The sons of SOIL

The sons of SOIL

August 2015

By Life Positive

When a top B-school talks about a holistic way of management, not just of companies but of the planet too, then one knows that the New Age has started sprouting shoots. SOIL or School of Inspired Leadership is one such endeavour.

Founded by HR magnate Anil Sachdev in 2008 in Gurgaon, SOIL is a business school with an edge, which offers postgraduate courses in Management and Executive Education leading to an MBA. The core philosophy of the institute is to nurture characters instead of merely churning out business managers. With five pillars of Inspired Leadership – ethics, mindfulness, compassion, sustainability and diversity – forming its core values, SOIL seeks to empower professionals with creative, emotional, social and spiritual intelligence.

Morning circle (multi-faith prayers), Himalayan retreats, appreciative inquiry, working on social innovation, and simulation through theatre and yoga are some of the practices followed in the institute. The curriculum enables the students to look within and evolve to their higher consciousness while contemplating on ways to heal the planet through sustainable approaches. According to Sachdeva, an ideal SOIL student needs to be a young undergraduate with at least one to three years of experience in the industry with the desire to make a difference in the way things run, and has the basic values of ethics and compassion.

A consortium of industry giants like Tata Steel, Johnson & Johnson, SAS Institute, ICICI Bank have come together to develop curriculum for various programmes run by SOIL. As a part of its Social Innovation Programme, the institute deploys its students one day per week to work with 29 NCR-based NGOs to create a spirit of ethics and compassion in them.

On being asked about the success rate of SOIL, Sachdev mentions how companies like HCL Technology, Anand group, Maveric and many others single out SOIL Alumni for their perspective and character. “This confirms that my experiment is working,” he says.