Why do an MBA?

Global economic recession in 2008-09 and the aftermath of which reduced job offers to fresh management graduates by a great extent have raised serious concerns about the outlook of management education.  Although the economic scenario is changing now and the job market is leaping back to normalcy, concerns about the value of a management education still remain. So the question, “why do an MBA” is very much relevant and worthwhile.

MBA is still the most common qualification for a corporate job

MBA is still by far the most common denominator for being qualified for a job in most of the functions in an organization across any industry segment, may be with certain exceptions in case of core sector industries like steel, cement, and infrastructure. But even in these core sector industries, for senior management positions in any function, preference is given to people with MBA degrees. In the rapidly developing service sectors in India like Banking and Financial Services, Retail and Telecommunication, an MBA is a good qualification to get a preference.

MBAs understand the language of business

MBAs get preferences over other qualifications in corporate jobs across most of the industry domain because MBAs understand the language of business. In most of the functions, which are keys to survival for an organization in any industry domain, understanding of the language of business is very important. Functions like Marketing, Human Resources Management and Finance Management are keys to survival of an organization. This does not mean that production and operations are less important. But at least in Marketing and Human Resources Management, MBA is an essential qualification. Finance functions can do with CAs but then again there are not enough CAs to fill in the huge requirement of finance professionals in the country.

By language of business, I mean certain particular terms and concepts which are essential for one to know in managing a business appropriately. By business here, I mean large scale businesses. A small businessman can do without these business terms and concepts but managers of large scale businesses can’t. Terms and concepts like branding, ROI, marginal cost, value, product life cycle, retention, and net worth are essential in running such businesses and these are not understood well by non-MBAs.

MBA curricula develop self-belief

An appropriate MBA curriculum also helps develop self-belief in MBAs. Self-belief is key to individual success. Without self-belief, competencies and skills may fail. This is an adage which is true for ages. In the corporate jungle where everyone fights for survival, a large dose of self-belief and self-confidence see one through.  In a good MBA classroom, a student is compelled to compete with one another in a healthy fashion. A student has to make presentations in front of other students and convince them about a concept or solutions to a case study. A student’s communication skills are constantly honed through numerous presentations.

MBA curricula develop abilities to work in a team

Survival in a corporate job also requires one to be able to work in teams. A good MBA curriculum necessitates a student to work in study groups. Study groups typically consist of students from varied background and varied personalities. Working in such study groups for almost two years shapes up a student’s team working abilities. Abilities to work in a team successfully require one to understand others; be sensitive to others’ mindsets and opinion; resolve conflicts without putting anybody down; and overall showing camaraderie to others. A good MBA curriculum helps one to develop these abilities.

MBA curricula expand horizons

An appropriate MBA curriculum expands a student’s perspectives of socio-economic situations. A good MBA graduate is a person who understands the world’s social, economic and political scenario and understands how all these affect business decisions. MBA curriculum hones one’s analytical and logical deductive abilities. These develop one’s decision making abilities.

Very few qualifications can develop your abilities like the ones I have written about above which an MBA helps to develop. The bottom line is MBA is still by far the best bet for securing a great career. Careers in many other areas could be very lucrative but then every career has a risk, that is, you may become successful or you may not become successful. When you are pursuing a particular career option, you have a risk. So therefore, by pursuing a career, you are taking a risk. The qualification which still minimizes your risk or in which your bet is safer is MBA. Of course the final decision of doing or not doing an MBA should depend mostly upon your interest, aptitudes and personality. MBA is still one of the most coveted and aspired degrees in the world but it is surely not for everyone.

Just keep on doing things!

Although I was fortunate to study at some great institutions, I had always been a moderate achiever. As a young man, I used to wonder what separates me with the super achievers. I didn’t have any clue to that at all. Well…a good working knowledge in human behaviour shaped up by none other than the legendary Prof. J. K. Mitra and some self-initiated research over the years have finally answered the question.


