Fresh look at a topic done to death - What does industry expect from B school graduates?

Purple leap and The Hindu had arranged a panel discussion about Business education and these are some of my jottings. My apologies for not adding the names of the speakers...believe me it was difficult to get and I can not make out who said what from my scribbling pad!

Prof Prakash Apte of the IIMB made the following points:
1. Among various competencies managers need, the two most important are a. Managing Decision Making Process and b. Managing Human Capital
2.Should we create 'Managers' or people with skill sets for jobs like 'analyst' or 'market researcher'?  Companies  are looking for technically competent 'analyst' or 'market researcher' which might mean a moving down of  HR and decision making skills.
3. Diversity is very important as a lot of the learning happens between peers. IIM's seem to lack this as many of the students are engineers with no work experience, good with numbers.
4. B Schools need to revisit the value of and weightage for various selection criteria like experience (is length the only thing?), quantitative abilities, personal interview etc.

How I considered his keynote  was that there needs to be a relationship between what kind of student is taken in and the course offered in terms of content/delivery/placement opportunity and every other aspect. There can not be a one size fits all kind of approach.  In short, we need to create "Managers"  ( strategy, HR, Leadership etc)  or Business Process Professionals ( finance/ CRM....analytical and dependent decision making)   based on kind of  intake and placements.

Various speakers from industry spoke about what they expect in terms of knowledge, skills, attitude etc. of students who graduate from B schools and join the industry. This is a randomly put together which hopefully still makes lot of sense.

• Institutes need to educate students about realities of careers and get them grounded before they leave school.Students need to know that they need to do their time in the trench. Students need to know it is not a 100meter race, it is a marathon.
• Bring fresh perspectives/new ideas eg: need to know about social media marketing which may be new to the senior manager 
• Persistence of purpose
• Should have a opinion. To have a opinion one needs to have understanding and  passion.
• Balance is a essential. Emotional intelligence is a prerequisite for success. Balance also between theory and practice.
• Need to understand the context of the organization. Learn to be in  listening mode initially!
• Customer centric. Communication skills and Change management abilities...the three C's
• Intellect, inter-personal skills and integrity ....the three I's

All speakers felt that MBA grads have great expectation and are unaware of realities. One speaker went to the extent of calling them "not real people. Well packaged surreal people"

Surely I have not been great at recording all the points..but I do hope you my dear reader gets the drift. Improved communication skills especially listening skills, being grounded, good people skills, and realistic expectation are what industry is looking for apart from analytical skills, can do attitude and knowledge of concepts and new stuff. Do write in.

Welingkar - only brands bring in the premium!

That Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai was raided by the IT dept for collecting large sums of money as capitation fee is just one part of the story. There is a more important lesson, and that is that such monies can be collected only when there is substantial brand equity.

I do not know who collected how much money, and, truly , during a season when scams are being highlighted as though things were wonderful before, it is just one more. Even though I worked for Welingkar in Bangalore, trust my views are objective, considering I got no where near the Director and had heart wrenching terrible feedback from students for the first time in all my career!

The point we need to see is that Welingkar was able to charge a premium on its price because it had built a brand name. Building a higher education brand calls for addressing various student/parent relevant touch points successfully. Impressions are formed online, in classrooms, through physical infrastructure, contact personnel, placements, subjects taught, and a long list of tangible and intangible things( that should suffice for a free list!). In the last few years, Welingkar has managed this very well and hence it was able to collect the donations in a year that has seen, across the world,  a significant drop in admissions to management programs.  Whether the premium was really worth it, I think we should believe that the customer is not a fool and understands value.

Today management schools that teach a small bit of management theory, provide survival skills, and are finishing schools, all at once are what customers in India want and there are jobs for young management graduate who walk out of these schools.

Let the Income Tax guys do their jobs, while we appreciate the brand building efforts of Welingkar. It is not that Welingkar is perfect on all counts. Which institution is? I think however with solid history, some great faculty, great infrastructure and  inevitable ( education brands take for ever otherwise!)  fluff a really nice brand was built and this tax issue is not a road block, only a small bump on the road.

'India' Track in B'Schools anyone?

Views/Perspectives about India the country from contemporary  Indian management thought leaders  is rarely discussed in business schools. 

