Sir I would like to hone my business acumen and gain structured insights into the strategic domains in which a business operates. - Clichéd answer every MBA aspirant gives in his interview.
It only takes a few months for nascent B-schoolers to realise the importance of structure. When we look at chaotic semblances of the dynamics of various industries, we look for a method to the madness. With a series of arduous classes, assignments, and projects, we soon learn to optimise our lives the way we do businesses. The article looks at four essential pillars — decision-making, risk-taking, time management, and problem-solving — that help B-school students apply their learnings in the real world.
Decision-making and risk-taking: ‘ Grey’ is the word that defines the atmosphere in which a B-school graduate is trained to operate. Optimism was never considered a business strategy. We are taught data-driven decision-making, which sometimes makes us susceptible to blindspots that the numbers miss.
We soon learn to implement game theory in our regular decisions to optimise opportunity costs. The uncertainty of the potential opportunity costs transforming into sunk costs is an inseparable aspect of the decision-making process. We learn to be more aware of our core competencies and invest our resources judiciously to maximise returns.
Time management and problem-solving : Time is the currency we trade in, and just as companies diversify to maximise their scope of returns, we too tend to do the same when it comes to initiatives that we undertake. The amount of time we devote to a particular task is a function of the probability of its success, and the extent of returns, which may be minuscule, biased by a subjective factor called passion. So, what happens when we go wrong with our calculations?
Failures are an integral part of our everyday learning. We learn about how economies of large countries have failed and survived; in comparison, the size of our personal failures seem to be trivial. Treating failures as sunk costs and understanding the fallout of an increased commitment for businesses are factors that are not only confined to large institutions but also extend to the smallest decisions of our everyday lives.
Regarding problem-solving, we are equipped with an arsenal of knowledge that we can use to solve organisational problems, and sometimes, we can use some of it to solve personal troubles too.
In conclusion, the practical exposure that students get inside a B-school not only hones their ability for business development but also helps them undergo a significant transformation, helping them achieve better personal growth.
(Aninda Halder, a student at IIM Bangalore, is a Campus Ambassador for BL on Campus.)