Learning from life WHAT THEY DON`T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL

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