“While most are dreaming of success, winners wake up and work hard to achieve it”
MBA. This particular acronym is now commonplace in the verbatim of every individual. Highly polished professionals who have God level communication skills are masters of their domains yet jacks of all trades are the perception that comes up with the term, and not without good reason since many do fulfill this role.
But what doesn’t come to the limelight is the intense pressure and work it takes to form this end product. Think of a Diamond, a lump of coal subjected to immense pressure for a prolonged period to form a priceless material. Yet, until the value of the material is recognized and polished and treated well, the real value isn’t achieved.
While our traditional education system focuses predominantly on classroom and theoretical based achievements and parameters, for a would-be manager it is important to be exposed to real-life scenarios for application of their knowledge. Many people do argue that solving cases in classrooms and conducting activities are a breakthrough, but I do beg to differ. Case studies taught in classes are usually classic scenarios and cases but they have already become redundant in real time and often are constricted to one view, while activities, of course, innovative again limit one to a constrained way of thinking and application which makes us something like robots being programmed to carry out a particular task.
What most people tend to forget in such cases is that MBA is not only about academics, but also the extracurricular activities and other exposure it brings along with it, one of them specifically being
Competitions.
HUL Lime, Mahindra War Room, ABG HeadstaRt, Marico Over the wall, Tata Steel-a-thon these names must be familiar to anyone pursuing an MBA course anywhere in the country.
Competitions are a different class of beast which not only tests your knowledge on a particular domain you might be pursuing but encompasses different other domains and hence makes you think and analyze them from a different perspective. For e.g. In a product development case often categorised as a marketing case study competition not only do you take into consideration which channel can attract customers and increase the sales but also how scalable is it in terms of investment (Finance), what would be needed to optimize in the company manufacturing and supply chain (Operations and Supply Chain) and how will such a shift lead to a change in company business functioning and demand of skills and how to compensate for the manpower demand (HR). Hence they try and find an ingenious solution within the organizational framework.
These tend to help the participants expand their knowledge and horizon over the different aspects of a business as they have to think on the fly and need to improvise based on their research on the organization as each solution will have a different implication for different scenarios and companies. Not to mention the cases and simulations which the candidate has to attempt across various rounds are based on the real-life problems being faced by the particular organization, hence they are able to innovate and get a flavour of different domains. Companies also try and find the best solutions which are applicable to them and as a reward for recognizing the talent they get the best solutions presented to the business leaders who are key to implement these decisions, which in turn may result in the best of the best being hired to the organization. Thus participants constantly keep upgrading their all-around skills and knowledge.
The research which is usually done by the participants to just understand the problem statement and potential solution exposes them to different domains and helps them predict outcomes and future steps, which can be taken by the organization.
They also help in bringing laurels to the particular college the students represent and put them on the map of being potential recruiters from the said campuses where the best talent can be found consequentially attracting more talent, in the long run, a bonus for both the college and recruiter.
While this path does exist, it is the onus of the students to achieve “Self-Actualization” and understand the value that such events add to their records and work hard for their own development and that of the college they represent. The college must on its part promote and establish a culture of competitiveness and create a conducive environment for the realization of said goals, thereby making them hotbeds of talent.
- Divash Mishra
MBA-HRM (2017-2019)