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 A
management degree does make a difference to an IT career. The structured
programme, the faculty and student interactions, and the very atmosphere
that a good B-school generates, all combine to provide the right
mix of talents required on the global stage, says Prashant Govil
Ever
notice that anyone who graduates from one of the better business
schools in the country seems a changed person? If you question the
emergent B-school graduate, he or she will rarely admit to any changes
in persona. But somehow, you notice the polish and the different
way of thinking.
The
question is who and what brings about the change? Is it the way
the programme is structured or is it the faculty and student interactions
that make the difference? The answer is a combination of the above
two factors and another elusive aspect which is what makes the Business
Administration course the most sought-after across the globe—the
B-school atmosphere which generates a hunger to do things differently
and better than the guy next door.
“A
good B-school curriculum is tuned to make the students look at things
differently, to try and identify underlying patterns in any scenario
and get to the core of an issue. In essence, it is aimed at inculcating
a holistic problem-solving and managing orientation, capable of
judiciously balancing the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’
factors,” says Dr Unnikrishnan Nair, associate professor for
organisational behaviour at IIM-Kozhikode. For a career in information
technology, it provides the much-needed management orientation/skills,
which so many of our engineers have been accused of lacking when
it comes to managing large overseas projects.
The
right blend
A
careful blend of finance, marketing, economics, operations management,
strategy, statistics and human resource management, with courses
on foreign languages and different cultures (including Indian of
course!) thrown in for good measure, all combine to give a well-rounded
worldview to the participants—an education which holds them
in good stead for the rest of their lives. For an IT career this
is essential, as it gives an engineer a business perspective, which
a technical education and on-the-job training can never provide.
Other
than the programme itself, a major factor is the very stakeholders
in the programme—the students and faculty. Pick up the faculty
list of any one of the IIMs and what do you see? Dons from Cambridge,
economists from Stockholm, engineer-MBAs from the famed IIT-IIM
combine, engineers from MIT, or MBAs from Harvard or Stanford. How
can somebody not change and not learn when interacting with such
an erudite assortment? And then the students—a wide variety
of profiles, some with work experience of one or more years in some
of the best organisations in the country; add to this the exchange
students from abroad who bring with them colourful cultural diversity,
and you have the ingredients for a heady mix indeed. For an IT career,
this is the ideal recipe for developing people skills and inculcating
a leadership orientation, essential to take IT assignments to the
next level on the world stage.
Says
Nair: “I would emphasise that the most valuable learning in
a B-school comes from outside the classrooms—live field projects;
informal interaction with peers, faculty members and the guests
who visit the campus; in the library halls; and most significantly
in the contemplative loneliness of one’s own personal moments.”
The very atmosphere creates a need for high achievement and develops
a passion in the student to move on and do something bigger, better
and more efficiently than others.
Street
smart
There
is another school of thought that exists, in complete contrast with
the thoughts expressed above. Some very famous and influential people
do not have too many charitable things to say about MBAs. Examples
abound: Mark McCormack (What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard
Business School), Henry Mintzberg (“You Can’t Create A
Leader In A Classroom”), Henry Ford (“Hundreds Of Businessmen
Have Succeeded Without An MBA, But None Without Common Sense”),
and many others like Larry Ellison, Richard Branson, Akio Morita
and Bill Gates. They may not always be MBA-bashers, but they certainly
don’t respect an MBA education over their own brand of common
sense and business acumen, which has seen them through to their
respective pinnacles of success.
They
are of course fully justified in arriving at such conclusions, because
they have achieved great success without any management degree.
But, I still think otherwise. Take a poll of the 100 most influential
people in the business world anywhere, check the percentage of MBAs
in that list and then check the percentage of MBAs among all educated
people in the total population—somehow these figures don’t
seem to match. That makes you wonder whether there really is something
in this sometimes overrated degree after all. I leave you with that
thought.
Prashant
Govil is a consultant with Tata Consultancy Services. E-mail: prashant_govil@mumbai.tcs.co.in
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