The Hindu Business Line : Management graduates need to change focus

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Management graduates need to change focus

The crisis in investment banks should spur B-school graduates to imbibe practices that will serve them well in the long run.

— G.P. Sampath Kumar

In perspective: The financial crisis has driven home the need for young management graduates to equip themselves for long-term professional growth.

Ganesh Chella

A management graduate can be described as one who has acquired knowledge and developed skills in a number of areas that together constitute the science and art of management. This enables him or her to bring professionalism to the management of enterprises by shaping management practices, demonstrating management and human skills and creating new management knowledge in a socially and environmentally sensitive and sustainable manner, keeping in mind a global perspective.

A momentum player is a trader in the stock or commodities market who identifies a trend in the price movement of a security and rides the trend as long as it is profitable.

While the media is hugely sympathetic towards the current batch of business school graduates because of their disappointing employment prospects with international investment banks, I am not. I am, instead, tempted to look at what caused all this in the first place. In my opinion, management graduates have landed themselves in this position simply because they have lately been behaving more like traders keen to ride a profitable trend and less like professionals who want to make a difference in the field of management.

To be fair, all business school graduates want to find the best possible job on campus. Peer pressure and pressure from their families is understandable. I have been through that myself. The desire to do well has, however, now been replaced by greed and a mindless pursuit of instant wealth. It has robbed them of the ability to discern between what is attractive and what is good for them based on their strengths and natural preferences. Under difficult circumstances, this greed has given way to desperation. Many are now suddenly inclined to work with companies that would otherwise have been unwelcome on campus. Why, some are even considering entrepreneurship, as if entrepreneurship is what people get into if they can do nothing else! How much panic can one bad season cause to otherwise bright minds, I wonder.

I think this is a good time for serious reflection – both by students and educators. Here is my humble contribution to this reflective process.

The foundation of knowhow

Management education merely exposes students to concepts and ideas. It does not give them a feel for how things actually work or the knowhow. Acquiring knowhow takes time and a long-term orientation. For a long time, management graduates were hired keeping the long-term in mind. Their training and their job placements helped them acquire the knowhow in a stress-free environment. However, the obscene pay levels on campus and the changing values of young graduates have led organisations to do away with the run-in period and view them as talent for today, thereby robbing them of the opportunity to learn the fundamentals.

To reverse this trend, management graduates must choose jobs that help them build this solid foundation of knowhow. This may call for a reasonable tenure, some initial sacrifices and hardships and readiness for delayed gratification.

The foundation of managerial competencies and social skills

Good managers must learn both analysis and synthesis. They should learn to see both the fine print and the big picture. Good managers must also be able to plan, control, delegate, take decisions and secure results. Management graduates must make conscious career choices that help them learn these valuable skills on the job in order to become sound managers. Those who fail to build this foundation of basic managerial competencies in the early days suffer immensely in later years when they are called on to lead teams or businesses.

Good managers must also learn to act intelligently in their social relationships with team members and peers. They must be able to respect, listen, empathise, influence and collaborate intelligently. Management graduates must therefore spend their formative years becoming more self-aware and developing these valuable skills. Is it not easier to learn and change early in one’s career? Those who fail to develop these social skills hurt others and destroy their own careers.

The foundation of professional values in action

Good managers must have a solid foundation of values in action. They must have a clear sense of what is right and wrong, what is ethical, what is fair, what is human and what is sustainable. The early years of work must be devoted to imbibing these values.

When management graduates get carried away by momentum-led opportunities and want to make huge sums of money in an almost undeserving manner, they put themselves on the fast lane where the margin for error is zero and the consequences are severe. When they give themselves the time to pick up speed, they build a foundation on which they can reap returns a while later.

Lord Krishna explains this so beautifully in Chapter 18 (verses 36 – 38) of the holy Bhagvat Gita when he compares sattvic happiness with rajasic happiness.

He describes sattvic happiness as that which in the beginning is like poison (because of all the self-control, self-discipline and constant effort), but in the end is just like nectar because of the sense of fulfilment and inner peace it gives. He contrasts this with rajasic happiness which at first is nectar-like, but in the end like poison because of its transient nature.

Business schools have lessons to learn too. They must stay committed to their espoused vision of bringing professionalism to management, creating new knowledge, creating entrepreneurial, ethical and socially sensitive and humane global managers. If they cannot do this, they must at least borrow and reproduce this line from the financial services industry in all their full-page ads: ‘Investment in management education is subject to market risk. Please read and understand all business trends carefully before investing.’

(The writer is the founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR consulting firm. He is also the co-founder of the Executive & Business Coaching Foundation India Ltd. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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Management graduates need to change focus