Saturday, May 14, 2005

What is the 'buzz' about management?

Was speaking to anshu about what is the big fuss about grading management students and then chucking them out of institutes. Considering the fact that many of those chucked out have handled immense responsiblities while having been in office in favour of us 'freshers' jsut because we can mug better is preposterous. Which brings me to the fundamental question?
What is management? Is it about gettting grades, or mastery over 'management theory' ( those 'enlightening theories ranging from my poor nerd Mintzberg to the epochal 'late' Ghoshal), or is it getting the trust of your c0-workers? or is it wizardry with numbers ? Or as we always like it is it a mixture of all these things? Who the fuck knows what it is , but every bodywants to do management from a prestigious institute. Not that any of the products of these insti's are not successful, even though the companies may have been created by entrepreneur's their running has mostly been left to professional managers and the world has not been a worse place beacause of that. Gettign back to my original point, the fact that people are branded good or bad managers is preposterous. The best that one can do say that " this guy is good with people", or this guy is " numerically inclined". On the actual job, unless your slogging your ass off in an investment bank (those gods with huge pay checks and look at that car guys ) for 18 hrs , chances are taht your average numerical skills will still ensure a pretty good career for you. And since you are able to execute perfectly people will still trust you.