Experiential Learning

This post is going to be quite uninteresting because it is about mundane stuff which all of us experience everyday but still make mistakes. It is especially key learning of fresh MBA entering the corporate world. Even though I had previous work experience and knew this very well but still a stint in academic changes the mindset. These are my 3 most important learning in first two months of work:-

1)Expectation Management :-
MBA coming out of from B school working 20 hrs a day, learning a merger and acquisition case study, developing pricing strategy for new product, understanding the impact of globalization, doing industry analysis using Porter framework as part of assignments that too in a day, one can imagine his expectation from the corporate world. He considers himself fully ready equipped with all sort of management ammunition to attack the “bottom of the pyramid” and "creating value for the shareholder". He is waiting for companies to embrace him and ask him to turnaround their company. Don’t get bewildered, this is practically most of the MBA’s expectation to work as management consultant/investment manager/brand manager etc. And please don’t ask about salary and of course there is certainly location preference (after all he is “MBA”).
But wait what he finds in real world? He is not doing the expected work but is simply googling data or making some report for some senior to make presentation and no one is asking his inputs for the company’s future strategy. And what happen to salary it’s not even 50% of what he was suppose to get. Location? ? Are you joking to ask such question in globalized world? Wait didn’t mention most important point he would have landed in wrong industry all together
So you can understand his state of mind. So what should one do? Someone told don’t worry till you are in “right bus” but here there seems to be no vehicle altogether.
Relax this is fact of life and most of people would have experienced the same. It’s called Murphy’s Law. I had read somewhere “career planning = career limiting” and most of us make this mistake. We make ourself too inflexible since we have planned career well from manager to CEO in some record time of 5-6 yrs. We have fixation to profile, industry to such an extent that even if we get better opportunity in other areas we turn blind eye to it. So my only learning is plan career with caveat its never going to be way you intended. Then you may ask y plan career? Simple answer to this is that everyone of us either make gymn schedule or study schedule or take new year resolution sometime or the other knowing fully that we have always failed to follow it but that doesn’t stop us from making them. Same is true with career planning.
This is how I have reconciled myself :).

2)People Management:-
Recollect your OB lectures when everyone was sleeping wondering why one has course such as this in their program. However after an MBA, in just few months one would realize that Kotler’s and Damodaran is of not much of use nor the Peffer’s ,Prahlads and Ghemavat. You don’t need to read “Talent is never enough” by John Maxwell since you experience it. You can see very talented MBA from best of Bschool reporting to someone who is hardly graduate and this fresh from B school starts complaining about company not being able to give its employee due worth. These examples help him to reinforce his belief that company has not given right profile/money. But the fact is intellectual capability is not of much importance if person cannot drive the behavior in organization. Best of strategies are of no use if they cannot be implemented. Sales manager who cannot motivate his team to achieve their target is of no use even if he has fool proof strategy. The same is true with all the other functions of business. Everyone has a supervisor and the other fact is everyone finds his/her supervisor as biggest fool on the Earth. Moreover this is true for fresh MBA who was taught “Managing with Power” and was never taught how to work without power. It’s very important to pursue ones viewpoint rather than reconciling to the belief that the other person is fool. It requires lot of courage, persuasion power, negotiation skill and understanding of OB to get one’s work done without “power”.

3)Don’t miss forest for trees:-
Completely frustrated MBA in wrong place under fool considers his work very trivial. He fails most of the time how this trivial work of his fits in bigger picture of the organization. This may be because he is too dejected that he doesn’t even want to put an effort to visualize the big picture. This is big trap and if one falls in it then it can act as a “tipping point” after which there would be steep descent in his career. So ensure you have big picture in mind and work towards it with hope that it would be rewarded and you would get better opportunities in future.

This has been my experiential learning till now. Some of the things I have experienced and some are my opinions/belief and its quite difficult for me to separate one from other.
Quite big and boring post and it’s in my interest to stop gyaan before I loose subscribers to my blogs.