An MBA gives you a headstart in your career since it strengthens your business knowledge foundations. But what most B-schools, or for that matter most universities, lack today is valuable inputs that provide adequate insights to analysing or running businesses with simplicity and clarity.
Globalisation, complex organisational structures, ever-increasing competition and short-term pressures have all but buried managers under an information overload.
Most managers today are preoccupied with dealing with tonnes of data and row after row of metrics rather than concentrating on understanding and managing the top two or three aspects of their businesses.
A B-school education revolves hugely around theory and a set of guidelines that have been already tried and tested. An MBA programme in its own way explores the basic hygiene factors in business but does little to arm a student with immediate practical exposure.
Even today, some of the case studies shared with the students in B-schools are decades old! Which is why even good professors struggle to get their students to relate to the business environment described in these case-studies.
I firmly believe that there ought to be more consulting-based assignments to give students a better perspective of running a business successfully. If you have to spend a year as an intern for your medical degree, an MBA should be treated no less seriously and students should not get away with internships of just a few weeks.
It is a given that a leader ought to have a basic level of knowledge about all areas. But that should not mean that leaders also ought to spread themselves thin across all areas.
Instead they must learn to identify the topmost factors relevant to the business, and work towards managing their outcome. Unfortunately, that is still not taught at most B-schools.
Alok Sinha is Senior Vice President, professional services and technical support, and Head, Mumbai, Symphony Services. He graduated from XLRI, Jamshedpur, in 1995