBA to add value to communities in the developing world. Instead all one truly needs is a plane ticket, a willingness to listen, and the desire to improve the world we live in.