'You need to learn to be a global manager'

What they don't teach you at B- school

B-schools should teach their students that there's more to it than what they learn in their two years at campus, which may be equally important for their career. We usually see management students pass out of B-schools wearing a chip on their shoulders, assuming they have learnt everything there is to know in the corporate world. They cannot be more wrong.

But then you can't blame them. After having spent almost 20 years in industry, I have realised that the education that is given in management schools is more about strategy, numbers, planning and so on and very little about the human side of the problem.

My 10-year experience in the IT industry has shown that the amount of time you spend with people is 60 to 70 per cent of your work hours. And thus, it is a great disadvantage if you don't know how to deal with people at all levels "" juniors, colleagues, bosses, clients, vendors and so on. In fact, the very point that people management is vital in the corporate world, is found lacking.

The other thing I find wanting in management education is learning how to recruit the best talent and how to manage talent within the organisation. After all, if people love what they do, they will do it well. And that will show in the company's balancesheets.

B-schools teach you about new service offerings to the client and a better positioning of the company within the industry. Consequently, you learn to look at everything from the organisation's perspective and, to an extent, from the competitor's perspective.

What I didn't learn at B-school was to look at my service or product offering from the customer's point of view. We all recall the mantra that the customer is king, but we are seldom taught to put ourselves in his shoes. And even if we do, it is not in the earnest. When I joined the corporate world, I found the inverse to be true "" if the customer doesn't comes first, you will not be in the fray at all.

Another important teaching that management schools overlook is to train their students to be global managers and manage global talent. At the same time, changes need to be made to the curricula so that management students learn how to structure their businesses when they operate on a global level.

The writer is is Managing Director and Executive Vice President, Cognizant Technology Solutions. He passed out of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, in 1985