The degrees earned at business school are the ones that give you an edge, but there is more to it than that. There are vital lessons which you learn through the course of your life. These important principles in life have taken me forward in my profession and shaped my viewpoints.
Find a vacuum and fill it: Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises. The first rule for a manager is to train himself to see vacuums, or gaps, in the market and then to fill them. Look around, it doesn’t matter how big or small your area of operation is. The principle remains the same: find that vacuum and fill it fast, before someone else does.
Embrace change as a way of life: The graveyard of business is littered with companies that failed to recognise the need to change. Be open to new ideas and anticipate constant change. Vigilance is a great asset. Always look for new ways to do things and believe that, once it works, it will soon be obsolete. Change is constant. Change is everywhere. Deal with it, or your business will die.
Measure for measure: Benchmarking is the cornerstone of continuous improvement. It makes you focus on basic issues as to how one can improve and how others are doing the same thing better. A good manager should always have a healthy disregard for the status quo. Benchmarking allows this dissatisfaction to be channeled into productive change. It should be a state of mind rather than a performance review.
Chase quality, not quantity: Perhaps it is a gift rather than a quality — a gift of being able to distinguish between what is ordinary and something that other people recognise as outstanding, as exceptional. Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skilful execution. It represents the wise choice of many alternatives. If you want to compete with the best, you have to worry about every detail. Competition is tough, but if the standard of service and attention to detail exceeds expectations, you are halfway to winning customer loyalty.
People build brands, brands do not build people: A brand is only as good as the people behind it and their passion for excellence. Even dominant brands also must be constantly reinvented through infusion of fresh ideas. While a powerful tool, a brand is only as good as the people using it — and if you have chosen the right people, they can just as easily create a new brand and even, in some cases, fashion a better one if asked. In a nutshell, people build brands, brands don’t build people.
Be prepared for anything:
We can’t control every event but we can control our response to it. As a business we need to be lean and strong. If we are not, we will not be able to go through a crisis in case it hits us. You have to win — so many people are depending on you. That is why you have to be prepared for any type of emergency and be able to adapt to it on short notice.
The Author : "Rahul Nath"-> graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1987
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Preparatory schools go the IIM way
Leading institutes line up large investments to give online training.
With the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) mulling to take the Common Admission Test (CAT) online in a couple of years, MBA test-preparing institutes like Career Launcher and TIME are also preparing to get their online act together.
Career Launcher, for instance, plans to invest around Rs 3 million across its centres to provide computer terminals for its students. “CAT online means taking a test on the computer which serves questions from a local server. We are working towards equipping ourselves with training and putting our methodology in place,” says Shiva Kumar, Director, Career Launcher, an MBA-test preparing institute.
TIME, on the other hand, says it could tie-up with a network of colleges or companies like Reliance Infocom to facilitate online training for its students. “We are looking at tying up with computer training institutes or a network of colleges with computer labs at various centres to conduct computer-based training sessions,” said Jaideep Singh Chaudhary, product manager — CAT, TIME. TIME has around 169 offices across 81 cities and it trains over 50,000 students for CAT exam alone.
Online testing could allow a host of flexibilities like convenience of testing across various centers, conducting test at any time of the year in a phased-out manner over a span of 30-odd days and validity of scores beyond a year — to the IIMs admission committee and the students.
According to sources, IIMs have already invited tenders for conducting the test by parties or companies with ability to put up infrastructure that can handle the exam on such a large scale. The CAT exams could be formatted on the lines of the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) so that the scores are valid for a year or two.
Meanwhile, the IIMs are considering online CAT to counter the burgeoning number of CAT applicants each year. The numbers have moved from 90,000 aspirants to 2.3 lakh aspirants (in 2007) over a span of four years. This year the number of students to appear for CAT are expected to go up to 300,000 students. In comparison, a decade ago, the number of CAT applicants was somewhere around 35,000.
Industry players are also expecting that an online exam could reduce the number of questions. “The number of questions in CAT has been reducing constantly. In the past two years, there have been 75 questions in total. It is 45 per cent of the total number questions that came in CAT 1998. Interestingly, there are around 75 questions in GMAT which is on-line too,” adds Kumar.
