Experience is a better teacher: Taarek Hined
WHAT THEY DON`T TEACH YOU AT BUSINESS SCHOOL
While B-school education lays the foundation to understand the intricacies of running a business, there is a wide gap between what is taught in theory and what needs to be practised. At B-school, everything can be categorised into several key aspects of business management — marketing, human resource, finance and so on. But, in reality, the task is to bring these aspects together to be able to make the right decisions.
It is also extremely crucial to couple theory with reality in order to make the right decisions in an organisation. One of the factors that determine success in business is one’s ability to adapt and adjust to market conditions. You may have the perfect price and product, but remember, it is customer psyche that determines the value to a product. While B-school education stresses on the importance of developing this understanding, it is only through my years of experience at FedEx, which is a very customer-centric organisation, that I learnt this.
From my experience of working with people from different backgrounds and countries, I have learnt that managing people from diverse backgrounds can be quite complicated. While a B-school can teach an individual business etiquette, in reality, one also needs to appreciate the cultural sensitivities of interacting with people from different backgrounds. Developing interpersonal relationships is key to building successful teams within an organisation. Also, with globalisation, the world has become more interdependent — I didn’t see that when I was in B-school in the mid-1980s. What is common talk now were just concepts then. There was no Nafta, or common currency. So you learn as you go.
While B-school education provides a great platform to learn structured fundamentals of managing a business, interpersonal skills can be attained only through experience and exposure to the real world. While everyone wants to get into management, an important question they need to ask themselves is: Is management for me?
No two organisations are alike. They don’t teach you that at B-school. Having spent many years in the corporate world, I believe that experience is a better teacher and the ability to manage with the winning attitude is the key to success in the real world.
Taarek Hinedi graduated from George Mason University, USA, in 1989