The clue to be super – achiever is to have a tremendous self-belief. In behavioural science this is called self-efficacy. Simply put, self-efficacy is your belief in your capabilities of getting things done in certain areas or in general. This is all that you require in achieving great things. This is all there is to know about how to succeed in life. Trust me, it is this simple.


But well…self-efficacy is not a standalone phenomenon…and it is not something which happens overnight. Self-efficacy results from feedbacks one gets from doing things. When you do something hands-on, you get a result. The result could be failure or success. Either you are able to do the thing successfully or you fail in doing the thing.


You may a fail a few times but if you keep on attempting, you may hit success once and may continue being successful in doing that. The moment you become successful in doing the thing, you start developing a perception about yourself which necessarily translates into a sentence like ‘I am probably good in doing this.’ If this is reinforced over a period of time by achieving more success in doing that thing, your perception will be endured. Enduring perceptions are called beliefs. The belief will be like ‘I am definitely good in doing this.’ Once you have this belief, you will love to do the thing more often and you will also be successful most of the times. Your self-belief in doing one thing will spill over into other things.


So, attempt to do as many things as possible…just do! If you face a challenging task, just go ahead and do it. You may fail. Don’t worry. The more you attempt the more will be your chance of success. If you attempt many things, you will succeed in some things. Success will build your self-belief. And that will lead to more success.


The bottom line is…do all those live projects and assignments yourself. If you fear Maths, do Maths more. Attack all that in which you are weak. Just go on doing.

The power is within!

What gets a fresh graduate a great job offer? Is it the degree or the institute? I guess there are a few essentials which lead one to grab a great offer and remain successful thereafter. The first thing what you need is self awareness – are you aware and could substantiate your strengths and weaknesses? Do you respect yourself and feel good for whatever you are? You got to be happy and positive about yourself. You got to feel ‘you’re ok’. The second thing is about understanding others – do you have the understanding and respects for others’ mindsets? Do you empathize easily? Do you accept social responsibilities? Are you comfortable in building and maintaining relationships with people from all walks? The third thing is about self control – can you control your emotions? Can you tolerate differences in caste, creed, culture and opinion? The fourth thing is about being optimistic and happy all the time – having an ability to smile through difficult times; keeping your head straight when the worst is happening around you. You will see a lot many questions in the interviews that you attend will be circling around these. Well, merely claiming that you have all these may not suffice. You might be asked by the interviewer to substantiate with some examples/ instances/ incidents.


The future workplace will belong to people with these competencies – self awareness; social skills; self control, focus; and tolerance. Working in sync with others in getting the organization’s jobs done will be the key. With these, you would need strong doses of conceptual skills, logical abilities, communication abilities and a passion for excellence. In his book ‘Five Minds for The Future’, Howard Gardner stated that five cognitive abilities will command a premium in future workplaces. Every leader should master these. These are – The disciplinary mind: Mastery of major schools of thought including Science, Maths, and History and of at least one professional craft; The Synthesizing mind: Ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others; The creating mind: Capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions, and phenomena; The respectful mind: Awareness of and appreciation for differences among human beings; The ethical mind: Fulfilment of one’s responsibilities as a worker and a citizen (Source: Five Minds for The Future, Howard Gardner, Harvard Business School Press, April 2007).

Essence of Management Education

A formal management degree is without doubt the most coveted professional qualification all over the world today. And the most glamorous too! It adds a ton to one’s ego. A tag of Harvard, MIT-Sloan, Kellogg, LSB, INSEAD, IIM and IIPM add a whale of weight to one’s resume and makes one a front-runner in the race of corporate jobs the world over. It melts hearts too! So, that’s it…a management degree is a sure shot way to success. And it definitely suits the younger generation’s eternal quest to find the shortest way to win!


That’s it? Or, it isn’t really?