There are a few books about doing business in India, however these do not offer insights into India the land and its people and mostly discuss some aspects of culture through a foreigner lens. 


In recent years there have been many thinkers/authors who have brought to fore the opportunities/challenges/ and way of doing business in India, however, these have not been presented together as a composite body of
knowledge.

I strongly feel the  need for an ‘India Track’ in the curriculum of business schools and this has not been systematically been addressed. Sadly the university system MBA institutes will need a direction from AICTE or the university to offer such obvious courses, however, am sure some private schools can offer such a track. Whether it is of value, do read just a little further and write in.

Many recent books about Indian business by Indian thought leaders have yet to be used by teachers in B schools. Management Schools need to interact with these authors to work on a how their books can find place in the syllabus of management programs.

 There is a need to present India from the point of view of a manager to enable her to succeed in India.

What subjects/authors am I thinking about?

• Indian Economics - past, present and future. There are plenty of books in this area, however, works of Bimal Jalan or YV Reddy and similar need a look
•  Indian Psyche for Managers – Sudhir Kakkar author of Indian Psyche or even Being India by Pavan Verma
• Indian Consumers – where to find them and what  they want.  Rama Bijapurkar author of ‘We are like that only’
•  Ancient Wisdom for Indian Managers – ‘Vidura Neethi’ , Prof. Subramanian, Chennai
• Imagining India –  Nandan Nilekani
• All the three books  – from discovering the India opportunity to offering the Dharma prerequisite to the world of business – Gurucharan Das
•  Indian Demography -  Interesting and little known slices of India would be really useful. I have read a book review about a recent book in the Times of India, sadly the title and author name have slipped from my 50 yr old brain.
• Indian Society – Plenty of good books available here
• Then there are books from Shombit Sengupta, Jessie Paul, Subroto Bagchi, Jagdeep Kapoor, and Santosh Desai et.al. which should be a must read for Indian business students to expose them to ideas, paradigms, and Indian examples that are closer home. Living in Bangalore one cannot miss out including books from Ramanujam Shridhar and Harish Bijoor, even if I have not had a look at at them.

With India being central in the worlds present and future, am sure there are foreign B schools who will be interested to send their students to attend a India track semester or like it is their style, first do the classes in the home country and then send informed students to India the land of opportunity. At the end of this thread, am hoping to have a list of subjects and reference books, so do write in and contribute your ideas.  More importantly let me know what you think of this. Will this add value?

GD - The Grand Deception

Group Discussion to help reject students seeking admission to management institutes are just that. Even the cynics get convinced when you provide a argument  about the 'need' for a way to pick a few from among many equals. Leave the top rung institutes, institutes are aplenty, and it is not like a IIT type situation for sure.  This post is about how in a market that breathes the 'shortage' mindset, you can increase aspirational value by creating a fallacious shortage. Even after at least two decades have passed since shortages are a thing of the past, this mind set is available to sellers of every ware.

Management institutes conduct GD's for selection of students. Many of them conduct several rounds, I think the idea is simply to create an impression, very successfully that  " what is difficult to get must be very good" and therefore the converse being considered true too. Thankfully IIM's have got rid of it, many good B schools  need it to push students of the 'management quota' into regular merit lists required by managements or regulators, and students, whether in intellectual Bangalore or wise Patna, still swear by it and prepare for it!
Another possible myth is that Faculty are well trained to make objective assessments.

Can you apply this ploy to your product or service? Do you already do it? Let me know. I am sure many will rubbish this post...that is because they need to. Am eager to get brickbats as much as I am to get bouquets, only then can I grow

Execution, Execution, Tenacity

At first I wanted to call this post Ideas, Execution, and Tenacity as the mantra for successful entrepreneurship.Ideas are now available everywhere as are opportunities. It all comes down to systematically executing business plans and sticking to the knitting till success comes calling. I have known businessmen who made it big in the second business cycle from start date..say 10 yrs. Many younger entrepreneurs may not agree about the tenacity needed, however in my experience I have seen tenacity pay rich dividends. What about Innovation? I do not know about this, most successful new ventures do not bring new to the world products or processes. I think it is overrated for now.

