Management!

Time and again I have asked myself "Do I really wanna do an MBA?", "What is so special about management that an engineer can't handle it","Is actually going to transform my career or I wanna do this because everyone else is doing it?".

I want to do an MBA for a career leap, MBA is like a pole vault, if I can do it I can crossover to a managerial position. But then MBA is an answer to my question only if my ultimate goal in life was to become a manager. How many of us dreamt of becoming a manager in our childhood, As a child I used to dream of making a car that would fly as well. There were others who dreamt of becoming a pilot, doctor, engineer, scientist, etc. But why all of them today are appearing for CAT.

Management is a separate knowledge domain, Engineers do not have management knowledge and the way a electrical engineer cannot do a civil engineers job well, similarly engineers without the management knowledge cannot handle a managerial position.

Management is a definitely the hip thing today. It pays well, but with evolution wealth has moved from one section to another depending on economics. There was a time when cattle were the measure of wealth, then farmers were the riches, then probably engineers with initial industrial revolution. Today it is managers. But what about tomorrow. Management has been around for long enough for it to be the thing of future. Management was actually born because of engineering. Engineering brought industrial revolution and large scale production. Large scale production required semi-skilled employees to perform repetitive activities competently, diligently and efficiently. And then coordinate these efforts to produce complex goods and services in large quantities. So management was born. Essentially management looks at human beings as machine and because these machines are not governed by n number of fundamental laws of science(which is static) management is much more complex compared to engineering. Human beings are dynamic which makes management dynamic. But important thing here is that management has same philosophical foundation as engineering has. Both the knowledge have enabled large scale production. They look at everything as production units/machines and try maximizing efficiency and the quality produced by such a unit.

Human beings are not machines because machines cannot manage themselves. If management is not going to be the hip thing in future then what else would be????? The answer can be easily deduced if we look at current revolution. After information revolution today human beings are moving towards innovation and co-creation. Human beings have two unique ability to adapt and create. With the changing times these two are becoming all the more important. Why lehman brothers a 156 years old organization which made 2 billion dollars in profits in 2007 could not adapt to changing environment of 2008 and collapsed. Having worked for lehman I can say it had one of the world class management systems in place. All its managers were world class. It collapsed because it lacked the human dimension of adaptability and co-creation. In fact in the coming days of recession a number of large organizations might come down, but small individually run business will not because they have the adaptability. Other large organization which will survive recession are organization like Apple, Toyota, which have exploited the creative dimension of human beings and have become centers of innovation.

Entrepreneurship is going to be the hip thing in future. The wave has already started. Entrepreneurship has the same philosophical foundation as innovation and co-creation. Every entrepreneur looks at his employees as complete human beings who have adaptability and creativity. A true leader today is an entrepreneur who does not lead by means of his position but by means of his ability to inspire employees to bring gift of initiative, imagination and passion to work. Tomorrow's successful organization will be more human, every human being then would manage himself, management will then become a trivial knowledge.