Personal Values, Goals and Career Options

Name of the Faculty: Ramya Ranganathan

Designation: Adjunct Faculty

Teaching Area: Organizational Behaviour /

(such as Finance & Accounting; Entrepreneurship
Marketing; Production & Operations
Management; Strategy)

This course may be offered to: PGP, EPGP, PGPEM, PGPPM

(PG Programmes / Doctoral
Programme)
http://www.iimb.ernet.in/programmes

Credits (No. of hours): 3 Credits (qualitative grading)

(3 credits=30 classroom hours; 1.5
credits-15 classroom hours;
session=90 minutes)

Term / Quarter: Term 5

(Starting April /June
/September/December)

Course Type: Elective (Qualitative Grading).

(Core or Elective)

Offered as:
(Regular Course: staggered across
the term or
1
Workshop Course: 3-5
continuous days)
1
Workshop course: Please provide reasons as to why the course is being offered in workshop mode and why it cannot be offered
as a regular course (that is spread over 10 weeks). As an institution, IIMB prefers courses offered in the regular mode, since it
results in better learning experience for the students and avoids overlapping of courses.

Degree/Diploma Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2019_Internal Faculty
 Are there any financial implications to HBR Readings, HBP Book Chapters, and a
this course? textbook that is priced at 499 INR.
o
Additional information required

Degree/Diploma Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2019_Internal Faculty
Course Summary

Today’s executives are increasingly looking for ways in which they can be more
engaged in their work and be energized by what they do. Given that people are
spending more time at work, a feeling of disconnect with the job can easily erode one’s
overall sense of wellbeing. At the other end of the spectrum, when work becomes a
calling or like a sport, then one’s job itself can become the high point of one’s existence.
Work can be a vehicle through which one can find deep satisfaction and purpose in life.
A key challenge these days, is not merely finding a job for the sake of livelihood, but
engaging with work so it engages and energizes, thereby adding meaning to work and
life.
In this course participants will learn to design and create their careers in a way
that it works for them. They will be led to explore what holds meaning and gives unique
purpose to their own lives by exploring their personal values, authentic interests, and
stakeholder influences through activities, exercises and peer discussions. They will
learn how to negotiate and navigate the tricky and seemingly wicked problems of life,
career, happiness and meaning in a thoughtful and practical way.

This course is for students who want to engage with ideas and their classmates
in an honest and sincere way to help themselves and the others craft their work and
their lives - now and in the future. This course is aimed at encouraging students to start
looking at how they can align their ‘life’ views with their ‘work’ view – and grapple with
the tricky yet important questions of combining the need to make money with the need
to have satisfaction, meaning and joy in life. This course will challenge you to
understand and change dysfunctional attitudes and beliefs that might be blocking you or
keeping you locked within a box. This course will push you to start exploring what gives
you energy and what sucks you dry - so that you can use this understanding as a
compass while designing your life (in practical and pragmatic ways) to fill you up.

Pre-requisites, inclusion/exclusion criteria, if any: No Pre-requisites

Learning Objectives / Outcomes

The course is designed with the following specific objectives and learning outcomes:

a. Cultivate a conscious understanding of your own personal values, priorities and

authentic interests,

b. Get a better understanding of the mental models and beliefs that you have
related to the topics of work, career, success, failure and money – and change
the ones that might be blocking or limiting you.

Degree/Diploma Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2019_Internal Faculty
 c. Understand the double-edged sword of goal setting – both the pros and the cons
and learn to use it effectively in the context of setting and navigating career
visions and milestones.

d. Feel more ‘in-charge’ of your career and start relating to it as a sport or game
rather than a ‘chore’ or ‘must do’.

e. Shift your thinking so that instead of being part of the “society factory” you start
embracing life as a journey to be experienced fully, rather than viewing it as a
problem to be solved.

Pedagogy

The course will be a combination of lectures, class exercises and discussions. We will
also have intensive dialogues and peer supported reflection in small groups. We will be
using a combination of explorative techniques in this course and you will benefit most if
you come with an open mind. We will also be using some theatre, art, and meditation
exercises to help us in exploring our mental and emotional patterns.

Textbook: Designing Your Life: Build the Perfect Career Step by Step by Bill Burnett
& Dave Evans

Course Evaluation & Grading Pattern

Component Weightage

Final Assignment – Individual 50%

Personal Career Crafting Plan (based on all the class exercises
and discussions)
This assignment is due on the last day of the class.

