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| Sanjiv Lamba, MD, BOC India: Successful
sans the MBA tag |
Sanjiv Lamba boasts the kind of resume
any MBA would die for; only, he isn't an MBA. At 39, Lamba is the
managing director of BOC India. He started off as a junior exec, "doing
all the things no one else wanted to, including photocopying documents
and fetching coffee for the bosses", as he once mentioned to
this magazine; three-and-a-half years later, he earned a two-year
stint with the parent, impressed people there sufficiently to have
his stay extended by a further two years, and returned to India in
1997, when he was just 32, as General Manager (Finance). In late 2001,
after he had turned around the fortunes of the company, he was named
CEO (he was then 36, and the average age of employees was 43). "I
emphatically disagree with the view that an MBA is sine qua non for
running a company or indeed, for rising up the corporate ladder,"
he says. "What matters most is the ability to envision and execute;
here, experiential learning provides the single most important input
in a successful manager's repertoire." The man is right, of course,
but circa 2004, even he would find it difficult to replicate his success-without
an MBA, that is.
It isn't that business has changed enough in Lamba's years at
BOC-he is a lifer, and has spent 15 years at the company-to make
an MBA qualification indispensable, even at the entry level. It
is just that the market has changed dramatically since the time
Lamba signed on with BOC. Today, no one stops with a mere graduate
degree. Those with a bachelors degree in arts, science, or commerce,
proceed to a masters degree, either in their own discipline, or
in management; and those with a bachelors degree in engineering,
opt for a Master of Science degree in the US or an MBA from an Indian
or US B-school. At one level, this phenomenon has resulted in the
mushrooming of business schools. At another, it means it isn't really
worth its while for a company to recruit from undergraduate campuses;
there may be some undergraduates good enough to merit admission
to B-schools who choose to work instead, but their numbers are insignificant.
In effect, to get ahead and land a job with a blue-chip company,
an individual needs to possess an MBA.
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R. SURESH
MANAGING DIRECTOR/STANTON CHASE |
ATUL VOHRA
MANAGING PARTNER/TRANSEARCH |
SONAL AGRAWAL
SENIOR DIRECTOR/ACCORD GROUP |
| Does an MBA help? |
| YES |
YES |
YES |
| If you were hiring for a senior
position, and all other things being more or less equal, would
you hire an MBA or a non-MBA? |
| If we were looking for candidates for a CEO,
or any other senior position, if we have to choose between an
MBA and a non-MBA, the MBA would win hands down |
The MBA may score a few points extra but experience,
track record and results are definitely more important than
the degree per se |
If the two candidates are
the same in all other aspects, the MBA |
Just ask Ravinder Zutshi, Director, Samsung India. The man is a
science graduate (from the University of Delhi) and while he has
himself not suffered from having not gone to a B-school, he believes
the times make it imperative to do so. "The current dynamics
of business do not allow growth without being an MBA, and there
is no time for any internal (training) initiative on the company's
part." That is an opinion seconded by B.V.R. Subbu, President,
Hyundai Motor India, and another non-MBA (he holds a masters degree
in economics from Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University). So, what
is it that makes a stint in a B-school crucial? "In addition
to developing general management, analytical, and strategic thinking
skills, business schools also help in developing attitudinal skills,"
says Rajiv Kaul, Managing Director, Microsoft India, and an alumnus
of XLRI, Jamshedpur. "B-schools not only teach you resilience,
but also help you learn to cope with tremendous pressure."
That could explain why Satish Reddy, MD and COO of Dr. Reddy's
Laboratories, wished he had an MBA when he took charge in the mid-1990s.
At the time, his qualifications in medicinal chemistry and chemical
engineering seemed just right for the MD of a company that was largely
in the bulk drugs business, but as the company grew and reached
a point where it could aspire to be a global discovery-driven pharma
major, Reddy, the son of founder Anji Reddy, realised that he was
lacking "a structured pattern of thinking that comes with formal
education in management and the analysis of various case studies".
"I had to do a lot of self-learning," he says.
