It would have been easy to wallow in this most inauspicious of beginnings. Instead, Jain, the first Indian to head a top-flight US business school, quickly got down to writing letters to the school's alumni seeking their help in placing the graduating students.

"I could see that the global economic environment would become tough and placing the students would be equally so. So I wrote to our former students many of who were in decision-making positions at small and medium enterprises that did not recruit from the top business schools," says Jain.

He was criticised for demeaning the Dean's position by "going around with a begging bowl". However, after Kellogg reported 91 per cent placement rate, the best among all B-schools in the country, in that troubled year, this went on to be become standard practice among the top B-schools.

That's Jain for you. Born and brought up in Tezpur, Assam, he has devoutly followed the age-old Indian ethic of accepting one's fate and moving on to address the situation at hand.

"There are biases everywhere. I may have very well faced them. But even if they became obstacles for me, I did not notice them," says Jain. He says he faces more bias in India. Some time ago, in the breakfast queue at a five-star hotel in New Delhi, the man on the counter wanted to bypass Jain and serve the foreigner behind him.

A five-star hotel in Hyderabad put Jain in a dingy room while allotting spacious suites to each of his three American companions, little knowing that they wouldn't have come to India but for the lure of spending time with the Kellogg Dean.

About a month after Jain had become the Dean, Philip Kotler, the marketing guru who is a member of Kellogg's faculty, persuaded Jain to fill in for him at a seminar.

Jain resisted by saying that Kotler was being "product-centric", that he should be customer-centric and that in this case the customers were the seminar's audience. But Kotler wouldn't listen. His son-in-law was undergoing surgery that very day and Jain simply had to step in for him.

Jain does not know how to drive and Kotler often dropped him home in those days. It was difficult to refuse.

Now, Kotler is a celebrity all over the US and Jain was not exactly known to the organisers. In fact, in Jain's words, the organisers were clearly disappointed to see "this man of colour" as Kotler's replacement.

However, Jain does not harp on this colour bit. The highlight of his anecdote is how the seminar's chairman introduced Jain to the audience. "All of you know Philip Kotler," he said, "I give you Kotler's boss."

It's not surprising that Jain places attitude as the most important quality in a professional, way above talent and qualification. He defines attitude as the willingness to work.

"Beyond a point, the technical qualifications do not matter, attitude does. If you are trying to build a ship, do not tell your workers to go to the forest, chop wood, and build a ship. Instead, instill in them the desire for the sea. They will do the rest."

It may have helped that at many of the life-turning junctures Jain found someone to guide and help him. That's how he became a professor of marketing.

After finishing his masters in mathematical statistics from Guhawati University, he taught in Guhawati for five years before going to the University of Texas in 1983 to pursue PhD under Frank M Bass (his PhD was on data base marketing, which later morphed into customer relationship management, better known as CRM).

Bass told Jain to get into marketing, but the mathematics scholar was understandably reluctant. It was then that Bass convinced him that the best way to learn was to teach and sent him for an interview at Kellogg.

It's not a surprise that Jain does not mind having the middle seat in an aeroplane. "You can get to know two persons, one on either side of you," he says. "Reach out to people, make friends. It is an investment." He would often get an email from someone he exchanged cards with at a seminar.

That someone turned out to be a businessman seeking suggestions on the marketing plan for a new product. Jain would make his suggestions and forget about it.

One fine day he would see a story in Chicago Tribune with the details of how the Kellogg Dean was instrumental in the success of a new product.

However, the mathematician still lurks inside Jain and keeps popping out every now and then. "Data is accounted, opinion discounted," says Jain, and applies it to the smallest things in life. He is the Dean during the day and a marketing teacher in the evenings.

That makes him leave home at 6.45 in the morning, to get back only at 9.30 in the evening. But when his wife complains to someone that her husband comes home late, Jain is quick to correct. "Don't say late, say your husband comes home at 9.30. It may not be late for the listener."

Just like the mathematician, the Indian too is a constant presence in Jain. He appears to be in love with the US, the opportunities it offers to everyone, and its work culture, but does not hide his Indianness, and wears his arranged marriage on his sleeve.

Most of those who know him, and several seminar audiences, would know that Jain did not see his wife before he agreed to marry her. One fine day in 1989, when Jain's family thought he was getting on in years, he received a letter from his father talking about this girl he wanted Jain to consider for marriage. "I have visited her place and met her," read the last line of the letter. "I really like her."

Jain's reply was immediate and positive. "If you like her, she must be really special. I will marry her."

By that time, Jain's father had become completely blind. That's acceptance.

Text: Suveen K Sinha, Business Standard

Source: http://specials.rediff.com/money/2008/sep/02slide1.htm