Move your MBA learning up the value chain with right ingredients & skills!

About the guest author

Vikas Patel

Manager – Strategy and Business Design
Management Consulting Firm
NITIE Mumbai

Cracked 14 Corporate Case Study Competitions

Worked across 8 industries, 9 core and enabling functions and 3 continents

 

MA: What are the typical challenges faced by B School students?

Author: MBA courses are designed to bring the best out of students. Professors and overall student machinery play an important role to append over it. However, B-Schools students are expected to pass the following litmus test (refer figure 1)

Figure 1: Litmus test- the great MBA Challenge
Mountain picture credit – publicly available source, not for profit usage for student welfare initiative

MA: What is the right approach to maximize learning during MBA programs?

Author: Focus during MBA time should be on 360-degree learning which should help you to transition into corporate life smoothly and deliver value on three fronts – (a) value for society/ consumer/ client, (b) value for the firm you will work for, (c) value for self. Following framework can be referenced to frame your approach (refer figure 2)

 

Figure 2: 360-degree value unlock framework to help students framing 2 year MBA strategy

 

MA: What are the good qualities expected from new managers?

Author: In current times, especially with COVID, roles, and responsibilities of managers / leaders have tremendously increased. Some of the examples of the qualities they are expected to show are – critical thinking, empathy, open to communication, leadership with purpose, integration, inclusion, collaboration, market and tech-savvy, insight and data-driven, flexibility, etc.

 

MA: What are the skills in demand during COVID times?

Author: The corporate way of working was already going through a shift, COVID just accelerated it. We can cover this in detail during the next article, to name a few popular skills/ capabilities – digital marketing, risk & cybersecurity, cloud computing, data analytics, RPA, AI/ML, IoT, web design, programming, etc. 

 

Disclaimer - All the views are personal. It has nothing to do with any firm/ institution

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