Vineet Nayar, President of HCL Technologies has remarked in his guest column in Business Standard, "What No B-school can teach you". It has been a growing trend for business managers (who themselves are what they are partly due to their b-school name tag) to lambast b-school education weaknesses. A trend which started off after the book 'What they dont teach you at Harvard business school". I agree with the quotes borrowed by Mr. Nayar from Vernon Sanders Law about experience being the best teacher. I agree with the premise that the classroom is the most dangerous place from which to view the outside world. What I certainly donot agree is generalising a statement that No b-school can teach anything worth a managers salt. A few questions;
1. Mr. Nayar says 'Pride' is not taught in b-schools. I agree, Pride is a virtue and not a skill. This column on rediff ends thus "Vineet Nayar is president, HCL Technologies. He graduated from XLRI in 1985." I am sure Mr. Nayar wears his XLRI alumnus tag and takes 'pride' in displaying it. Forget, teaching 'Pride', an MBA aspirant takes great 'pride' when he gets admission into an IIM and passes out with flying colors. He wears his tag proudly to state that he is 'the cream of intellectualism'. Pride is relative Mr. Nayar, it all depends on how you handle it. Life at b-school is tough, and what a student imbibes is his relative ability to excel, take pride with humility, and healthy spirit of teamwork. No organisation or institution can teach these virtues, that are part of a person's upbringing. Remember, these virtues take some time to influence a person's character. A person's experience over a career spanning 10-15 years cannot be compared to his experiences in a 2 year stint at a b-school. But the two years does make a big difference.
2. What are the 'take-aways' from just 2 years of b-school life? The answer is a confident personality. A spring board to ones career that enables a student to dream and push his limits to achieve excellence. I challenge any organisation worth its salt to take up the task of making a manager out of its employee in two years. I bet they will fail. Experience is a teacher, alright, but not always the only perfect teacher. Experience require proper thought, application, and approach. I agree, this theoretical approach is least successful, but I advocate a blend of both. If Mr. Nayar were to say that only experience can teach these virtues, why have graduate education at all? Let us send our sons and daughter's to run businesses right after primary school.
3. Results, b-school students are made to push limits and produce results. Some b-schools require students to show profits on their projects, do shadow consulting, and their performance is graded.
My argument is no institution can teach virtues like values, pride, passion, and result oriented approach. So it is immaterial to pass the buck to b-schools. Show me any organisation that can teach ethics, values, and self-righteousness. Give a student b-school education through out his career, he will make a better manager than one without.
5 comments:
Interesting thoughts there. Its kind of a strange situation - as in both versions are right.
It is true that organisations cannot claim to offer the kind of training that a B-School offers in 2 years, but lets not also forget that a 2 year stint at a B-School also does not make a Manager!
The main issue with B-Schools today is the over-academisation of whats being taught. Its become so much acaemised that even the current case studies from HBS looks like clinical research material. This leads to situation where there is a mutual mistrust in organisations between B-School products and those who are not B-School products. Just based on how you see things.
Another issue, you mention B-School produces confident personality. In fact I were to generalise on the majority - I might use the term over-confident personality. Especially those who come out of MBAs without having work experience in their prior lives.
What happens I guess is that you get trained to think and act like a CEO and think that its all about strategy and stuff! And when one enters the industry, their co-workers doesn't seem to be talking any strategy, they are just into transactions and more transactions! Very operational stuff. And they think - hey thats because these guys may not know that there exists a higher level thing called strategy! Very often this could be true - but very often it isn't.
So at the end of the day, if you ask me is a b-school stint necessary and sufficient condition for a successful mgmt. career - the answer to both will be no. But having had a b-school stint - and if you use it appropriately - one certainly has a much broader awareness of what happens in a company than others. Now it depends on the individual on how he or she uses that awareness (I use the term awareness instead of knowledge, as I think you dont really get knowledge during the 2 years as much as awareness!)
I agree with your point on awareness being the key. Call it the over-commoditisaton of b-school education. I agree that the way b-schools are progressing is in the wrong direction. I also feel an MBA education as of the present day stands for executive education. Sometimes, I feel why do corporates clamour for 'over-confident' no-work experience MBA's and provide fat pay packages. Corporates say, they need fresh blood and talent. One of the leading corporate houses said, they go to b-schools because they get people who are competitive, and are the best depending upon the MBA selection process. My argument to them was, why dont you give placements with CAT scores as the basis. It makes the task more easier, as one doesnot get corrupted by the b-school system, and doesnot waste two years. I got a smile in reply to that statement. The day corporates change placement standards, b-school education in India has a ray of hope. Otherwise, I fear b-schools are becoming 'placement-shops'. Your fears are mine too, Pramod.
I think perhaps its necessary to differentiate India and ROW in this particular case. And I have to say this - I don't meet too many Indian MBAs outside of India - the brand equitiy of even places like IIM is not very high - even though if you read Indian media one thinks otherwise. And those whom I do meet - leaves me with a very bad taste unfortunately. Here's a standard introduction - "Hi, I am from IIMA, my name is XYZ!" - you get waht I mean!
I am differentiating because a huge majority of Indian MBAs (me included for that matter) do MBA right after their graduation. Where as that is not generally the case elsewhere. This makes for a big difference in attitude. And also when you look at statistics showing successes of MBAs.
An off-beat thing. I was recently talking to head of marketing at Insead. He was telling me that Indian students are indeed some of his best students - and some of his worst. But what he said is remarkable of late is the number of female Indian students coming to Insead and other top management schools, of very high calibre. He thinks that there will be huge change in the Indian management scene by around 2008 - 2012 when a large proportion of senior leadership positions may be filled by females. Interesting isn't it!?
Yes, general management is out, and niche, specialised management domains will be the future MBA requirement. I think it is high time corporates demand atleast 5 years of experience for a managerial placement. Some like Infosys do that, by offering placements based on candidate profiles. Majority of Indian b-schools operate on an assumption that every MBA is better than any other degree (very untrue).
There seems to be someone thinking on my line..
http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2005/jun/29guest.htm
Post a Comment