Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

Abstract

t without getting any sleep and then attend regular classes starting at 9 am.</p><p id="f672">That was the first time I went about 36 hrs straight without a single minute of sleep. However, it was the first of many more through the 2-year period.</p><p id="1127">The other instances came with crazy assignments that had steep deadlines, or exams announced at a short notice, and various other challenges that an MBA is designed to throw at you.</p><p id="b571">Investment banking is known for demanding the ability to work at any hour and pull “all-nighters”. So for me and many of my classmates who ended up in finance or even in consulting, the skill to work at any hour with high efficiency was an extremely valuable one.</p><h1 id="f98a">#3 — Mediocrity Isn’t Always a Bad Thing</h1><p id="d711">Before you get to a Harvard or a Wharton or any other top tier B-school in the US or your own home country, the feeling of triumph and making the cut makes you feel invincible.</p><p id="917a">However, the rude awakening happens when you bump into peers that are so much smarter than you on various accounts. Some have already worked at a top firm for many years before going for their MBA and are semi-pros at marketing even before taking the first marketing class, others have an undergraduate degree in Economics when you are struggling to tackle the Economics 101 class.</p><p id="d2fa">I was a topper throughout high school and my undergraduate degree but during my MBA I was surrounded by such smartness that I was usually just happy getting by with average middle-of-the-class grades.</p><p id="da78">I would occasionally even get the sub-par C grades during the challenging relative grading, but I was just happy I survived without a single Fail grade!</p><p id="62a1">The definition of success and failure gets hugely modified and you learn to accept mediocrity and even the occasional failure in some areas and learn that you can’t possibly be the best at everything.</p><h1 id="6ee0">#4 — You Scratch My Back, I Scratch Yours</h1><p id="5e11">I went into my MBA with an engineering degree in computer sciences, while I had a classmate who came from an accounting background.</p><p id="8ae9">So the wise thing to do clearly was for us to combine forces based on the need of the hour. While I helped him learn the basics during our IT systems management course, he helped me get through the basics of Accounting 101 when I couldn’t tell a P&L statement from a balance sheet.</p><p id="4a99">Similarly, I had friends who were experts in economics, or strategy, or financial modeling who each helped me and other classmates by taking group classes for these courses to ensure that the collective intelligence was greater than the sum of the parts.</p><p id="3289">In the corporate world as well, you need to find colleagues that have complementary skillsets to yours. If you are great at presentations but can’t work your way around an excel sheet, find someone who can and use their help. Similarly, help them the next time they need to make an impressive presentation so the relationship is mutually beneficial.</p><h1 id="d626">#5 — Introduction to the Types of Office Characters</h1><p id="a86c">People are people and their true nature remains the same whether it is at school or in a corporate setting.</p><p id="8ba8">So the B-school is the perfect place to observe and learn about the kind of people you can expect to face in an office setting and i

