'B-schools face the danger of creating irrelevant products'

It is a coincidence The Strategist asked me to write about what they don't teach you at B-school. Just the other day, I went back to my B-school (the Xavier Labour Research Institute), exactly 10 years after graduating, and spent a couple of days there.

It was such a fabulous experience going back to college, mingling with the current batch of students and spending time with the faculty.

We ended up having a panel discussion on exactly the same topic. We all seem to focus more on what we missed, rather than what we gained, don't we?

I would first like to talk about what I did learn at B-school. The course gave me tremendous value-addition in two specific areas: personality development and teamwork. These have stood me in good stead right through my corporate life.

On the personality development front, my B-school life gave me the confidence to handle tough situations, some degree of focus in life and the ability to work hard to achieve a goal.

The ability to take risks to get ahead was something I gained. I may not have dared to take up a career in media planning and buying if I hadn't gone to management school.

Working in groups made up of all kinds of people, having to lead people, and the experience of being led by others were all great lessons in teamwork.

There were other areas of learning, specifically, "the approach to problem-solving", thanks to the innumerable case-studies that are a handy tool to impart management knowledge.

Looking at the past 10 years in corporate life, there are perhaps three things I learnt more on the job. The first and most basic thing was to "keep it simple".

B-school graduates tend to complicate matters a lot, and the higher you climb the corporate ladder, the more pronounced it gets. We need to keep our lives and our goals simple. We need to take one step at a time, if we have to excel in whatever we do.

The second learning on the job was the need to understand the "application value" of a concept. B-school lessons are so many and so intense, that one ends up trying to learn more about the concept than what to do with it.

I did not seek knowledge for the sake of improving my perspective or for gaining the satisfaction of having understood something.

There was a lot of such knowledge available, through classroom sessions and even otherwise. The exam filter was something I should have learnt to remove, to have gained more from the course.

So what didn't I get to learn at B-school? I don't think it's fair to ask this question. The reasons being: the continuous learning process that all of us go through all our lives makes it difficult for us to assign responsibilities to people or institutions for something we failed to learn or they failed to teach.

Second, the rapid changes in the environment make past learnings redundant today. So, rather than look at what B-school didn't teach me, I have tried to put down what B-school should teach the current crop of students.

Regarding the present-day batches in B-schools, I have several concerns. Have management institutions kept pace with the past 10 years' rapid development? How much importance is entrepreneurship given in B-school courses? And what about issues like corporate governance and ethics? How is technology being leveraged in management education? And are people being trained to manage technology? What about brand India...how do managers leverage a shining India?

These are some of the issues that tempt one to ask "what they don't teach you" in B-schools today. A great corporate leader once said, "If the rate of change outside is greater than the rate of change inside, the end is in sight". If B-schools don't adapt to the rapid changes in the environment, they face the danger of creating irrelevant products.

And finally, do we learn to live or do we live to learn? I guess it's a bit of both, in which case, B-school or no B-school, it's really up to each one of us to shape our lives.

C.V. L. Srinivas is managing director, Maximize India.
He graduated from Xavier Labour Relations Institute in 1993