Returning after 23 years to India, which he had left in 1987 after an MBA in marketing, to study communication in the US, Nagesh Rao, President and Director of MICA, Ahmedabad, is amazed to find that the conversation around how crucial communication skills are in any business or other organisation, hasn’t changed much. Greater focus on finance, marketing, production, etc and their recognition as “essential management skills” continue.

This is largely so because communication is taken-for-granted for both personal needs and career goals. The assumption then, as now, was that you either have it or don’t.

“Even today the conversation around communication as a soft skill is a little surprising, and I laugh about it because it is one of the harder skills to really master. But the field of communication itself is relatively new,” he says.

If management literature is about 100 years old then communication literature is only 50 years old, he adds.

Illegitimate child

The other problem is seeing a direct connection between communication and profit, either financial or human capital. So its value is hard to measure. Rao, who returned to India to first teach communication at the IIM-A, recalls a student telling him candidly: “When we join an organisation like the IIM-A for an MBA, finance is at the top, because we want to get into a Goldman Sachs and so on. Then come operations and marketing. And if organisation behaviour is like a step child, communication is like an illegitimate child.”

Recalling this story Rao adds, “The funny, or not so funny, thing is that every recruiter who comes to MICA or any of the IIMs, if you ask them for the top three important things they look for while recruiting, communication is at the top.” So it’s an interesting paradox that while at one level corporates understand its value, the absence of specific tools to measure its actual impact tends to lessen its value.

But the recognition of communication graduates is better in the US, Europe or Australia… but not so remarkably better that all communication graduates automatically get great jobs. But yes the awareness is higher as more alumni with communication backgrounds from business schools have taken top positions. And when they hire, communication gets much more importance, says Rao.

At MICA, his mission is to change all this by making communication and its importance a way of life. In its initial avatar, MICA created leaders in the advertising industry. Today, the two-year flagship program has specialisations in brand management, research and analytics, advertising management and account planning. This year, MICA became the first institute in South Asia to offer a specialisation in digital communication management. Digital cuts across all sectors and an expertise in this area is a must for future leaders. The curriculum focuses on a simultaneous focus on profit, planet and people - as Rao emphasises, “You cannot teach ethics in a class; it is an attitude and needs to become a way of life.”

Placement

Coming to placement, MICA students get 100 per cent campus placement with 40 per cent getting into the communication industry… major print media companies take its graduates on management side as also Sony and other electronic media companies. “And now, because we have focussed on marketing and brand management, about 30 per cent of the recruiters come from FMCG companies like Proctor and Gamble, Nestle, Loreal, etc.”

But in the last two years, says Rao, MICA has seen IT and technology companies such as Wipro, Cognizant, and more recently Amazon.com, Google and Facebook coming for campus recruitment “because of their realisation that we do focus on the business space quite a bit.” In one year recruitment from digital/e commerce companies has gone by 40 per cent, he adds.

The pay package averages around Rs 9 lakh; “the IIMs and IITs are still ahead of us primarily because as we combine strategic marketing and communication, people outside do not see us as a traditional B school and in one way we’re happy about it.” Last year the highest salary offered was by Amazon (Rs 20 lakh) With HT Media snapping on its heels with Rs 19 lakh.

Rao says that while cracking the CAT is the first requirement for admission, what makes “MICA unique is that we look for somebody with not only strong analytical but simultaneously strong creative skills as well. And it’s a myth to think if you have one you can’t have the other. Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders. And you can’t run great companies by just number crunching and associated tasks, you also need strong communicational skills. I won’t say she has to be a slick communicator. We all bring different communication capabilities and styles, but what is required is an edge”.

He thinks communication management skills are getting a greater play in Indian companies what with many Indians with Ph Ds in communication returning, as he has done after 20 years of teaching in the US, or visiting B schools on a regular basis.

Skills and strategy

Another essential for a communication expert is a not only great skills but also strategy. “In terms of what are the best arguments, or given this audience before me what is the best message I can get across and how.” He says journalists do it all the time, by using different communication strategies while delivering the same message to two different groups such as farmers in Tamil Nadu and politicians in Delhi! “So for me strategy comes first, and skill later, though both are required at different levels.”

He warns that domain knowledge is an integral part in the success of any communication professional; so a communication person also needs expertise in management, education, journalism, and so on. “A pure communication expert can cut across multiple domain functions within an organisation, but if he or she has an expertise in a particular area that combination is ideal.”

Rao is certain that the leaders of tomorrow need to have strong task and relational competencies - strong IQ and EQ. To build thought leadership, MICA introduced a doctoral program - Fellow Programme in Management (Communication) four years ago. The first graduate recently took up a faculty position in a prestigious institute.

At the end of the day, his dream is to turn out students focused not only on the “practical” aspect of his education - the pay packet. “We are striving all the time to see how we can send out contributing citizens who will add value not only to corporates, but the community and the planet.”

That will happen not only when you use both sides of your brain but also your mind, body, heart and soul in whatever you do. “How else do we leave a world that is better for our kids and grandkids. Even though we are only a two year programme B school, I keep pushing. And, it can’t happen only with students or teachers... from the mess guy to the security guard, to the office staff, students and faculty, the notion of a contributing citizen needs to become a way of life,” adds Rao.

He is worried by more and more students, and often their parents too, pushing for an education directly related to a job… “they say at the end of the course I should be able to do something directly with my degree/diploma. Such a practical viewpoint is useful but only to a degree. For example, in the MBA context students tend to ask: ‘At the end of it how much money am I going to make? In the class they say theory is useless, tell me what the practical side is. For me, that was a worry, because in the process you’re forgetting key aspects such as the people, community and the planet… that is why I keep talking about contributing citizens”.

But of course such “contributing citizens” will add great value to the organisation that recruits them too, says Rao. “We want to tell recruiters that our students bring a perspective… he/she understands the domain, is willing to think out of the box and communicate both effectively and in an engaging manner.”

Recruiters are realising that this pays, he adds. They may not have the tools to measure its direct impact but know that communication skills and strategy are huge positives. “In the future I see the connection of this to leadership much more. If you have the right communication background, your ability to become a leader, particularly in the global context, improves quite dramatically.”

Flip side of digital communication

Asked how the digital communication course can address the core issue that tends to make electronic mail impersonal, and sometimes even rude, Rao says that as in everything else, here too, the technology is open to bad use. “Yes, as we know there can be a disconnect in emails, creating a lot of negative energy. But if you look at the corporate, especially the marketing side, they are figuring it out how to move from a mass market to an extremely personalised one.” So the communication is no longer to a group of women in the 25-40 age group living in metros. It is to a particular woman who lives in Chennai or Ahmedabad, with a specific background.”

And the other side of this kind of communication can be scary too, Rao says while recalling another anecdote of a young woman who was thinking of getting engaged and was surfing Facebook. After that, every time she went online, she was followed by ads that sold only diamond rings!

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