Let’s not take a stand. Let’s first look at, at random, a few world leaders in business who have created enormous wealth or led organizations to pinnacle of success as well as a few mercurial and path breaking entrepreneurs. Think of Bill Gates (no introduction needed), Warren Buffet (Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway), Karl Albrecht (founder of supermarket giant Aldi in Germany), Michael Dell (founder of Dell Corporation), Ingvar Kamprad (Founder and owner of IKEA), Larry Ellison (CEO, Oracle), Akio Morita (the co-founder of Sony Corporation), Sam Walton (founder of the world’s largest company Wall-Mart), Jack Welch (the most famous CEO of GE), Lee Iacocca (former CEO of Chrysler Corporation), our own N.R. Naryana Murthy, Azim Premji, Ratan Tata, L. N. Mittal, and many other such people. You will find them in the list of the world’s wealthiest.

These guys have built world class companies from scratch or turned around the fortunes of beleaguered behemoths into super dynamic marker leaders. Not only for themselves, all these guys have also created enormous wealth for their shareholders. What is most strikingly similar among them is that almost all of them have no management degree! What they have common among them is a burning desire to build something worthwhile touching millions of lives. They all wanted to do great things and achieve impossible targets. They all have intense energy to continue working hard to achieve greater things, year after year. Nothing could put them down. Nothing could stop them from continue achieving.

Look at the current scenario in India. In a recent check done by a business magazine among some of the CEOs of 100 leading Indian companies have revealed that only 1/3rd have formal management degree! And only 17% have degrees from the top B-schools IIMs, XLRI, JBIMS, and IMT Ghaziabad. Rest are from a variety of background – from no formal degree at one extreme and IITs at the other extreme.

So do we take a stand that formal Management education has not much to do with success in life? Perhaps yes.

But then what are we doing in Management education?

The mis-directed perspectives in Management education

As a fall-out of a long deprived society fast turning into a consumerist society where conspicuous consumption is the main parameter of wealth; a direction less education system where people develop skills which are not required by the industries; and a complete lack of manpower planning as well as educational planning by the designated authorities have created a situation where people believe that only a ‘professional degree’ would open the doors of opportunities. Degrees like MBA, BE in Computer Science, and B. Tech in Biotechnology are thought to be the key to success in getting a good job.

In case of MBA, the situation is aggravated by the media which project a few elite management institutions as the gold mines for the talented. The media writes about a few of the students of these institutions who have landed up international jobs with salaries paid in dollars. They make these institutes and in turn make MBA degree as the object of desire. They project some heroes. Media need heroes and sensational news. The institutes and a few students of them provide just that. In the process, media does not write about a large no. of students from these institutes who do not get good jobs. Media does not write about the real stories behind those astronomical starting salaries. In a world where CTC (Cost To Company) is quoted which includes the cost of training, guest house accommodation and even transport allowances, the media ignorantly or intentionally misses the point. The institutes also quote the average salary or the median salary. The institutes also quote the highest salaries. But nobody quotes the minimum salaries.

In this Mecca of propaganda and misleading information, the real meaning of management education and the life skills that a management education can build in a person die a silent death!

What is the real essence of Management Education?

From the perspectives of education and context of learning, right management education can add tremendous value to one’s life. It can develop essential life skills and understanding in a person with which he/she can rule the world, hands down. What are those essential life skills and understanding that management education can develop in a person?

1. Skill to explore, understand and expand our horizons – an eternal hunger to ask what, where, why, when, who, how, how much – an eternal desire to know more and get to the roots of issues.

2. Skill to understand what matters and what not – ability to cut through the clutter of humongous information.

3. Ability to access large amount of data and the ability to select, comprehend, organize and interpret relevant data and eliminate the unnecessary data.

4. Skill to research for information and learn more, continuously.

5. Ability to see the whole picture – how everything is linked together and how outcomes happen.

6. Ability to analyse data and infer; understand the use of the inferences/ interpretations to real life situations – making sense of the data.

7. Ability to question and analyse concepts and understand the relevance of their use in real life situations.

8. Ability to understand every solution to problems and every issue from the perspectives of cost, return and risk.

9. Ability to communicate – ability to reach out effectively to different types of people with élan – ability to communicate effectively in a variety of situations.

