'You need a fervour that leaps out of textbook theory'

WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL: CHAITANYA (CHET) KAMAT

The most valuable armour provided by B-schools to their graduates as they leave the secure confines of academia is the art and science of strategy writing.

Professors armed with the power of theory dissect the mystique of strategy into its various dimensions: industry assumptions, strategic focus, customers, assets and capabilities, and products and services. Yet what they forget to tell you is that in the real world, there are no strategies carved in stone.

But as classrooms transform into conference rooms, textbooks are replaced by dynamic circumstance and pens are replaced with people, the black and white of written strategy begins to take on innumerable shades of grey.

Strategy is not static in the real world. The environment in a B-school is, by definition, academic. It does not prepare you for the complexities of the business realm within which you actually define strategy and execute it.

The key difference as soon as you step into the world of business is that the strategy needs to be recalibrated every once in a while. There is no clear direction ahead in the real world; there is no sanctity of plans.

Strategy takes on an opportunistic flavour, it becomes a nimble-footed tactic that sometimes moves forward, at times sideways and at other times a completely different direction that short-cuts the journey to your goal.

In other words, you need to have an appetite for ambiguity. Be it resources, outcome, partners or competitors, the golden rule remains that everything can and will change. It is only the degree that will differ.

There is an interesting report in the latest issue of theHarvard Business Review on research conducted to find the common thread in a group of high performance companies as against less successful ones.

Hundreds of managers, analysts and researchers were interviewed; strategic, organisational and performance profiles built; and industry and organisational patterns studied. None of these factors explained the difference.

What did explain it "" consistently "" was the manner in which managers in the two groups of companies thought about strategy. The managers of less successful companies thought along conventional strategic lines. And each of the managers of high-growth companies moved beyond textbook strategy to apply what the researchers, W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, term the logic of value innovation.

Interestingly, the two researchers are distinguished professors in management.

The recognition of this need to re-validate and adapt strategies mid-stream is gaining ground. Risk today has taken on a connotation beyond competitors and market share to include the impact of terrorist attacks and global medical threats like SARS.

I am not suggesting that B-schools do not teach us about the need for effective risk management. What I am, however, suggesting is that management gurus have taught us to view risk through grey-tinted lenses.

Risk management connotes setting up systems and processes to prepare for downside risks such as bad debts, fluctuations in interest or exchange rates, non performing assets, insufficient demand and so on.

What is not emphasised adequately is the upside risk. In boom times such as those being experienced in certain sectors of the Indian economy, corporate leadership has to turn risk management on its head.

It has to go scurrying to the drawing boards to cater to the unforeseen upswings in unexpected quarters and carve out strategies to assimilate and support this new demand.

An interesting case in point is that of a large multinational that entered India to take advantage of the burgeoning demand in this promising emerging market. Soon after setting up shop in India, it realised that the real opportunity lay in the opposite direction "" setting up centres in India to cater to its own business process outsourcing needs. A quick change of strategy resulted in the creation of a poster child of the Indian BPO success story.

This leads us to the final ingredient that seals success, yet remains unspoken in B-schools. The importance of intensity "" the x-factor that determines success beyond the confines of academia.

You need a zest for implementation, a fervour that leaps out of the covers of textbook theory. The very same situation met with a "not possible" by one graduate is embraced with "let's make a miracle" by another. It is only the passion in a leader that reveals the covert opportunity within an overt obstacle.

Consider the example of Dhirubhai Ambani, an oft-quoted instance but a powerful one. The sheer energy and tenacity of the man drove him to create India's largest private sector company "" that, too, within a single generation!

The other, lesser-quoted example is that of Verghese Kurien who has driven with a single-minded focus (to serve the rural dairy farmer), the most impressive expansion and growth in an industry as unorganised as dairy farming.

Kurien and Ambani stand out as beacons of nose-to-the-ground leadership, breaking away from textbook theories, spotting opportunities and meeting challenges with out-of-the-box solutions discovered through their sheer zest for success. B-schools should hold up examples of such leaders to their students.

"Reinventing leadership" is a popular subject being offered as executive development courses these days. This itself is a sign that there is need for mid-course correction as we struggle to apply theory to practice. For, if theories were consistently applicable as it was taught when leaders were being groomed in B-schools, then why the need to "reinvent" the leader?

B-schools teach you the rules of the game, but what they do not tell you is that you can and should bend the rules as you go along. As they build the capability to play the game, they forget to mention that unrelenting drive is a necessity to win.

Yet the truth is that your strategy could get left behind in your files unless you can keep the fire blazing inside you and also instill passion in your people to drive them to achieve it.

(Chaitanya (Chet) Kamat is head, India Delivery Centre Network, Accenture. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in 1986)