'Constant interaction with industry is essential'

WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL/ Vikram Achanta

Vikram Achanta

When I joined work as a management consultant at Tata Consultancy Services, what troubled me the most was the inability to get my afternoon nap.

Idyllic afternoons at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C), were spent snoozing, ideally fuelled by cold beer. So, my first recommendation to the deans reading this article is to abolish the siesta to better prepare students for the world outside.

On a more serious note, though, I would like to qualify the title's "teach" (as in "What they don't teach you at B-school") by including the faculty, the subjects taught, their content and the teaching methodologies used. I'm not sure about other institutes, but at IIM-C, the admission interview panel generally includes an alumnus of the institute.

I've played such a role for a couple of years and I understand that the reason behind this practice is for the alumni to assess whether the prospect is "people like us" or "people like them": would the candidate be better off swotting at rival institutes since he/ she may bring in an unwelcome air of academia to a chilled-out campus?

The other more important reason is that the alumnus is supposed to bring in the "voice of industry" to the management institution's admission and selection process. This "voice" was the most important aspect lacking in my B-school education.

Two of the greatest benefits that my B-school gave me were: one, it put me in the midst of a tremendously talented and fun bunch of people and, two, I now carry the IIM stamp forever.

It also inculcated in me the habit of working in teams "" often with people whom I did not like "" forced me to think differently and also compelled me to spend many hours mugging facts that I now know have little or no practical application in my current job.

At IIM, the basic curriculum model comprised learning the basics of everything in the first year; the following year, students could select the bulk of what they studied. However, learning by rote the Indian social structure and complex models of statistical analysis doesn't seem to me the best way of getting ahead in the corporate world.

I'm told that when IIM-A and IIM-C were set up, the former was modelled on the Harvard Business School and its case study-driven methodology, while the latter was modelled on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, with its focus on quantitative methods.

I suspect that the case-driven method has, methodology-wise, a closer link to giving students a more practical orientation of industry, providing, of course, that the courses are kept up-to-date across subjects.

I believe that it's not enough to criticise; you must offer solutions as well. In this case, I'm not sure of the solution, but I do know what the end objective is: try and ensure that students don't get bogged down by rote-work. Instead, they should be taught subjects that are of relevance in the "real" world, by faculty who understand how businesses actually work.

One of the most interesting pieces of work (and learning) we did on campus was a project-based market research assignment for Child in Need Institute (Cini), an NGO. Cini ran a chicken farm on the outskirts of Kolkata and it was our project team's job to assess the potential for them to retail their farm-fresh chicken in downtown Kolkata.

Would the people of Kolkata pay a little more to benefit an NGO (surprise, they wouldn't) and other such questions were answered by our survey. Working as we were with a flesh-and-blood organisation helped us gain a unique perspective on businesses.

So here's a suggestion. All students in their second year of B-school should find a small entrepreneur, running any business, from a chowmein stall to auto ancillary manufacturing "" someone who would truly value getting

advice from a bright student. Let the area in which this person works be linked as closely as possible to the specialisation chosen by the student.

This could work across the second year or for a select term. Ideally, this should not be a large, team-based assignment; restrict each team to two members. That's because teams tend to provide camouflage cover.

If management institutes are serious about diversifying their revenue model and doing more consultancy and research work, then they need to figure out a model wherein the faculty is plugged into industry and how it works.

The only substitute for actual work experience is constant interaction with industry and observing the practical application of the management science the faculty teaches.

But why is industry orientation required or, alternatively, why is change required? Simple, some of the brightest students in the country are spending two years of their time and a great deal of money in getting an MBA degree.

A significant amount of government money has been expended in setting up top Indian institutes. And leading Indian and multinational companies are trusting that the student they hire (at a salary that could probably feed an entire village in Orissa for a month) will neither act the prima donna nor require spoon-feeding.

Of course, I have no doubt that the main reason why recruiters flock to the IIMs today is because the common admission test (CAT) does a good job of screening.

The other important reason for change is to help avoid the sense of frustration that a large number of students get when they actually go out and start working.

Working as a glorified courier as an account executive in an ad agency or learning how to bribe purchase officials in MIS departments is not the best way to blood the best and the brightest in the land.

As you learn fast in the corporate world, it's all about expectation management.

One important learning I realised once I got into business on my own is that running a business is different from working for someone. I don't believe that entrepreneurship can be taught as a formal course in B-school. What a management institution can do is to provide an environment wherein students can be enthused about starting and running their own business.

The heydays of the dotcom era witnessed a number of business plan competitions and increased interest in entrepreneurship "" I hope that those initiatives continue and do not become passing fads. Risk-taking tends to be limited at the start of one's career and so it should be. A few years' experience in the corporate world cushions you better for taking the entrepreneurial plunge. Besides, if you have an entrepreneurial bent of mind from an early age, then I doubt you would spend two years at B-school "" you would go ahead and try your hand at running a business.

I think management students would stand to gain a lot if their educational institutions would include in the curriculum an adapted version of the American TV show The Apprentice.

On the show, the anchor (Donald Trump) assigns similar tasks "" and fixed budgets "" to two teams. The tasks range from setting up and running a lemonade stand to auctioning celebrity souvenirs. This is capitalism in its purest form "" the team that makes the most money each week progresses.

The concept could be adapted as an elective course in the second year curriculum: it will provide students with first-hand experience of what it takes to run something on your own. It will also work as an eye-opener to how difficult entrepreneurship is.

(Vikram Achanta is co-founder and CEO of Tulleeho, a marketing services firm for the alcoholic beverages industry. He graduated from IIM-C in 1992.)