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SANTOSH DESAI
PRESIDENT/MCCANN ERICKSON INDIA
PGDBM, IIM-A |
RAJEEV KARWAL
CEO/ELECTROLUX KELVINATOR
MBA, IMT, GHAZIABAD |
ALOK KEJRIWAL
CEO/CONTESTS2WIN.COM
NON-MBA |
| DOES AN MBA HELP? |
| YES |
YES |
Yes and No. While it provides a window
to the best management practices the world over, it drastically
curbs entrepreneurship |
| IS NOT HAVING AN MBA A HANDICAP? |
| Not quite. It is just one way of learning
that distills and packages expertise by developing minds to
a certain extent |
Yes, if you want to be an organisation
man |
No. It is your attitude
to learning that really makes a difference |
| DOES GOING TO AN IIM
HELP? |
| Yes. Not only does your career come with
an insurance policy, the on and off interaction with quality
minds makes one operate at very high levels |
No. If you are from a lesser school,
you try that much harder |
Not relevant |
MBA, Yes, But Does The School Matter
The school matters. "Recruiters go to premier B-schools with
a view to find a certain calibre of students as the admission procedure
ensures strict quality control," explains Sonal Agarwal, Senior
Director, Accord Group. Ergo, the B-school an individual attends
has a role to play in the first job he or she lands. Pradeep Gidwani,
the managing director of Fosters India, is convinced that the "good
school advantage" counts in the initial stages of one's career.
"The B-school can be a deciding factor, but this is valid only
for the first job or so, not beyond that." That's not something
R. Subramanian, the managing director of Subhiksha Trading Services,
India's largest chain of discount stores, is likely to agree with.
Subramanian is a gold medalist from that most hallowed of Indian
B-schools, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (he was
nicknamed thalaivar, leader in Tamil for his sheer excellence in
academics) and while he concedes that an MBA from a good B-school
is critical from the first-job perspective, he insists that its
power lasts long after that. "Inside the organisation, it influences
what kind of esteem you are held in and what kind of opportunities
come your way," he says. "An IIM diploma can carry weight
all through life, but graduating from the eighth ranked B-school
may not be very different from graduating from the 40th ranked one
beyond the first job."
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SANJIV GOENKA
Vice Chairman/ RPG Group
"Since the peer group in good
schools is highly motivated, competitive and skilled, one gets
used to operating in an environment that separates the wheat
from the chaff" |
Subramanian has a point, especially in the context of the mushrooming
of B-schools in the country. "Most have no clue what they are
doing," says Subroto Bagchi, coo, MindTree Consulting (he is
a political science graduate). "This trend of trivialisation
of the degree is very dangerous." Still, the IIM-logic clashes
with the experience of recruiters such as Y.V. Verma, the head of
hr at consumer products major LG India. Verma, an MBA from University
Business School, Chandigarh, prefers to recruit from Tier II and
Tier III schools whose students, he claims, are more willing to
learn and get their hands dirty on the frontline. "They have
the right attitude and are far more humble than their counterparts
from the IIMs who walk in with a know-it-all attitude," he
says.
That may be the case, but there's no denying the advantages that
come with graduating from a top-notch B-school. "Since the
peer group in such places is highly motivated, competitive and skilled,
one gets used to operating in an environment that separates the
wheat from the chaff," says Sanjiv Goenka, Vice Chairman of
the RPG Group, and a commerce graduate from Kolkata's St. Xavier's
himself. "The two years that students spend on campus also
breeds trust and camaraderie and this can be leveraged later in
life." Goenka is speaking of the old boy network, and although
Santosh Desai, an alumnus of IIM-A, and President, McCann Erickson
India, dismisses "the bond" as something that does not
"translate into something material; you just end up discussing
cricket", it does help to open doors, and help the cause of
business. Last word: if you are opting for the life of a salaryman,
an MBA is required, and you might as well get one from one of the
better B-schools. It matters. A lot.
-Reported by Arnab Mitra, Kushan Mitra,
Priyanka Sangani, E. Kumar Sharma, Supriya Shrinate
and Nitya Varadarajan
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