“lessons you wouldn’t learn in business school – 01″
Managing business is a piece of cake if you have an MBA. Or at least this is the perception.
Personally speaking, I have nothing against MBAs in general or MBA graduates in particular. The thing is that the rise in the number of the so called “professional managers” is raising a number of questions in the circles of business. Those questions have been given a rise in the last period after the global economic crisis. This crisis which started in Aug 07 with the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market has its effects so huge today more than a year after. Many people think that the roots of the crisis lie in bad decisions made by this new generation of business leaders equipped with a certificate and who lack what the CEO of General Electric calls “Domain knowledge”.
I always thought that one science is never isolated from other sciences. Marketing, business management, cultural studies, social studies, economics, politics, psychology are all related to each other. Philosophy is still the mother of all sciences being the systematic examination of basic concepts.
Knowing how to manage a business is a circle trapped between two circles.
1. Environmental and cultural knowledge.
Whether you run a local, national or a global business it is important to know the culture of the nations, the economical trends, the political history, etc. You also need to know the perception of things in the minds of people (which may vary from an area to another), the way people understand and handle things and the practice by which they do relevant things. And by the way, this is not only a study to be put in the business plan under the header “macro-environmental studies”.
2. Domain specific knowledge
Each domain of business has its own specialties, technicalities and jargon. Sometimes those are even different from place to place. Most successful business leaders say that they have made their way from the bottom up and that’s what was most useful in their professional life.
Lessons you wouldn’t learn in business schools:
- Business management knowledge is not all you need to know to excel in your career.
- If you take a management role in a company, try to spend some time at the bottom of the pyramid and in several parts of the supply chain.
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original . Well put.
keep it up
thanks
Thanks Bilal, good to hear you liked it.
Actually, I agree with you 100%, especially when you said:”one science is never isolated from other sciences” which is a very valid point.
If you want to excel in your career, you have to develop yourself, besides listening & learning as much as you can from all kinds of people around you.
a good manager should have to know every single detail about his career, Keeping an eye open on the changes in all fields in the world.
Thanks for the topic
Thanks Qusai, totally agree. But be careful not to over-diversify your fields of interest. You will be lost and you will trapped in the perception that you know what you really don’t.
Totally agree with you, that’s why I said: “a good manager should know every single detail about his career” that means the first priority is to concentrate on a very specific field which he is involved in.
Then, at least he should have the basic information about all fields if possible as you know very well that those information are very important to have a wider vision.
“Knowledge become power only when we put it into use.”
Great insight Qusai, thank you.
Well, Majd emailed me to comment on his article, so he (and other readers) have to bear the consequences of hearing my blablablabla…
to I might agree that some conventional MBA classrooms overemphasize the science of management while ignoring its art and denigrating its craft, leaving a distorted impression of its practice.
Sometimes it’s highly recommended to get back to a more engaging style of management, to build stronger organizations, not bloated share prices. This calls for another approach to management education, whereby practicing managers learn from their own experience. It is a need that you build the art and the craft back into management education, and into management itself.
However, what, where and whom you’re talking about here? Our country? How advanced are we in the science of management so that we start taking approaches to management and management styles? Is that what is wrong about our corporate/ business/ organizational systems?
I think what should address at this stage is the principle of management itself; we are a little far from choosing weather we want to take the ‘academic & scholastic’ way or the ‘practical socio-cultural’ or whatever way of management. What we need here, I claim, is management! and I guess we have a great potential if we are equipped with right structure, the right way!
Just try to explore the knowledge of any entrepreneur or ‘Basta’ salesman in Al-Hareeka or Hamadyeea and see how aware he is of the impact of knowledge, culture and social codes on his business.
You’ll be surprised to see how ‘diversified’ the aspects that he bears in mind to keep his small business surviving and profitable, but mostly not developed!
What is really needed in local knowledge and business culture here is a new and modern ‘structure’, where management education (like MBA) turns out to be a need more than intellectual luxury, as it’s perceived by some people.
Thanks Anas for the comment, I like what you said that business knowledge should not be an intellectual luxury, this is exactly the point.
I wrote this article from a global prospective. When we want to look at the local scene, it is true that we are not that advanced in what you called “the science of management”. Although I don’t think there is a common definition for this phrase. Managing business is not a bunch of theories and approaches only, it is a wide technical and practical complications which involve economics, math, social and cultural knowledge and many other things.
Again, I have nothing against business schools. They are very important to learn the business culture and the standard of doing business in our world. What I don’t like is to be trapped in a world of theories which may not be applicable in so many environments.
As you said, it is very important to know the culture and the aspects which are important run your business. This is a talent you find in a sales man in “hamidieh” but you rarely find in a CEO of a multinational company.