Skip to main content

What I learnt and Failed to Learn at B-School !!!

I joined the Management Institute with a very confused mind. Confusion of the degree itself and later the confusion of specialization. But things got clear as I entered the journey of MBA.
So, what were the things I learnt during my MBA?

1. I learnt a few fundamentals (or at least the jargon) in areas such as Human Resources, Marketing, Finance, strategy etc.

2.I learnt that I was in a large crowd of huge peers. My best efforts saw me on top.

3.To my relief, I did learn that I do have a skill or two that were valuable in my world view and that I had it in fair measure...Thankfully, I believed in my own insight.

To cut the long story short my B- School experience provided me with knowledge that was relevant to appreciate management and business.

Above all, it did give me the "thappa" (stamp) of being an “MBA”.

The management knowledge and skills that a B-school provides are necessary, for sure. However, it does not meet the criteria of sufficiency. There are a million or zillion things that are required to sail happily through one's life.

A few of them that I could list here are:

1.Self-belief

Quite sadly, the education system globally is built on a rather dubious scaffolding called 'Relative Grading'. This works against adding to the self-belief. And, not many in a competitive B-school have the innate ability to work around this institutional conspiracy. I guess this is considered too difficult or unimportant by the gurus in the B-school.

2.Dreaming
It is considered an unthinkable part of the syllabus. I have not found courses that allow youngsters to dream, to build fantasies of any kind, to imagine a world that they can build by not worrying about resources or limitations. Expediency, skills, 'realistic assessments' are put on a higher pedestal than dreaming.

3.Cooperation vs. Competition
Successes in life is built around the word called ‘cooperation’. Unfortunately, this is a non-existing and much-loathed term in a B-school system that is built on competition deep inside her DNA. Beating others to a game is a much-celebrated attribute. The gifted horses get trained to do that and end up being champs in 'gaming' the whole field of performance. Looking for a win-win way of dealing with life remains mere jargon learnt at B-school, with neither imagination nor belief to practice it in real life.

4.Choosing your own path
Every happy or success story is an illustration of this truth. B-schools do not look at themselves as ones who will facilitate this inside-out journey. Their allegiance to the courses and demands of the corporate sector are far higher than towards helping a youngster move towards realizing his or her potential. In sum, each individual needs to look at his own way of discovering the million things that he or she needs beyond the courses delivered by a B-school.

"A new era of delivering education with allegiance towards the learner is waiting to happen"

Comments

  1. Thax 4 this.
    I agree on points 3 & 4 ,

    H.

    ReplyDelete
  2. very true...point is waiting is not a solution...tapping into character with immeditae actions is the approach expected....
    Tushar

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Followership

“It is often said Today’s effective followers are tomorrow’s potential leaders” There are effective followers and ineffective followers Sheep There are people who are passive and like to work from 9-6. They think they work for living and lack initiative. They expect their leader to think for them. Most probably they may say, “Sir, whatever you think good for me”. They are also “Yes Sir”, “No Sir” type. Survivors There are some people whose motto is “better to be safe than sorry”. They do not take risk, tend to be political. They do not lead change but want to survive across it all costs. They are not someone who would rock the boat. You will find plenty of such people in Govt. offices.  Followership Model Alienated Followers They are capable yet cynical people. They come across as negative people. They generate and emit lot of negative thoughts and energy. They are seen gossiping in the corridor and criticizing their organisation and management. You will hear comment su...

Fourth Industrial Revolution and Protection of Personal Information

  “We seem to increasingly trade privacy for convenience with many of the devices we routinely use” -           Michael Sandel (Harvard Professor) Have you given a thought on the information that is freely available about you without your knowledge? Have you ever experienced?   When you are searching for a holiday accommodation on any website, and you leave the booking incomplete…have you noticed the same hotel advertisement catching your eye as you browse through social sites be it Facebook, Instagram or any other online site? When you buy any specific items from any online site…have you noticed related  products being advertised to you? e.g. buying maternity clothes from website, you suddenly start noticing advertisements about other  maternity products, children clothes, toys? It all happens because of your information and preferences been tracked and monitored through a small cookie (its not the one we get in...

HR: A Strategic Asset

Strategic assets are “the set of difficult to trade and imitate, scarce, appropriable, and specialized resources and capabilities that bestow the firm’s competitive advantage”. It is easy to understand why organizations talk about people as an asset, but tend to manage them largely as a cost to be minimized. Aside from accounting principles that encourage this perspective, HR costs are easy to observe, while HR value creation is not. Largely because of the traditional perspective on HR, organizations have no way to measure HR’s strategic performance. Nevertheless, we know that intangibles in the aggregate are an increasingly important source of firm value, and that human capital ought to be a part of that asset value. HR is a strategic asset as it can play a critical role in both strategy implementation and management systems. Namely, the ability to execute strategy well is a source of competitive advantage, and “people” are the lynchpin of effective strategy execution. We think i...