Management mantra: Sometimes it's better to lose

What the educators at B-schools often forget is that management is an
experiential discipline. It is not about the law of gravity or the
theory of pure dynamics, where things happen in one particular way.

In management, a particular approach or a set of policies could work
well in one company, but not in another. Similarly, a management style
may work well in one organisation, but may fail in another.

What B-schools largely miss out at one level are the softer issues,
and at another, the more practical issues that make you succeed. The
focus is more on being analytical.

In the real world, you can be analytical, but if you are not sensitive
to emotions, you may find several situations and business problems
hard to handle.

To give you an instance, at B-schools the focus is always on how to
win -- in business, negotiations and so on. No B-school teaches you
that sometimes it is important to lose.

In the corporate world, there are situations when you could easily
win, but strategically, it is good for you to get some allies for a
larger objective you're trying to achieve.

To get more people with you, it's important that you give more weight
to someone else's view. So long as you can live with the other idea,
you may let the other person win, because that's how you can win the
person to achieve your larger objectives.

There are a few more things that B-schools haven't focused upon much.
One, authority should not be mistaken with titles. The authority you
get should come from the value you add, and companies too should value
their employees in the same way.

Two, there are few business schools that focus on the need to be
entrepreneurial. Today, the business cycles are rapid, things change
quickly and we need people who can think out-of-the-box, we need
managers who have a strong entrepreneurial sense. Unfortunately,
B-schools haven't done much on these fronts.

Saurabh Srivastava is executive chairman, Xansa Outsourcing and
Technology. He did his masters in Management Sciences and Applied
Mathematics from Harvard University in 1969.