The Hindu Business Line : <I>`B-school taught me tolerance' </I>

Vishali Rao is a 2004 batch business management graduate of the Institute for Financial Management and Research, Chennai, an ICICI-promoted institution. At present working as a manager with an MNC BPO firm in Chennai, Vishali strongly believes that the exposure one gets at work can never be matched by classroom teaching. Vishali says that more than functional skills, it's people skills that are more important at the workplace.

On what B-School taught me...

IMFR has set the foundation for my management career. There is a widespread belief that most successful managers are MBAs, which is not entirely true. When I entered IFMR, I was a raw Commerce graduate not knowing what to expect out of the entire course. The programme laid emphasis on team building and most of the projects are teamwork-based. The library at IFMR is one of its kind in India and was extremely useful throughout the course in terms of gathering functional knowledge. IFMR also taught me a lot in my personal life — tolerance towards people and discipline to name a few. At the end of the course, it set the stage for an entry into the unpredictable world of corporate life.

On what B-School ought to have taught me...

Although IFMR's course content was excellent and comparable to other top-notch B-schools, it could have offered more industry exposure in terms of live projects with corporates. We did have many experts from the industry talk to us, but nothing really beats the learning derived from `doing'.

On applying B-school knowledge at work...

Of all the subjects that we underwent, the course on organisational behaviour seems most applicable in today's corporate scenario where attrition is high and managing people/teams is the most important duty of any manager. This course was one of the "soft" subjects and I must admit that we did take this subject lightly.

However, on completion of two years at work, this seems the most relevant subject, as functional/ process knowledge can be gathered anytime, but people management is inherent and organizational behaviour really addresses this.

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