Online CAT would mean that comfort with working on and reading from the computer is a must for students. Part of the practice for students will shift to the computers. “Though the fundamentals would remain the same, people could be more willing to learn through computers,” adds Kumar.
While there are concerns about security breaches to the test process, industry players say CAT online can look at BITSAT—graduate admission exams being successfully applied by BITS, Pilani.
“The BITSAT model has an outsourced partner who has built the testing engine, which generates tests based on a tagged database supplied by the authorities. For BITSAT, BITS Pilani conducts tests at designated centers over a span of 40 days. Students book the time slot when they would want to take the test.
While students who take the tests in a particular time slot would similar papers, candidates in different time slots get different papers,” says a professor from a management institute which takes CAT scores for admission. The number of students who took BITSAT last year was 90,000 and is expected to touch 1.3 lakh this year.
The good news for students, however, could be that though these institutes are looking at upgrading their infrastructure to meet the needs of online CAT, they do not plan to pass on the cost to the students, at present. The fee that these institutes charge from students varies between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000 per year for tier I towns and Rs 18,000 for tier II towns.
With the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) mulling to take the Common Admission Test (CAT) online in a couple of years, MBA test-preparing institutes like Career Launcher and TIME are also preparing to get their online act together.
Career Launcher, for instance, plans to invest around Rs 3 million across its centres to provide computer terminals for its students. “CAT online means taking a test on the computer which serves questions from a local server. We are working towards equipping ourselves with training and putting our methodology in place,” says Shiva Kumar, Director, Career Launcher, an MBA-test preparing institute.
TIME, on the other hand, says it could tie-up with a network of colleges or companies like Reliance Infocom to facilitate online training for its students. “We are looking at tying up with computer training institutes or a network of colleges with computer labs at various centres to conduct computer-based training sessions,” said Jaideep Singh Chaudhary, product manager — CAT, TIME. TIME has around 169 offices across 81 cities and it trains over 50,000 students for CAT exam alone.
Online testing could allow a host of flexibilities like convenience of testing across various centers, conducting test at any time of the year in a phased-out manner over a span of 30-odd days and validity of scores beyond a year — to the IIMs admission committee and the students.
According to sources, IIMs have already invited tenders for conducting the test by parties or companies with ability to put up infrastructure that can handle the exam on such a large scale. The CAT exams could be formatted on the lines of the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) so that the scores are valid for a year or two.
Meanwhile, the IIMs are considering online CAT to counter the burgeoning number of CAT applicants each year. The numbers have moved from 90,000 aspirants to 2.3 lakh aspirants (in 2007) over a span of four years. This year the number of students to appear for CAT are expected to go up to 300,000 students. In comparison, a decade ago, the number of CAT applicants was somewhere around 35,000.
Industry players are also expecting that an online exam could reduce the number of questions. “The number of questions in CAT has been reducing constantly. In the past two years, there have been 75 questions in total. It is 45 per cent of the total number questions that came in CAT 1998. Interestingly, there are around 75 questions in GMAT which is on-line too,” adds Kumar.
Online CAT would mean that comfort with working on and reading from the computer is a must for students. Part of the practice for students will shift to the computers. “Though the fundamentals would remain the same, people could be more willing to learn through computers,” adds Kumar.
While there are concerns about security breaches to the test process, industry players say CAT online can look at BITSAT—graduate admission exams being successfully applied by BITS, Pilani.
“The BITSAT model has an outsourced partner who has built the testing engine, which generates tests based on a tagged database supplied by the authorities. For BITSAT, BITS Pilani conducts tests at designated centers over a span of 40 days. Students book the time slot when they would want to take the test.
While students who take the tests in a particular time slot would similar papers, candidates in different time slots get different papers,” says a professor from a management institute which takes CAT scores for admission. The number of students who took BITSAT last year was 90,000 and is expected to touch 1.3 lakh this year.
