Knowing is not enough, we must apply it. Willing is not enough, we must do it.

This maxim sums up the much required change in the MBA of the present.

We may praise institutions for churning out managers at the speed of thought every six months; we need to get present to the ground realities by taking an empathetic view of the situation.

Most of the (so called) managers that come out in huge numbers every year are not the ones the industry demands. ‘They might be reservoirs of knowledge, but then they are of no use if they do not know what to do with that or how and where to use that knowledge,’ says Surya Narain Bahadur, executive director with a Delhi based training company. He goes on to say, ’in fact when people are tagged MBA; it makes the journey harder for them because of the expectations it sets in the mind of employer – industry wants business ready people, who are self driven and do not wait for instructions’.

This book driven MBA, therefore it appears does not work well. There is a need in shifting the paradigm. We need not do a lot of analysis, the answers are there. The MBA of the future needs to be more market oriented, so much so that that the two years of education should be considered as two years of work experience. There lies the future of the MBA.

The book ‘Rethinking the MBA: Business education at crossroads’ by HBS professors Srikant M. Datar and David A. Garvin, on the future of MBA education makes references to some of the problems of the current MBA education. One of the problems they highlight is the limitation of models and markets as the rubber meets the road.

MBA education of future needs to focus on high level of self awareness and a corresponding ability to relate with others in the team and the organization. Are we talking about psychometric or spirituality here? Well that is for the industry to decide, but psychometric testing on self awareness is certainly picking up specially for filling many leadership positions.