Top ten sites/blogs for marketing content in India

Some day we will have jury to pick and choose the top ten. Actually my search has been limited and have looked at what I think is essential reading for a business student. Someday, god willing, I too will have a blog; that some people read!

http://www.ramabijapurkar.com/default.htm

http://santoshdesai.com/

http://onqualitativeresearch.blogspot.com/

http://www.samsika.com/

http://harishbijoor.blogspot.com/

http://www.campaignindia.in

http://www.afaqs.com/

http://fmcg-marketing.blogspot.com/

http://marketingpractice.blogspot.com/

http://www.cashcow.in

Do write in especially if your blog is better and more useful than any of the above. Happy Deepavali.
P.S : Ever thought why all advertisements (created in Mumbai of course) are trying to extinguish the differences in how the festivals are spelt and therefore pronounced across in India. I do not think this is a nice thing, what do you think?

Marketing is now about building relationships using automation!

Sounds contradictory at first, not so when you think about it in 2010. Met Pramodh, once colleague and digital marketing entrepreneur at Mysore this morning www.mysr.in . He educated me about 'closing the loop' in terms of making connections with customers, prospects, or other groups across digital media. Social media is the most enigmatic and fashionable 'buzz' word today. I am not convinced if it is established in terms of advertising organisations having someone trained and exclusively looking at this, nor am I clear about how pricing or spend levels are determined. Looks like some number is good enough. The old saying about 'half of advertising is a waste and no one can tell which half' sits nicely on digital marketing for now. of course there is lot of interesting work/research happening....my view is about general decision making in this domain.

We discussed an end to end solution for B school enrolment marketing (tough one considering students use the digital media for research and parents; who fund them, use traditional media/word of mouth to form 'impressions') and structure for a course on digital marketing which we plan to offer at the B school I work.

I do not want my blog to be some catharsis or showcase for my thoughts...much rather have diverse views on topics that I put up. If you have read this far, go a little further write in your comments please!

Price and Value Do we 'really' understand?

The Indian customer is credited as being 'value'conscious. I think this is a ploy used by retailers and manufacturers who use the term value when they actually mean price. Discount retailers are showing the way here. The customer - do you think she is sure what is good value?

We are used to awarding the contract to L1 the lowest bidder. We are happy to buy a 2 litre pressure cooker for the lowest price without comparing the steel used, materiel used for making the handles, functionality or aesthetics of design. When I see this even in institutional purchases it pains me. Are we imagining that customers are aware about how to look for value? Do let me know what you think

Research in Business Schools - Does Industry find B schools competent?

Everyone knows that research is paramount for any institution of higher education, however, we need to understand why this is not happening. The three main stake holders  Industry, Institutions and Faculty/researchers have different issues to address

Industry:

• Does not think it is worthwhile to associate with faculty who are purely theoreticians with no understanding of business reality.
• Faculty not competent to research and  deliver any valuable input 
• SME's can benefit a lot if they can associate with small schools, however, none of these have faculty who can do any customised research.
• Industry associations are spending little or no monies on research. It is only individual companies who want research to address their particular issues and so there is no way to fund research generic research which addresses broader issues impacting industry as a whole.

Institutions:

• Hire faculty with no industry experience 
• Workload allotted has no place for industry interaction or research. Teaching, Teaching, and Teaching about business only from reading text books!
• Only association that can be contemplated is with large companies/MNC's with a hope for placements or large research funding....mainly a 'image' building measure. 

Faculty:

• No training or experience in understanding research opportunities in the world of business
• Research limited to work towards Phd, getting grants, or publication credit. 
• Research is for 'adding to the body of knowledge' not to help business solve or understand real life problems.
• Plenty of research is being carried out across the world to find a cure for AIDS/Cancer or bird flu. How many business researchers are working on the problem of attrition? or decision making ( not using mathematical models but on how heuristics are developed and used). Am sure there is a research happening, the issue is how much and how relevant.

whooo...I need to improve this post. Will edit it next week in the meanwhile I am posting it with a hope that I will get some good insights on this topic

