Five-point MBA

Rohith Desikan*

It’s funny, how quickly time passes. For me, it only feels like yesterday when I was sitting in a  cubicle plodding through my workload with  decided indifference, when I received ‘the mail’. It was the mail that I had been waiting for, for longer than I cared to admit; the mail that had possessed my hopes and dreams ever since I had given my selection interview; the mail that would trigger a course correction in my career trajectory; the mail that would change my life, for the better (I hoped). It was March 21^st, 2012 and I had just received the mail that confirmed my admission at IMT Ghaziabad.

The next year and three-quarters have been but a flash – I have gained more knowledge, met more people, given more presentations, completed more projects and cleared more exams than I have ever before in my life. To crystallize all that I have learned over the past 20 months from IMT in one blog is a difficult, nay, impossible task – nevertheless, I shall make a stab at it.

MBA Lesson 101: if you have more information to present than is manageable, break down the content to its very essence – and use bullet points (because everybody loves bullet points). So, in keeping with true MBA tradition let me offer the five key takeaways from my time at IMT:

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     Listening: The most vital piece of learning that I take back from my MBA is the realization that it is more important to listen than to be the one listened to. People tend to trivialize the import of having exemplary listening skills but I have been reminded time and again of its benefits and cannot stress this enough: ‘active’ listening is crucial for progress – be it academic or professional.

·    Economics: It is said that ‘one of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know’. Well for one, I do know that of all the different subjects I studied in management, economics was always the most revealing. The subject is not only about making one conversant with terms like GDP and the fiscal deficit – it also provides a clue to understanding and predicting all of human intent. In short, it endeavours to provide answers to the question: ‘Why does man behave like he does?’

·   Peer-to-peer learning: Being a member of an institution with over 500 other students has its pros and cons. However, there is no mistaking the fact that it makes for a vibrant and stimulating atmosphere to learn in. Working with people from a variety of backgrounds and cultural upbringing melts away a person’s social inhibitions and does wonders for one’s self-confidence. And I haven’t even started on the concomitant network effects that it brings in conjunction.      

·   Team work: If you work with different people, on different subjects, with different timelines resulting in very different outcomes, term after term after term, you shall know more about team work than you can possibly imagine.

·   Knowing thyself: More than anything else, I realized that after doing my MBA, I had a much clearer vision and understanding of who I really was, as a person. I now know more about my strengths and weaknesses, my hopes and ambitions, and my thought-processes and opinions than I did before I set foot at IMT. If that’s not learning, what is?

If I have to describe my experience of doing an MBA with one word, it would have to be ‘transformative’. Not because of the fact that it has made me a better and more-rounded individual (which it has), or because it made me realize how much I knew or more importantly, how much I did not know about the world I lived in (which it did).

It is because of the comprehension that the learning I have gained over the course of my management education is not cumulative or complete, but is only the beginning - and shall only grow exponentially from here on in my career. And for that, I shall be eternally indebted and grateful to my alma mater.

#Thank You IMT...  

*Views are personal.