Business Line dated April 5,2010 carried an article “Management without an MBA” by A.V.Ram Mohan. The author’s intention is to advise industry to carry on without depending on MBAs for the conduct of business, which he has been successful to put firmly, nothing emerges from the article regarding how to improve the MBA education and making them more useful to the industry.
To me there are a few basic flaws that affect the way the MBA education is currently imparted.
One is that business schools teach only management; no business is taught at or learnt from an MBA institution. Unfortunately lot of people(including the recruiters) wrongly assume that the so-called MBAs, after their two-year course, is well versed in business. They are only taught about how to manage the organization that does business rather than manage the business itself. A number of MBAs from some of the best institutes will be talking at length about what strategic tool they use for success or what type of leadership model they follow etc but will not be able to say what brings money for the company. They don’t know who their customers are; have never dug to find out what needs of the users they satisfy. They might use all kinds of jargons like B2B or B2C etc but really don’t know where their products are finding their use. For example, a solvent extraction company says that its customers are bakeries whereas their real customers are the end users who buy bakery products and consume. Most of the MBAs in marketing don’t try to find out what the customers need; they try push the company’s products down the throat of the customer even if his needs are different.
Two, the MBAs usually don’t want to dirty their hands; they want only armchair jobs. Industry also(unfortunately) give them such considerations. This puts a severe limitation on the learning of the MBAs. People just forget that MBA is just another educational qualification and simply by having it, no one can claim to be a business man. I remember my first job as a management trainee in a heavy construction firm. After about 6 months of familiarizing the various departments and functions at the head office, the MD made it very clear to us that we will have to work at the construction sites of the company to get the real feeling of the business. Out of about 6/7 management trainees who were recruited, only two of us remained after this .I was one of those fortunate who took the plunge and worked at the construction site, which I would remember as the best part of my working life. Tight completion schedules, inclement weather conditions, very risky working conditions, accidents and deaths of even close friends , almost no opportunities for entertainment(especially for a teetotaler like me!) , job was difficult ,but I enjoyed. I enjoyed because most of these were opportunities to learn about life’s lessons.
And three, the unfortunate hype created around the three letter degree, MBA. There have been lots of brighter students in Economics, Science, and many other streams of learning. But nobody talks about them or their achievements and rewards. Nobody recruits them as a practice from the campuses. Nobody writes about the salaries they get after their graduation. It is not clear how a company benefits from an employee if the company offers him a package of Rs.10 million in the first year. The hype has actually been created by the industry who recruits such MBA from high-profile schools. Many recruiters have been complaining about the star-status these graduates aspire but how many have courage to stop recruiting from ivy league business schools?
The industry has to take serious steps to improve the utility of MBAs in industry.They have to interact closely with the institutions in order to enable the institutions bring out MBAs who will be more useful to the industry.The present practices don't help them achieve this. I have been doing some research on this and will post the findings once the research gets completed.
P.S. I also happen to be an MBA.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
How India’s Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management
The Harvard Business Review(South Asia ) issue for March 2010 contains an article titled Leadership Lessons From India :How the best Indian companies drive performance by investing in people by Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra V.Singh and Michael Useem, all professors at Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania.
India has been commanding attention among management and business researchers from major universities especially those from the US and Europe. Being one of the fastest growing economies, it is quite natural that this is happening. The article has been developed from the book the authors have written: The India Way: How India’s Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management (HBPress) expected to be released this month.
The study was conducted among 105 executives from top companies in India. While apparently the authors find wonderful things happening in India, their findings mostly point to a people-centric approach among the major Indian corporates. They also find that most of the Indian CEOs are hands on when it comes to strategy.
While the study has given high marks to Indian CEOs(or MDs as they are usually referred to in India) for their priority in employee development, a discernible reader will have a few questions that remain unanswered at this stage. These questions are:
1.Were the employees also interviewed to find out whether the opinions of the CEOs/MDs ratified by them? CEOs themselves should not sit in judgment such things.
2. The article quotes Mr.Vineet Nayar of HCL bracing the motto ”Employee first, customer second”. This very approach to business could be flawed. While good people will put lot of their insights in developing the knowledge about the customers and their needs, without customers , there can’t be any employment. When customers buy the products or services of the company in large numbers, business will thrive and when they stop buying the products, the business will suffer. Employees can definitely contribute to business but there is a limit to which employees can contribute to the improvement of business. Economic pressures can always put a company to face difficult times in business. So, I don’t think that Mr.Nayar’s view is necessarily correct. I would have appreciated if he had said that employees are above shareholders as employees might be taking a higher risk than investors today.
