When it comes to subjects like ‘Creative Thinking’ and ‘Personality Mapping’, few on the management landscape of India are as well known as Dr. Amar Nath Chatterjee. Dr. Chatterjee has conducted an unbelievable 108 MDPs on these subjects all over India ever since 2004. More than 2700 Team Leads and Managers have attended his 2-day programme on Personality Mapping alone – right up to the level of Vice Presidents of TCS.
It was in 2008 that Dr. Chatterjee began taking Guest Lectures on these two topics at top-notch management colleges like XLRI Jamshedpur, Jaipuria (Noida), IMT Ghaziabad and IIM Tiruchirapalli.
“Since July 2012, I have been regularly teaching at Jaipuria, Noida as an Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour/HR and Operations Management. My only other commitment is a 3-credit course on ‘Personality Mapping’ for the 2nd year students of IIM Trichy as Guest Faculty. Overall, Jaipuria has been a great teaching experience and an even greater learning experience! To be back with the ‘kids’ is always “youthening”. But of course, there will always be some fantastic kids in the class making my day, and there will also be some very naughty ones who have to feel challenged to be able to give their best. Jaipuria is a wonderful blend of head and heart, youth and experience, brilliance and perseverance, and awareness and aspirations.”
Dr. Amar Nath Chatterjee comes with a phenomenal 36 years of industry experience. After his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, Dr. Chatterjee started out in the Steel industry at Burnpur (WB), Bhilai (MP) and Bokaro (Bihar). But after three years in the steel industry, he shifted to the IT industry… and never looked back. His 33 years in the IT industry include organisations like IBM, CMC, IDM, ORG, HCL, ET&T/STP, Cadence and TCS. He has executed multiple functions ranging from Hardware, Software, Marketing and Delivery Management to Manpower Management. He has also covered the length and breadth of India working for the government, PSUs and MNCs.
“I usually adhere to corporate story-telling as a method of teaching in my classrooms. I gauge the level of interaction constantly by asking questions and seeking suggestions from the students, and interspersing my lectures with PPTs and video clips. I build on concepts from fundamentals with the help of inputs from the students themselves, assigning group-exercises and role-plays, or presentation of a case analysis.”
Dr. Chatterjee often brings his excellent industry network to bear when organising major events at Jaipuria. The most recent example of this was at the HR Conclave 2012, which saw a host of luminaries from both industry and academia addressing students and teachers on the challenges of HR in the emerging era. An avid researcher, Dr. Chatterjee has, in his four years as an academician, published six widely acclaimed research papers. Most notable amongst these is ‘A critical evaluation of the instruments for measurement of software development team performance’, which was presented in the Annual GDBA Conference in New Carrolton, Maryland, USA, on 17th October 2008 and published in the Global Digital Business Review. His Doctoral thesis, accepted by XLRI Jamshedpur in March 2012, was on ‘Developing a scale for measuring software development team performance (SDTP)’ and was a fine-tuned version of the paper presented in Maryland, USA. Dr. Chatterjee is currently researching the ‘Effect of team reward on team performance’.
“My personal teaching philosophy is simple. If I haven’t consumed at least half a litre of water during a session, I haven’t been energetic enough,” says Dr. Chatterjee with a smile. “If I haven’t learnt something afresh in each session, I haven’t really taught. If I am just teaching a course or a subject and not being a role-model, then it is of not much consequence.”
Dr. Amar Nath Chatterjee believes that humility is the true measure of education, and never fails to remind his students of the same.