Go beyond the B-school education: Santosh Desai

WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL

Santosh Desai

It is not the curriculum per se that helps you once you graduate from a management institute. What stands you in good stead is the way management education makes you think, analyse situations and put problems in perspective.

The learning does not lie in the content that is taught but in the mode of thinking that a B-school education fosters.

Also, it makes a huge difference when you are with a group of people who come from a wide variety of backgrounds.

For instance, my batch at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), had students from different strata of society, from all parts of India, and with different educational qualifications. I can safely say that the IIMs are not elitist as is often pointed out.

It is the genuine ability of the people that helps them secure a seat in an IIM. To that extent, the interactive learning with other students is invaluable.

When it comes to the teaching methodology, I strongly stand by the case-study teaching method adopted by IIM-A. These case studies are open-ended and always have more than one solution. Yes, you do have to read text books, but only as an accompaniment to the case studies and to refer to similar scenarios and look at the various approaches a problem can have.

In my opinion, management education teaches you how to break down a problem into little pieces, analyse it bit by bit, put your finger on the problem and consequently, come up with a solution. I can safely say that that has been one of my greatest learnings.

But at times, this is exactly where the problem lies, too. You have to remember that this kind of approach is not systemic and is not always ideal for a complex problem.

Management graduates tend to develop a standard way of looking at all situations. Having said that, I also agree that such an approach "" following a set process and going step by step towards a problem "" helps minimise errors.

However, management education gives you little help if you want to create something. I agree that it assists you in reaching a level of competency and helps you talk and understand the language of management. But if you don't have the ability to do things differently, there's little you can do after a point "" your management education notwithstanding.

A management education helps you reach to the level of order from disorder, but falls short if you want to reach from order to creation. It doesn't help you gain new ideas and new perspectives. It does not teach you synthetic thinking but advocates disparate thinking. It teaches you how to go step by step but is wary of any leap or jump.

So, it's not about where management education fails to deliver, but what you expect out of it. The B-school curriculum is just the first-level organiser. If you expect anything more, it really is your mistake. It's heartening to see that management students today understand the limitation of a management degree and are willing to look beyond it. They understand that the lessons learnt at B-school are not the last word.

I learnt to work on these areas on my own. For me it was a gradual expansion. For instance, when I saw the power and excitement in a certain idea but realised that I could not get to it from my current train of thought, I deserted it and went after the idea through other ways until I hit upon it. I had to learn other ways of analysis than the break-it-up-and-rebuild-it-right approach that I had been taught.

There are two kinds of analysis. Let's look at them by way of an example. Here's a question: why do skunks stink? The proximate analysis of it would be that they have glands that produce the smell that is not to the liking of many.

The ultimate analysis would be that because skunks lived in an area where there were bigger predators that it; so the self-evolutionary way of surviving was to develop some weapon that would keep the predators at bay.

To my mind, management education uses a lot of proximate thinking but little ultimate thinking. Thus, we have marketers asking, how do I make my brand sell, rather than questioning: why does my brand exist?

I also feel that work experience before going to a B-school helps. It allows you to be more critical of what is taught. Going back to my experience, I had some wonderful teachers, but they were hopelessly out of touch with changes in the corporate world. Somebody with work experience would have realised it sooner than I did.

I also believe that management institutes have a knack for knocking the stuffing out of students with work experience. The institutes don't always take criticism of the education system by these students in a positive way. Management education talks about work experience but fears work experience.

Santosh Desai graduated from IIM, Ahmedabad, in 1985