3.The book talks about investing in people by way of training and development. Most of the training according to me that happen is routine to improve management skills on job. They don’t necessarily impart training in business orientation or entrepreneurship development.
4.There is no mention about the succession planning among the Indian corporate. Is it because that is not necessarily an issue considering that most of the companies are family managed?
5.The sample companies seem to be very small compared to the number of companies listed on Indian stock exchanges.
6.The article also fails to mention anything unique about Indian management practices. Or , it does not address the issue why a unique Indian management way has not been developed despite the fact that as an economy, we have been lot of importance to management education and development.
While in general, the Indian business leaders could be classified as different in positive ways than their western and especially the US counterparts, how many of them can be said to have attained significance in their realm of leadership? What is it that takes a leader from being successful to being significant? A study of leaders who have been significant by making a difference in the way they achieved their own goals or their organizations’ goals point to one important factor, namely extra-ordinary courage. While most of the successful people and entrepreneurs showed courage to some degree, their failure to become significant can again be attributed to the lack of that extra courage that is required to take one from being successful(even highly successful) to being significant. By significance or being significant, I mean path breaking difference in the way they thought, executed, and contributed to the discipline(like technology, management etc) and impacted a whole lot of constituencies. How many of the Indian leaders could claim to have embraced such path-breaking differences to enter into a realm of significance except for a few handfuls like JRD Tata or Dhirubhai Ambani?
The article is only an excerpt. Let’s wait for the book for the complete picture to make our final comment.
India has been commanding attention among management and business researchers from major universities especially those from the US and Europe. Being one of the fastest growing economies, it is quite natural that this is happening. The article has been developed from the book the authors have written: The India Way: How India’s Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management (HBPress) expected to be released this month.
The study was conducted among 105 executives from top companies in India. While apparently the authors find wonderful things happening in India, their findings mostly point to a people-centric approach among the major Indian corporates. They also find that most of the Indian CEOs are hands on when it comes to strategy.
While the study has given high marks to Indian CEOs(or MDs as they are usually referred to in India) for their priority in employee development, a discernible reader will have a few questions that remain unanswered at this stage. These questions are:
1.Were the employees also interviewed to find out whether the opinions of the CEOs/MDs ratified by them? CEOs themselves should not sit in judgment such things.
2. The article quotes Mr.Vineet Nayar of HCL bracing the motto ”Employee first, customer second”. This very approach to business could be flawed. While good people will put lot of their insights in developing the knowledge about the customers and their needs, without customers , there can’t be any employment. When customers buy the products or services of the company in large numbers, business will thrive and when they stop buying the products, the business will suffer. Employees can definitely contribute to business but there is a limit to which employees can contribute to the improvement of business. Economic pressures can always put a company to face difficult times in business. So, I don’t think that Mr.Nayar’s view is necessarily correct. I would have appreciated if he had said that employees are above shareholders as employees might be taking a higher risk than investors today.
3.The book talks about investing in people by way of training and development. Most of the training according to me that happen is routine to improve management skills on job. They don’t necessarily impart training in business orientation or entrepreneurship development.
4.There is no mention about the succession planning among the Indian corporate. Is it because that is not necessarily an issue considering that most of the companies are family managed?
5.The sample companies seem to be very small compared to the number of companies listed on Indian stock exchanges.
6.The article also fails to mention anything unique about Indian management practices. Or , it does not address the issue why a unique Indian management way has not been developed despite the fact that as an economy, we have been lot of importance to management education and development.
While in general, the Indian business leaders could be classified as different in positive ways than their western and especially the US counterparts, how many of them can be said to have attained significance in their realm of leadership? What is it that takes a leader from being successful to being significant? A study of leaders who have been significant by making a difference in the way they achieved their own goals or their organizations’ goals point to one important factor, namely extra-ordinary courage. While most of the successful people and entrepreneurs showed courage to some degree, their failure to become significant can again be attributed to the lack of that extra courage that is required to take one from being successful(even highly successful) to being significant. By significance or being significant, I mean path breaking difference in the way they thought, executed, and contributed to the discipline(like technology, management etc) and impacted a whole lot of constituencies. How many of the Indian leaders could claim to have embraced such path-breaking differences to enter into a realm of significance except for a few handfuls like JRD Tata or Dhirubhai Ambani?
The article is only an excerpt. Let’s wait for the book for the complete picture to make our final comment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)