10 Things to learn while getting MBA!

Text Courtesy: Akshay, Student of MBA.
Get the Context Right

•This is an important point and almost all of the remaining points can be linked to it.

•Context can be emphasised with regards to any discipline and everyone’s approach is based on their own perceptions. Nonetheless the key principle for any academic or business scenario is to get the necessary exposure, understand all micro and macro factors applicable and visualise the other party’s viewpoint.

•Context in essence, also revolves around getting rid of mental models (preconceived notions and assumptions). This is easier said than done and takes a lot of time to perfect.

Look Towards The Future

•Good companies look both backwards and forward. But you cannot blindly extrapolate trends and figures from the past into the future and hold the same assumptions true.

•Information from the past may be important because it helps you to test your assumptions, and to understand how you got to where you are. But assumptions that hold true today might not hold true in the future and you will not be in a position to point out when certain patterns will occur again. You need to analyse the underlying driving forces and many organisations struggle with this.

Get Rid of Binary Viewpoints

•The biggest mistake people make in the corporate world is that they take a binary point of view. As per them the situation is either simple enough to use standard modelling tools or it is too complex to do anything.

•But the reality is that in most cases there is more to the picture and without establishing the strategic uncertainty and multiple possibilities you cannot apply standard B-School tools like Porter’s Value Chain, RBV (Resource Based View) and NPV (Net Present Value). These tools are static not dynamic. People even try to use sensitivity analysis or make some criteria stiff but that alone might not be enough, and you may need multiple levels of analysis.

•Nonetheless, despite limitations, models are still partially useful because:

•They are a good starting point and can help you identify what is missing.

•Even if they cannot tell you everything they can tell you what is definitely wrong.

•At the end of the day businessmen take factors beyond data into account while making decisions and heavily rely on their gut instinct but the rule is to use your instinct after you have digested plenty of data.

Don’t Get Prescriptive

•Business schools want to prepare you for the career ahead. In this context, while you do have a lot of assignments and case studies, the objective is not to make you mug up what a successful company did. There is no formula for success and there is no right or wrong answer as strategy cycles become shorter and change becomes more dynamic.

Decision Making

•Ten years after your MBA, you are not going to remember how to calculate beta or do linear programming. But what a good MBA should do for you is help you make sure you take the right decisions, ask the right questions, handle situations as well as possible and go through processes that help you keep track of a broader range of issues and possibilities compared to what you could have earlier identified.

•B-Schools want you to have a rigorous and unbiased decision making process. They also expose you to decision making under uncertainty. We were shocked to see the limited amount of background information that actually facilitated big international deals!