Saturday, February 27, 2010

Mugging

Mugging might have a different meaning in North America but in “Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow” (in fact across IIMs) it means:

Mugging = (Reading + Memorizing – Understanding)

B-schools have such a rigorous curriculum with some boring subjects (my perception) that mugging becomes inevitable to complete the course with in the stipulated time. Many a times I heard comments from senior executives from industry that B-school students are getting deeper and deeper into “Analysis Paralysis”. We do so much of analysis, somewhere down the line we miss the point why are we doing what are we doing? This may be the result of over-mugging.

So, shall we say a BIG NO to Mugging? In one of the lectures of Human Resource Management Prof. Himanshu Rai said, “Mugging is not bad”. He gave a very nice example of a doctor. Suppose that he is a big time muggu. So in the above equation Understanding = 0. However the doctor can give the medicine instantaneously as he remembers most of the things. On the contrary let us take an example of a doctor who hates being muggu. So in the above equation Memorizing =0. This doctor needs to refer books every now and then to prescribe a medicine. Obviously, a patient will trust the first doctor.

So there is nothing black and white. If people call you a muggu, say proudly, “Yes I am a muggu”.I think that one needs to strike the OMP (Optimal Mugging Point).What is that? IT DEPENDS .

What is Management all about?

A two word answer "(Right) Decision Making”.

I will give one of my experiences to illustrate the idea of decision making. In one of my exams in the course "Operations Management" a section of the question paper contained multiple choice questions.

For one of the questions none of the choices is answer. I wasted my time on it trying to fit one of the answers. After realising that I spent a lot of time I convinced myself that option(d) is the nearest and marked it. When I checked the evaluated paper I got zero marks for the question. I asked the professor. He told that none of the choices is answer. Then I said "(Yippee) Give me the marks”. He replied back, “Why, because you marked some option? You are not studying management to make some decision. You got to take right decision. When none of the options available is the right answer you should not go for any option. Learn to make appropriate decisions. This is the penalty for not making right decision”.

My education taught me many concepts, frameworks and models. It never taught me,” Understanding the problem and addressing it”. I always loaded my gun with all those concepts, frameworks and models. Let us call them bullets. Whenever I found a problem I shot at it continuously with a hope that one or the other bullet might hit. I hope that I unlearn this by the end of my MBA course.

There is nothing like “Yes and No” or “No right answer, No wrong answer”. I don’t buy this school of thought. For any problem there is one solution. It might be that you haven’t yet identified that one solution.

Why waste so many bullets? Take time to aim the target and hit it with the right bullet!