Options

t can help you prepare yourself on how to tackle each kind.</p><h2 id="64f6">Mr. Know-it-all or the Self-Proclaimed Star</h2><p id="18f3">There is always that one person in a class who has an answer to every question the professor poses to the class.</p><p id="3cd5">He/she is also not shy to make it known that they have the answers. This person is usually not very well-liked for obvious reasons but tends to do well in terms of grades.</p><p id="fdb1">At work, this is the annoying colleague who has an opinion and a view on everything, particularly even when it isn’t their place to speak.</p><p id="85ab">They are the ones to reply to an email within a minute even when it is addressed to the whole team or someone else on the team to ensure they can steal your credit and not let go of a chance to shine, often and preferably at the cost of someone else.</p><p id="fac8">The solution to this is to often let this run its own course as this sort of behavior, while often initially appreciated as eagerness and knowledge, is often later identified and ignored even by the professors and the bosses.</p><h2 id="0391">The Omnipresent Free-Rider</h2><p id="c090">This is a disease that plagues any team setting whether it is at school or at work or anywhere else.</p><p id="ef67">This is the smartass who carefully joins a group of high performers, pretends to contribute but in reality just simply free rides on the output of the rest of the team without making any contribution of significance.</p><p id="280d">Yet when the results are great, the free-rider is always there to take credit as much as the rest of the team without any qualms of their lack of contribution.</p><p id="fea8">These folks need to be identified and called out so that their behavior can be corrected, and everyone else doesn’t suffer because of them.</p><h2 id="aefe">The Smiling Assassin</h2><p id="641e">This is the quintessential backstabbing <i>“polite and nice on the outside, evil and cunning on the inside”</i> sort of person.</p><p id="63e6">The majority of the time of this person is spent in hatching plans to use others to their advantage, in a way that no one can point a finger at them because their apparent demeanor is absolutely harmless and proper.</p><p id="b30a">At school, this is the person who will pretend to panic ahead of a surprise quiz with everyone, to show solidarity, but secretly be fully prepared and often even the one who’d plant the idea of a pop quiz in the professor’s head.</p><p id="a5b1">At work, this person will sing your praises and show full support to your boss, but then separately write a private email to your boss flagging multiple issues with your presentation. Or, worse, they’d gain your trust and be on your trusted list of performance reviewers at year-end, and then sabotage you by writing a stinking review.</p><p id="f858">These are the ones you need to learn to spot early and be extremely wary of.</p><p id="12c1">While there is the natural learning of the academic courses the MBA will teach you, the true value of an MBA degree is in these valuable “life skills or lessons” that it teaches. The ability to work with different kinds of people with varying areas and degrees of expertise is not something you can learn in theory.</p><p id="3930">In many ways, the one or two years of the course is a high-pressure simulation environment preparing you for the challenges of the corporate life that lies ahead.</p></article></body>

5 Corporate-Life Lessons an MBA Really Teaches You

#4 — You scratch my back, I scratch yours

Back in 2010, when I was taking the entrance exams for the top B-schools in India, my main expectation from it was to make me an expert in the field of my choice — in my case Finance, so I would land a job at a top-notch firm with a handsome salary.

The primary skills I hoped to acquire were the traditional financial modeling, balance sheet analysis, consumer behavior, marketing strategies, 6-sigma operational excellence, and the usual areas you’d expect to learn from a postgraduate business degree.

I managed to ace one of the top entrance exams in India with a 99.95 percentile — meaning I had secured a top 50 rank among over a hundred thousand applicants who took the exam.

And hence began my 2-year journey at one of the top 5 business schools in India towards that coveted MBA that would be my free pass straight into the glamorous corporate world.

However, today over 8 years into my corporate career at a top investment bank, the real learnings that still help me today didn’t come from any of the courses I took during the MBA.

The real learnings were aspects that the 2-year residential program taught me about dealing with pressure, people, and productivity.

#1 — Cut-Throat Competition Begins Here

If there is one harsh reality about the corporate world, it is the fact that it is each man for himself.

Your closest of friends or your fiercest of rivals — when it comes to professional competition, you cannot expect anyone to fight your battle for you — they’ll instead happily go up in arms against you.

MBA is quite the same. Most top schools follow the concept of “relative grading” which is the crux of how performance evaluation works in the corporate world. You may be amazing at what you do but if everyone else is even better, you are as good as a failure.

Scoring an 18 on 20 on a test is a bad result if everyone else scored 19 or 20 while scoring a 10 is great if no one else managed to cross the single digits.

With that sort of dynamic determining your success, the last thing you should expect is co-operation or support from your classmates, no matter how good of friends you may be with them.

So when you are stuck on an assignment, don’t expect others to go out of their way to help, be prepared to find your own way.

#2 — Learning to Tame the Beast Called Sleep

The first event for the incoming class of students at my school was organized by the seniors or the 2nd year students.

It was never an official event but it had the blessings of the faculty who were involved in various aspects of judging the event.

It was essentially an event where you pick a random existing or fictional product and then design a marketing plan around it within a fixed budget and a 12-hour timeline. The 12 hours began at 8 pm and lasted till 8 am.

Yes, you were expected to do it overnight without getting any sleep and then attend regular classes starting at 9 am.

That was the first time I went about 36 hrs straight without a single minute of sleep. However, it was the first of many more through the 2-year period.

The other instances came with crazy assignments that had steep deadlines, or exams announced at a short notice, and various other challenges that an MBA is designed to throw at you.