Group Assignment 50%

(Groups will be formed by the instructor)

Overcoming Dysfunctional Beliefs and Mental Models -

Brainstorming & Reflection Report
This assignment is due around mid-term after session 11.

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Session-wise plan

Sessio Topic Readings

n

1 Introduction – Career Introduction: Life by Design

Crafting & Design (From the book “Designing Your Life”)
Mindset

2 Notions of Success Success that Lasts – HBR

Exercise - Reflection on Work Life

Balance (Nigel Marsh)

3 Taking Stock Ch 1 – Start Where You Are

Exercise – Health /Work / Play

Dashboard

4 Mental Models of Work Case – Ant and the Grasshopper

Exercise – Overcoming the three
polarities

5 Exploring Value Ch 2 – Building a Compass

Coherence Exercise – Workview and Lifeview

6 Letting go of Comparison Comparing: How to Break Your Heart

Every Time (HBR)
Exercise: Antidote to Envy

7 Flow at Work The Science behind Flow at work (HBR)

Exercise: Work & Sports

8 Engagement and Energy Ch 3 – Wayfinding

Exercise: Good Time Journal

9 Stakeholders Case – Cops in the Head

Reading Feeling Stuck and Doubting
Ourselves (HBR)
Exercise – Identifying Stakeholders

10 Ideation Ch 4 – Getting Unstuck

Exercise – Mindmapping & Napkin

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 sketchs

11 Relationship with Money Reading - Time, money, and happiness

(Current Opinion in Psychology)
Exercise – Money and You

12 Odyssey Planning Ch 5 – Design Your lives

Exercise – odyssey planning

13 Conformity How Fear Distorts Perception: And How

Iconoclasts Conquer the Fear of Social
Isolation
(HBR)
Exercise –
(Refer Asch Experiments)

14 Life Design Interviews Ch 6 – Prototyping

Exercise – Life Design Brainstorming

15 Playing to Strengths How to Play to your strengths (HBR)

Exercise – Discovering Strengths

16 Finding & Designing Jobs Ch 7 – How to not get a Job

Ch 8 – Designing your dream Job
Exercise - Networking

17 The Happiness The Science of the Smile (HBR)

Advantage Exercise – Reflecting on Positive
Psychology Talk (Shawn Achor)

18 Power of Choice Ch 9 – Choosing Happiness

Exercise – Creating your choice
manifesto

19 Accepting Failure Ch 10 – Failure Immunity

Exercise – Reframing Failure

20 Building a Team Ch 11- Building a Team

Also read the Conclusion

Degree/Diploma Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2019_Internal Faculty
Faculty Profile

Dr. Ramya Ranganathan is an Electrical, Electronics, and Communications engineer

from IIT Madras and holds a PGDM (MBA) from IIM Ahmedabad. Ramya worked in the
corporate world with blue chip companies like ICICI, Infosys and Citibank, before she
embarked on a quest to learn how she could help people (and herself) flourish better at
work. As part of understanding the person-work relationship, Ramya studied
Organizational Behaviour at London Business School and she has a Masters of
Research as well as a Doctorate in Management from London Business School.

Ramya has been teaching Post Graduate, Doctoral and Executive Courses at IIM
Bangalore since 2010 on Organizational Behaviour, Crafting Careers, Managing Inner
Worlds, Nurturing Creativity, Emotional Intelligence, and Managing Stress and Personal
Energy. She has designed and conducted several customized workshops for public
sector as well as private sector clients like NHPC, Atlas Copco, Biocon, Essilor, Swiss
Re, GAIL, HSBC, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, ISRO, Mahindra Finance, Aditya Birla etc.

Ramya’s flagship courses and workshops are ‘Personal Values, Goals and Career
Options’, ‘Positive Psychology’ ‘Leading with Joy’ and ‘Cultivating an Innovation
Mindset’. She was one among 15 faculty members who was awarded a certificate of
excellence for innovation in teaching by the Ministry of Human Resource Development,
Government of India, for the design of the course, ‘Personal Values, Goals and Career
Options’. She has an online MOOC course on edX titled ‘Crafting Realities: Work,
Happiness, and Meaning’.

Ramya has delivered two tedx talks titled ‘Attention: Our Gateway to Change’ and
‘Cultivating an Innovation Mindset’. Ramya has also authored a book of poems titled
‘I’m Choosing Life’. She is an avid writer and blogger and you can read her writings and
access her video blogs and courses on www.craftingourlives.com .

E-mail: ramya.ranganathan@gmail.com

Degree/Diploma Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2019_Internal Faculty