'Success should not be measured with designations'

WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL/ PRAMOD KHERA

Pramod Khera

A lot has been written about how B-schools do not prepare you for the realities of the workplace. Every organisation has its own set of anecdotes about how the management trainee fresh out of B-school was brought down to earth and taught practical lessons in management.

But isn't that true for freshers from all disciplines who take up their first job after graduation? No school "" and I don't mean just the management institutions "" can perfectly simulate work environments on campus.

Besides, the idealism that abounds in young minds is bound to get shattered when the harsh realities of the world hit them. Hence, I will not dwell too much on this aspect of my experience.

However, a B-school is expected to teach its students the theories of management, so you would assume that a graduate from a premier management school would have firm grounding in them.

In reality, though, while the existing theories of management do get taught, there are vital aspects of management that are either entirely overlooked or covered only fleetingly. But I would ascribe this more to the lacunae existing in the available knowledge in these areas, rather than a failing of the B-schools.

I have described here the few aspects of management that I believe are crucial and are not generally taught in B-schools. These are based entirely on my experience of two decades as a manager. I believe that had I been made aware of these issues during my management education, perhaps I would have been better able to contribute at my workplace.

First, I believe that the best lessons in management can be learnt from an entrepreneur who has successfully built and managed a good business. A successful entrepreneur always has an eye on the bottomline and makes it a point to control costs. The success of any enterprise is measured by the profit it makes.

Unfortunately, B-schools do not emphasise this aspect of management. In fact, when you are fresh from a management school, you want to apply all the practices of marketing, advertising, research and computerisation that you have learnt "" without assessing their impact on costs and, hence, the bottomline. I strongly feel that B-schools should introduce a course on profitability and how to achieve it.

The second vital learning for me has been that you cannot build a successful enterprise without the right people. While all management institutions teach you the theories and practices of human resources and organisational behaviour, the essence of attracting and retaining talent is missed out.

Today, a large part of my managerial energies are devoted to identifying and convincing the right talent to join my team. Having achieved that, keeping them motivated and challenged is an on-going exercise, which calls for skills in understanding their aspirations and career goals.

In my B-school studies I was not taught how to develop qualities of humaneness, caring and personal concern for my team members, which would have helped me become their mentor and build the best-possible team.

All B-schools teach you about leadership qualities and how great leaders are made. Every management graduate dreams of becoming a legendary leader. Stories of great management leaders are devoured, analysed and critiqued. However, a key quality of good leaders is conspicuous by its absence in all literature pertaining to leadership: humility.

In fact, graduates from prestigious B-schools are conditioned to think about themselves as the greatest, which breeds an arrogance that can be their biggest failing. The more you achieve, the more humble should you become. All great leaders in history have been epitomes of humility and this is one lesson that all B-schools have to teach to their students.

In the highly regimented atmosphere of a B-school, what is often ignored is "self-awareness". Properly developed, this tool can become a vital part of your armoury in the "war-zones" of business life. The Socratic "know thyself" calls for a dispassionate assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, often bordering on the instinctive rather than the rational.

In fact, in all walks of life, knowledge of what you can accomplish and what you cannot is imperative. This is a quality that is acquired over a considerable period of time, rather than "taught" in a B-school.

Another area that where B-schools lag is practical implementation. In real life, all projects are 10 per cent inspiration, conceptualisation and strategising, but implementation makes up the remaining 90 per cent. While conceptualisation and strategising is emphasised at the B-school level, students tend to learn about implementation part in the actual work environment "" hands on.

To lead as a good manager, it is essential "" as the cliche goes "" to consider success and failure as two sides of the same coin. B-schools attach a premium on success, as do all schools and institutions, but it is important to realise that success should not be measured with designations but with how much you have moved forward in life. And failure, as they say, is not the end of the world. At most, it is a passing phase in life. Get up and get going, until you taste success.

Lastly, management is all about common sense. You can graduate from the best B-school, but without an abundance of common sense you won't get very far. Sadly, this is one truth that cannot be taught. Hence, I will not blame management institutions for not teaching this.

But my advice to all B-school students and graduates is to first look at all management situations with common sense, and then through the lens of what they have been taught. That way, they will never go wrong. This is one learning that has stood me in good stead and shown me the right path to becoming an effective manager.

(Pramod Khera is the CEO and managing director of Aptech Ltd. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, in 1986.)