You can learn about management from an MBA course, but it can’t teach what kind of manager you should be.
Youneed to discover your leadership style on your own: Are you a delegatoror a hands-on manager? Should you lean more towards vision or action?Do you need to be task-driven or would it be better to buildrelationships? These are concepts you learn through 360-degree feedbackand real-life interaction, not in B-school.
A B-school can never teach you people skills. Managing teams is oftenabout building emotional bank accounts with them; that’s something youcan’t learn in an institution. Nor can an MBA course teach you toidentify and recruit senior leaders for your organisation.
Also,there isn’t enough emphasis on execution. Regular process reviews toensure strategic initiatives get converted to day-to-day operations isa critical part of running a business, but B-schools tend to overlookits importance.
Management education inIndia comes up short in dealing with global businesses. Not muchattention is paid to the intricacies of dealing with internationalcustomers and colleagues.
But perhapsthis is an area where practical experience counts more: Real life makesyou better global citizens than any course in an insulated institutioncan ever hope to. Another area where B-schools can never hope toreplicate real-life experience relates to the strategic insights anddiscoveries around new market developments.
Theability to recognise underserved or unserved markets, and act upon thatinformation, comes only when you are fully engaged in the real world.New business ideas usually spring from your operating environment, notfrom reading about business strategy.
Finally,B-schools don’t build in their students an ability to move out of theircomfort zones, whether it is behavioural (the discipline point madeabove), or about switching jobs or businesses.
Ofcourse, I don’t know how much of this is a trainable attribute, but itis a big part of big successes and needs to be recognised as such.