The Hindu Business Line : <I>Five skills and a sixth sense </I>

What B-schools teach is `minds-on' management, through the use of `tools, techniques, and models'. What you need further is `hands-on', that is, the skills to apply rather than merely know, says Sanjay Tiwari in `The (un) Common Sense of Management' from Response Books (www.indiasage.com) .

"Formal management education today has become so knowledge-intensive that it is becoming skill-insensitive," rues the author. The remedy he prescribes is a `holistic' view where there are `five skills and a sixth sense'.

The five skills that Tiwari discusses are about money, logic, creativity, time, and people. Begin with the easiest, the logic skills. "Knowing the `why' behind the `what' brings in a lot more clarity in our thought process," reasons the author, as the logic behind learning logic skills. As a by-product of the `why think' you would become aware of `hidden presumptions and prejudices'.

A chapter devoted to `creative skills' explains how creativity lends `flexibility' to our thinking `to see beyond the obvious'. Time skills are about planning and keeping. "Planning for time requires the ability to look ahead in time and anticipate likely events," elaborates Tiwari. "Keeping time requires the ability to manage tasks, activities, and resources in a way that they happen as `smoothly' and `timely' as planned." Ready takeaways are techniques such as `zone of concern' and `prioritising activities' that the author suggests.

The least intrinsic of the five skills are the money skills. Yet, these are the most important. The author speaks about entrepreneurial and profit-making skills as relevant to money. Good sense of money, according to the author, is all about "developing a sense of knowing which opportunities are worth investing in, what returns to expect, and how to manage in a cost-effective way so that the cost of making money is less than the money made."

The fifth and the most intricate and intrinsic are the people skills, comprising both interpersonal and team skills. "A leader's goal is to develop people in such a way that they can perform in his/her presence as well as in absence," says Tiwari.

The sixth sense is about intuition, judgment, and insights. A key indicator of the sixth sense is balance, between work and personal life. For, "wisdom lies more in being sensible than being intelligent."

Merits an incisive read!

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D. Murali