'B-schools tend to foster conventional thinking'

WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL

Instead, they need to emphasise lateral thought

The MBA degree is universally acknowledged as a stepping stone for the development of managerial abilities.

And though there are a host of B-school graduates who are business leaders, they agree that success has come from skills acquired and honed at the workplace.

The knowledge-base imbibed in a business school is integral for an outstanding manager, but there are other competencies required to succeed in today's increasingly complex business environment.

People management

B-schools help students develop into team players through group projects. But students are often unable to get an adequate perspective on people management and leadership.

As a consultant, I had the opportunity to interact with clients from a spectrum of industries, and at multiple levels in the organisation hierarchy.

I have also worked under a diverse set of managers and supervised people during project execution. And I feel that there is a need to effectively assess and understand personal mindsets to determine the optimal mode of interaction to achieve the desired results.

Consultants often carry out assessments and make recommendations that have significant impact on the client.

However, determining the "cure" is usually only a small part. There is a need to obtain a client's buy-in so that the recommendations are implemented.

Achieving this calls for determining what drives the other person's individual goals and aspirations from the specific engagement.

Though human resource management is essential, it is often treated lightly by B-school students.

Moreover, as a fresh management graduate, one wants to promptly fit in so as to "hit the ground running". But after two years in a highly competitive environment, virtues like patience, perseverance and an appreciation for other workers tend to fade away.

There is also a need to effectively manage people working below you and getting them to deliver. One has to be responsive to individual needs and working styles to achieve consistent performance.

Lateral thinking

The standard case-study methodology brings only past business realities into the classroom. Most case studies are based on situations in which the environment behaves in an orderly manner.

In contrast, real life situations are chaotic and involve complex co-relations between decision variables. But B-schools, on account of their focus on past events, tend to foster the development of conventional thinking.

As consultants, we often face situations when we carry out a market assessment and devise an entry strategy for a completely new product in India. Arriving at solutions to such problems needs lateral thinking.

Decision-making

You also need to look beyond the obvious "safe" solution and propose the correct, more "radical" solution.

You need a lot of courage in decision-making as it involves taking hard decisions on an established organisation structure, the people and the business.

Strategic change of a large magnitude calls for inductive thinking as opposed to reasoning and logical analysis as advocated in B- schools.

Also, while logical analysis is a key ingredient in decision making, it should be complemented by judgement and instinct.

B-school education builds significant functional and analytical skills and provides an individual with a strong network that can be leveraged in the future.

And though the MBA degree helps one to gain a foothold into the business world, there is a need to supplement this conceptual knowledge with skills like lateral thinking, people management and innate intuition.

The writer belongs to the 1998 batch of IIM, Kolkata, and is senior consultant, KPMG Consulting Private Ltd. The views are personal and do not represent theopinions of the organisation he represents