Reality check

WHAT THEY DON`T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL

STRAIGHT-LINE graphs versus jagged-line realities. Comparing plans with actuals versus grappling with the unplanned that is real. Dreaming a life of idealism versus living a life grounded in realism. Preparing the smooth so that there is no rough versus learning to deal with both the rough and smooth.

Twenty-four months of business school are little match for the 24 years of working that followed. An unprecedented recession, an unexpected career move, a sudden illness, or even an unpleasant boss can spoil the party!

B-school was heady idealism, where we idolised Jack Welch and imbibed Michael Porter. As if Enron and Dawood did not exist — or did not matter. As if organisational behaviour, quantitative analysis, finance and marketing were the necessary and sufficient dimensions to define and describe our careers.

 

Should I be buying oil or selling soap? Am I more proficient in media analytics or in formulating chicken feed? In hindsight, one is intrigued by how and why these devilish choices contrived and conspired were not addressed in the classroom.

The sterilised world of classroom analysis led to choices that at worst moved life from B+ to C-. The real world of choices — often without analysis — threatens to shunt life from A to Z and back to F, in no predictable or comprehensible order. For that brief part of life, one’s grades decided the pecking order. Ever since then, one’s place in the corporate pecking order has determined whether or not one has made the grade.

May be we were good students. Or, may be old habits die hard. For, often, we would use 400 words to explain a viewpoint when 40 words sufficed. I suspect that has remained the habit ever since. Let me attempt a correction. Put simply, business school prepared us little for the vicissitudes and volatility that followed. The diverse and unpredictable nature of real life simply overwhelmed the theories and concepts we armed ourselves with at B-school.

Or, may be, we still have not figured how the 4Ps, the 5 forces, Six Sigma or the 7 Ss come in handy. May be, it is never too late to learn.

So, would I wish to go to a business school again? Bet my bottom dollar, yes! Because where else in life will I get 24 months of joy strung together.

Amit Varma graduated from IIM, Ahmedabad, in 1989