10. A clear understanding that hard work and positive attitudes matters, the most.

Barring perhaps Performing Arts, all these are absolutely necessary to be successful in any field that we can think of. Whether one uses these consciously or unconsciously, these are basic skills that are powerful and useful in everything we do. These are the life skills or understanding that a good management education can impart. Besides these, a good management education also makes people aware about a wonderful concept called ‘passion’. Passion of making things happen. Passion of achieving things worthwhile. Passion of adding value to lives. Management education also promotes objective thinking. It’s a wonderful education, perhaps the best education one could have.

What to do about Management education so as to learn those essential skills?

Simple – unlearn what you have learnt so far in your life; relearn by doing, feeling, experiencing and simulating! You have learnt about theories which are sacrosanct. No question was allowed! You have learnt things only move in a pre-determined and classified way. You have learnt interactions among various situations or things can give rise to a defined no. of outcomes. You have classified the world in some pre-defined boundaries! Your vision has narrowed! You have been programmed not to question! You have fallen into a rut!

You have learnt, if you really have, so far by being a passive recipient of knowledge. ‘Gurus’ or ‘Demi-Gods’ have walked into the class rooms and delivered ‘lectures’ err…sermons. You have listened to and diligently took notes. You have mugged up these notes and read ‘guide books’ to write in the examinations. You have used rusty equipment in science labs and used obsolete methods in most cases to experiment or learn a few things practically. You have been ‘taught’ not to ask question, not to be an active learner!

So, first thing first, stop learning the way you have been taught to. Be an active learner. Ask questions. Dissect issues. Look at the world upside down. See things which normal mortals won’t see. Look at things from various angles. Redefine and reclassify your world. And learn to make decisions – quick, efficient and effective decisions.

And second, do all these following things, day-in-and-day-out, aggressively, vehemently with the determination of a winner.

1. Read and see a lot, really lot. Read everything – text books, newspapers, business magazines, general magazines, general management books, fictions, non-fictions, whatever you get. Watch CNBC, BBC, NDTV, and all. Juggle all these judiciously. Pick up a habit of going through mountains of data and make sense of it.

2. Ask questions. To lecturers; to your class mates; to industry executives; to shopkeepers; to everyone who tries to tell you something.

3. Listen. Concentrate. Get others' viewpoints with an open mind. Be interested into a variety of things. Don’t say, “QT is not my cup of tea”, “I don’t understand Finance”, or “There is no point in studying HR”. Everything matters. You would not know when, where and in what context.

4. Analyse theories, concepts and practices in multiple real life/ close to real life case situations by applying the concepts to solve problems/ tackle issues given in the case situations. Case learning is a long-proven technique pioneered by Harvard Business School.

5. Make presentations in front of a variety of audience and invite difficult questions and criticism. Then answer these questions and make people convinced. Share your knowledge. Be a conduit or flow of information. Add value to your class mates’ lives and learning.

6. Do assignments which are application oriented, not merely theory oriented. Writing theory is fairly easy these days. Just download from the net and bingo, your job is done in a flash! Use internet as sources but do not merely copy.

7. Connect with the world. Do live projects. Interact with company executives; customers and distributors. Do 50 of such projects in two years.

8. Analyse. Do not jump to conclusions. Ask why. Relentlessly, until you find a reasonable and ‘satisficing’ answer which appeals to your sense of logic.

9. Hone communication skills. Talk with people. Not only your class mates. But all kinds of people. There’s lot of learning hiding in communicating with all and sundry.

10. Ask for feedback on your performance. Ask for suggestions to improve and correct yourself.

All these are difficult. If you want to juggle all these together, you will not even realize how your days and nights are flying away. Life will be difficult. Take a break sometimes. Then come back and work hard. To make sense of management education, there is no short-cut. It’s a long, arduous, and difficult journey. Journey to make sense of the world we live in. No other education can give you that.