The Hindu Business Line : What B-school didn't teach

We will tutor you on things critical to your success as a manager of tomorrow. We will tutor you on things critical to your success as a manager of tomorrow.

THIS column is targeted at young managers and management students. This is a very important group of people. Primarily because today's management students are tomorrow's young managers, provided they clear all their courses and credit requirements, and, of course, many of today's young managers go on to become tomorrow's middle managers and a select few become day after tomorrow's top management. See, this column has its fundas completely correct on management.

Every week this column will teach you things that are critical to your success as a manager of tomorrow. As a student you might want to know which courses to avoid and books to read. Which cocktail is best before an economics end-term exam (Bloody Mary) and how to interact with the women in business school? As a young manager your doubts and tribulations are vastly different. Which departments to avoid and e-mails to read? Which cocktail is best before an Annual performance review? (Screwdriver) We at this newspaper are completely not interested in the highly lucrative consumer segment that is young managers. You may have fat salaries and high disposable incomes. But we only want to help you along in your journey to become the CEOs of the future. But, if you ask me, adding all your incomes to our advertiser's (and our) bottomlines do make them look nice.

BUSINESS TERMINOLOGY

Do you sit through important business meetings not knowing what your CEO means by `sustainable competitive advantage'? Were you the guy who went to a client meeting and said: "No, it is natural growth only," when asked about WYSIWYG? This column will teach you important things about business terminology. For example what exactly is a "new paradigm"? Is it something you eat? (No) Not to mention that this column will tell it all about national and international commerce. You have always wondered: What is a buoyant economy and why, if the economy is booming, do you still have only 14 Rupees left at the end of the month? We will share our proven strategies to help you not just understand international business, but also talk about it to other young managers as if you know exactly what an emerging market is.

The Sensex and stock market too complicated for you? Flummoxed by the vagaries of share prices, stock buy-backs, IPOs et al? Have no fear. This column will stretch its entire intellectual muscle to tell you what is a derivative, a credit derivative, a credit-risk derivative and a credit-risk derivative swap. After all between us we have several thousand PAN number and DP accounts in Ahmedabad.

Many ambitious young managers today are faced with a singular obstacle to their career progression: The overwhelming pressure to go to office. We will share deep insight into how you can take over 150 working days off and still become employee of the year. Boss demanding well over the 45 minutes of hard work you are prepared to put in everyday? We will reveal some of the interesting things successful managers have been doing for centuries to keep their bosses in place.

Management students often struggle with composing the perfect CV. The perfect one-pager that will make recruiters flock to them by the truckloads. This column has hundreds of secret tips to help you make the perfect CV, which will adequately reflect your abilities, achievements and intellectual prowess. And still not get caught.

By now I am sure you are asking yourself: "How does this guy know all this? Is his information and advice authoritative?" Let me assure that I have access to the entire gamut of business literature including the complete `For Dummies' series I bought from a roadside vendor in Churchgate. I also have an advisory board of leading industry luminaries with decades of experience in the field of managing businesses and enterprises. (Though I admit some of them are not aware of it.) And, occasionally, when I run out of things to write about, I will tell you interesting stories of my life as a young manager. They are hilarious and include interesting incidents with office stationery, conference calls and that weird webbing inside running shorts. They are all 100 per cent true, except for the ones I make up most of the time. Your feedback is very important and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. In short you should read us every week. Please.

(The writer, an alumnus of IIM-A, was a management consultant before quitting to work on a book and a full-time writing career.)

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