B-schools don't prepare you for the 'greys' in real life!

Why an engineer is more of an engineer after an engineering course, compared to a manager being more of a manager post-MBA?.

Is it the nature of the job after the course or the expectation that each course carries in the industry?

Graduating from B-school, are the students really well equipped and prepared for a life in the corporate world?

The stark realization is that they far from ready. Field level experiences are waiting to teach fitting lessons to our students

In the workplace you need a good balance between the technical/ functional skills and people skills. The ratio changes depending on the role.

Our B-schools equip our students with the relevant technical skills but they do little to enhance the softer skills like people management and working in open and uncertain environments.

It’s not as if this need is not understood by the B- schools, given that management graduates probably need superior softer skills than classical engineers. But the question remains, are they doing enough?

Coming to the field level, out of box thinking, possibly workable ideas are brushed aside as whimsical thoughts from a person lacking in experience. Any initiator has to convince the organisation. There will be a lot of setbacks, so it would involve a lot of motivating, convincing and pushing the people who matter to accept the ideas and implement them

Passion is an ingredient that actually helps achieve goals more than just good planning and execution skills. It may have been a good idea but if the ideas are not sold to people, it would not have been of any use. The ability to influence and take people along with must be learnt in a B-school.

At B-school, one operates in a more protected and certain environment. There are deadlines, there is pressure but somewhere, there’s an assurance of “another chance”. A management student tends to carry that belief forward while stepping into his corporate career.

In the corporate life, targets are to be achieved or surpassed from day one; anything less than that, including a 99% is never enough! But the paradigm in the B-School is something different – even a 90 per cent was excellent.

At B-school, there is a tendency to look at the skyscrapers when management and leadership is actually about being closer to the ground and getting your hands dirty. Perhaps, managing this expectation is an area where management institutions can play a larger role.

There is almost an informal caste system that exists between the thinkers and the doers. The paradigm is that thinkers are elite and doers passé. The loser is always the person who is not willing to get his hands dirty and engage in the finer details.

The method of evaluation followed by B-schools always centres on black or white. B-school education does not prepare a future manager for the “greys” in real life.

In corporate life, there are no written tests where what you write in a few hours can help you pass or fail. There are paradoxes in the consumer’s behaviour or the retailer’s approach towards your products, which one has to deal with constantly. In these cases, the management education system is too structured

The structured B-school education also limits, at times, our ability to see simpler patterns easily. The ability to innovate and think laterally will be the needs for the future, a challenge that B-schools need to take up. A case in point: some of the biggest businesses are developed by people who didn’t see the need for an MBA.

Today with the MBA degree seen as a quick passport to success, there is an additional challenge for the B- school in the form of career counselling. Proper career counselling will ensure that students have more clear choices than compromises.

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