Learning about adapting Hyderabad from Malleshanna

Mallesh works for a seed company in Bangalore and sells seeds in Hyderaguda. This post may be of some interest to my friends who share a bond with Hyderabad and for others it is a story of a changing city that adapts in so many ways to the new.
Back to my chat with Mallesh on the train ( The TTE breed of new India is a refreshing change and a post on that some other time). Some of the things he told me were
1.The Chicken will get cooked but not tomatoes of the hybrid variety (laxmi 501 or similar) . The tonnage yield has gone up many times but the the sourness and taste of the "original' are lost forever
2.There are hardly any grape gardens in Hyderabad ( yes, quite a revelation to me!) most have converted to growing vegetables and the structures used for grapes are suitable for gourds of all kinds. So you get good looking snake gourd, bitter gourd, bottle gourd. etc.
3. It is extremely profitable to grow vegetables especially if you have a contract farming arrangement with modern trade or chain retailers.
4. Hyderguda is still the main market for all seeds, pesticides and farm requirements even if the farms have gone further from the city. There are 40-50 Bangalore companies selling seeds in Hyderabad.
5. The use of pesticides for vegetables is going on at unbelievably high rates. Cauliflower and cabbage needing the most.
6. Hyderabad grows carrots, cauliflower, cabbage ( both white and purple), .....once thought to be from cooler climates only
7.Sitaphal does not need any pesticides. Papaya however has recently joined the club of using high amounts of pesticides.
Shifting from traditional plants like grapes to nice looking vegetables for the modern supermarket is obvious, what surprised me was the scale of the migration that has happened. Am happy Hyderabad now gets a wide range of really nice looking vegetables...loaded with pesticides? Yes but that is true for almost any place.

Management Education. Is it time out or final whistle?

Admissions to management courses have dipped big time. The latest issue of the Economist indicates admissions have taken a beating in Europe and to some extent in the US;the Mecca. India has had "millions" of management students. This year many of the government quota seats (which come at 20-25%  cost of open seats)  in MBA programs across the country have not been filled. Except for the top two tiers of business schools, most do not have sufficient student strength.

The reasons are not far to seek. Globally ROI is diminishing thanks to campus placement. The average salary has taken a beating and in many countries getting placed on campus has become difficult. Apart from this universal factor majority of Indian B schools (of course there are exceptions!)
1. Have not provided value and charged a very high fee for many years, it was a case of limited seats and great demand.
2. Have faculty with very little industry experience and/or understanding of industry requirements and the university MBA programs do not build any skills, it is all theory culled from US authors and presented as books from authors who form part of the university or can influence the choice of suggested reading.
3.Have been used to demand outstripping supply to a great extent. The need to build a brand and have differentiators of value to students/employers was never even discussed.
4. Have always focussed on building great infrastructure which appreciates in value ( read real estate) and investing only as much as regulations demand in terms of human resources  or providing a better  'student experience'

To add to this
.
A great number of B schools were approved by the regulatory authorities making  supply far greater than demand
Industry recognised that it was better to hire undergraduates and train them rather than take on someone who has greater expectations in terms of job profile and salary. Many have started visiting undergraduate institutes and investing in training departments.
 Students are now looking at ROI more seriously as education loans are becoming necessary. Students are also keenly looking at potential 'experience'at the school instead of just 'learning'.

Only those with a clear understanding of stakeholders needs, integrated marketing strategy, strong differentiated positioning, and long institutional horizon may survive in this consolidation/shake out. It is time to watch how management schools in India respond to market forces.  In 2010 in view of low demand (even number of those writing CAT has reduced) there has been a substantial price correction for management courses and this is just the beginning...of what ? Want to speculate?

What is "Branded"?

In the Indian context "branded" itself is becoming a brand! Gullible customers assume that "Branded" stands for everything that good brands stand for. Retailers use this term in their advertisements to lure customers and sell them products of inferior quality made by small industries or those imported from china. Do brands have to stand for something? Do brands have to provide some of the advantages of branding for customers that one reads in text books? The way the word "Branded" is used in India is worth thinking about.
Marketing Innovation, or Marketing just legal, it does not matter what you think of it. "Branded" is worth spending advertising money on!
Indian customers have had to deal with a deluge of brands in the last few years, could this be the reason for not being able to distinguish  between brands that simply the term "branded" has acquired a life of its own?

My views on management, marketing and retail in India

This blog will be as valuable as the comments it receives. Many times I might not even have a firm view,  just some subject that I think needs to be considered. Please send in your comments.  Any agreement or disagreement with my views will be valuable. So dear reader I crave you write in.