The good news for students, however, could be that though these institutes are looking at upgrading their infrastructure to meet the needs of online CAT, they do not plan to pass on the cost to the students, at present. The fee that these institutes charge from students varies between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000 per year for tier I towns and Rs 18,000 for tier II towns.
Dotting the 'I' WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT BUSINESS SCHOOL
Having started to build a company just a year after my graduation, I had no idea that my business school education would come in so useful at every step of the way. Yet there are such critical aspects in building and running a company that cannot be learnt in a classroom.
First is the importance of building relationships. Anyone that was part of the first “sale” by a company will vouch to the critical role that the relationship and trust built with the customer by the founder and the sales team played in landing the sale. Our company was able to successfully execute four strategic M&As in the last two years and the clinching point for each of these was the mutual trust and good faith that we shared with the sellers.
People work with people, and managers need to learn to invest in building these relationships over a period of time and not always look for immediate return on time and effort spent. B-schools tend to overlook this critical human aspect when they teach sales and marketing, strategy and negotiations.
Crisis management is another area where we learn very little in business school. Most companies, especially in their early years, face crises of various types and magnitudes — cash flow situations, senior management attrition, market turmoil and so on. Learning to deal with and overcome these crises is critical to survival and success. At one level, this involves addressing the immediate issue at hand, but at another, it requires re-building of confidence and re-commitment to the strategic direction, which is lost sight of in a crisis.
Third, most management programmes encourage students to take a high-level perspective of things, and less attention is provided to dotting the “I”s and cross the “T”s. It is dangerous for senior management to take their attention away from the detail. A strategy that’s not grounded in basic details may be disconnected from the reality.
Fourth, on a related point in strategy formulation, while it is critical for senior management to stay focused on the strategic direction at all times, they also need to be dynamic in learning from the market, and be pragmatic in refocusing their direction when necessary. The ability to know when to stay on the chartered course and when to change direction based on market responses can be cultivated only from years of experience and is not something that can easily be taught in a classroom.
Finally, most MBA graduates are hard-wired towards success and are not effective in dealing with failure. Personally and professionally, it is when one learns to deal with and learn from failure that the fear of failure vanishes, and innovation and risk-taking start taking root.
The Author:"Kami Narayan" graduated from Harvard Business School
First is the importance of building relationships. Anyone that was part of the first “sale” by a company will vouch to the critical role that the relationship and trust built with the customer by the founder and the sales team played in landing the sale. Our company was able to successfully execute four strategic M&As in the last two years and the clinching point for each of these was the mutual trust and good faith that we shared with the sellers.
People work with people, and managers need to learn to invest in building these relationships over a period of time and not always look for immediate return on time and effort spent. B-schools tend to overlook this critical human aspect when they teach sales and marketing, strategy and negotiations.
Crisis management is another area where we learn very little in business school. Most companies, especially in their early years, face crises of various types and magnitudes — cash flow situations, senior management attrition, market turmoil and so on. Learning to deal with and overcome these crises is critical to survival and success. At one level, this involves addressing the immediate issue at hand, but at another, it requires re-building of confidence and re-commitment to the strategic direction, which is lost sight of in a crisis.
Third, most management programmes encourage students to take a high-level perspective of things, and less attention is provided to dotting the “I”s and cross the “T”s. It is dangerous for senior management to take their attention away from the detail. A strategy that’s not grounded in basic details may be disconnected from the reality.
Fourth, on a related point in strategy formulation, while it is critical for senior management to stay focused on the strategic direction at all times, they also need to be dynamic in learning from the market, and be pragmatic in refocusing their direction when necessary. The ability to know when to stay on the chartered course and when to change direction based on market responses can be cultivated only from years of experience and is not something that can easily be taught in a classroom.
Finally, most MBA graduates are hard-wired towards success and are not effective in dealing with failure. Personally and professionally, it is when one learns to deal with and learn from failure that the fear of failure vanishes, and innovation and risk-taking start taking root.
The Author:"Kami Narayan" graduated from Harvard Business School
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Learn to sell WHAT THEY DON`T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL
Let me preface this column by saying that B-school education is extremely useful and important for people wanting to succeed at business in these competitive times. However, there are a number of essential skills and topics that I believe are not taught at B-school, but are critical in making a person succeed at the highest level.
First, the most basic but immensely practical subject is that of “administration”. Much of the young graduate managers that pass out of B-schools are not taught the basics of good administration. In the initial part of their careers, the lack of administration skills cause them to stumble and take hard knocks where none were necessary.
I am amazed how smart, intelligent graduates falter at basics like time management, filing, the simple yet effective art of “follow-ups”, taking notes for research and presenting crisp, complete memos and “bulletin” or a “scoreboard” of the task at hand. Many of these may be thought of as old-fashioned, but I think our fathers and grandfathers were more effective at these and did better with paper and pencil than today’s B-school grads with their laptops.
The second thing that I find most B-schools don’t teach is that one thing that makes or breaks a business or takes an already running business to the next level — “selling”! It is seen to be infra dig and almost looked down upon with contempt. I think that is deplorable because businesses thrive on cash-flows generated by selling products and services.
Nothing is more injurious to the financial health and morale of the company than poor sales. Other subjects are given far more importance than sales. But in reality, selling is an essential skill for all people wanting to run a business.
B-schools encourage competition and don’t teach young, aspiring leaders on how to collaborate rather than compete. In the real world, the people who collaborate with their team-members and outside stakeholders (clients, partners and distributors) do much better than highly intelligent and capable managers who are seen to be “selfish” and/or “solo-performers”.
Last, the more senior one gets in the company, what matters is “who you want to become” rather than “what you will do”. Let me explain — people are not clear whether they want to be great marketers, great systems analyst or maybe even start-up specialists.
That is where one should be honing their skills and art. Instead, people’s decision-making is more reliant on what others are saying or doing, what is currently a “hot” industry or trend, or a lot of times — what pays more. That approach can carry you to some extent, but ultimately to be “great” at anything, you need clarity of who you want to become and what you will be known for, that is, your legacy. That is the ultimate question.
Rajiv Jamkhedkar graduated from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University
First, the most basic but immensely practical subject is that of “administration”. Much of the young graduate managers that pass out of B-schools are not taught the basics of good administration. In the initial part of their careers, the lack of administration skills cause them to stumble and take hard knocks where none were necessary.
I am amazed how smart, intelligent graduates falter at basics like time management, filing, the simple yet effective art of “follow-ups”, taking notes for research and presenting crisp, complete memos and “bulletin” or a “scoreboard” of the task at hand. Many of these may be thought of as old-fashioned, but I think our fathers and grandfathers were more effective at these and did better with paper and pencil than today’s B-school grads with their laptops.
The second thing that I find most B-schools don’t teach is that one thing that makes or breaks a business or takes an already running business to the next level — “selling”! It is seen to be infra dig and almost looked down upon with contempt. I think that is deplorable because businesses thrive on cash-flows generated by selling products and services.
Nothing is more injurious to the financial health and morale of the company than poor sales. Other subjects are given far more importance than sales. But in reality, selling is an essential skill for all people wanting to run a business.
B-schools encourage competition and don’t teach young, aspiring leaders on how to collaborate rather than compete. In the real world, the people who collaborate with their team-members and outside stakeholders (clients, partners and distributors) do much better than highly intelligent and capable managers who are seen to be “selfish” and/or “solo-performers”.
Last, the more senior one gets in the company, what matters is “who you want to become” rather than “what you will do”. Let me explain — people are not clear whether they want to be great marketers, great systems analyst or maybe even start-up specialists.
That is where one should be honing their skills and art. Instead, people’s decision-making is more reliant on what others are saying or doing, what is currently a “hot” industry or trend, or a lot of times — what pays more. That approach can carry you to some extent, but ultimately to be “great” at anything, you need clarity of who you want to become and what you will be known for, that is, your legacy. That is the ultimate question.
Rajiv Jamkhedkar graduated from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University
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