Investment banking is known for demanding the ability to work at any hour and pull “all-nighters”. So for me and many of my classmates who ended up in finance or even in consulting, the skill to work at any hour with high efficiency was an extremely valuable one.

#3 — Mediocrity Isn’t Always a Bad Thing

Before you get to a Harvard or a Wharton or any other top tier B-school in the US or your own home country, the feeling of triumph and making the cut makes you feel invincible.

However, the rude awakening happens when you bump into peers that are so much smarter than you on various accounts. Some have already worked at a top firm for many years before going for their MBA and are semi-pros at marketing even before taking the first marketing class, others have an undergraduate degree in Economics when you are struggling to tackle the Economics 101 class.

I was a topper throughout high school and my undergraduate degree but during my MBA I was surrounded by such smartness that I was usually just happy getting by with average middle-of-the-class grades.

I would occasionally even get the sub-par C grades during the challenging relative grading, but I was just happy I survived without a single Fail grade!

The definition of success and failure gets hugely modified and you learn to accept mediocrity and even the occasional failure in some areas and learn that you can’t possibly be the best at everything.

#4 — You Scratch My Back, I Scratch Yours

I went into my MBA with an engineering degree in computer sciences, while I had a classmate who came from an accounting background.

So the wise thing to do clearly was for us to combine forces based on the need of the hour. While I helped him learn the basics during our IT systems management course, he helped me get through the basics of Accounting 101 when I couldn’t tell a P&L statement from a balance sheet.

Similarly, I had friends who were experts in economics, or strategy, or financial modeling who each helped me and other classmates by taking group classes for these courses to ensure that the collective intelligence was greater than the sum of the parts.

In the corporate world as well, you need to find colleagues that have complementary skillsets to yours. If you are great at presentations but can’t work your way around an excel sheet, find someone who can and use their help. Similarly, help them the next time they need to make an impressive presentation so the relationship is mutually beneficial.

#5 — Introduction to the Types of Office Characters

People are people and their true nature remains the same whether it is at school or in a corporate setting.

So the B-school is the perfect place to observe and learn about the kind of people you can expect to face in an office setting and it can help you prepare yourself on how to tackle each kind.

Mr. Know-it-all or the Self-Proclaimed Star

There is always that one person in a class who has an answer to every question the professor poses to the class.

He/she is also not shy to make it known that they have the answers. This person is usually not very well-liked for obvious reasons but tends to do well in terms of grades.

At work, this is the annoying colleague who has an opinion and a view on everything, particularly even when it isn’t their place to speak.

They are the ones to reply to an email within a minute even when it is addressed to the whole team or someone else on the team to ensure they can steal your credit and not let go of a chance to shine, often and preferably at the cost of someone else.

The solution to this is to often let this run its own course as this sort of behavior, while often initially appreciated as eagerness and knowledge, is often later identified and ignored even by the professors and the bosses.

The Omnipresent Free-Rider

This is a disease that plagues any team setting whether it is at school or at work or anywhere else.

This is the smartass who carefully joins a group of high performers, pretends to contribute but in reality just simply free rides on the output of the rest of the team without making any contribution of significance.

Yet when the results are great, the free-rider is always there to take credit as much as the rest of the team without any qualms of their lack of contribution.

These folks need to be identified and called out so that their behavior can be corrected, and everyone else doesn’t suffer because of them.

The Smiling Assassin

This is the quintessential backstabbing “polite and nice on the outside, evil and cunning on the inside” sort of person.

The majority of the time of this person is spent in hatching plans to use others to their advantage, in a way that no one can point a finger at them because their apparent demeanor is absolutely harmless and proper.

At school, this is the person who will pretend to panic ahead of a surprise quiz with everyone, to show solidarity, but secretly be fully prepared and often even the one who’d plant the idea of a pop quiz in the professor’s head.

At work, this person will sing your praises and show full support to your boss, but then separately write a private email to your boss flagging multiple issues with your presentation. Or, worse, they’d gain your trust and be on your trusted list of performance reviewers at year-end, and then sabotage you by writing a stinking review.

These are the ones you need to learn to spot early and be extremely wary of.

While there is the natural learning of the academic courses the MBA will teach you, the true value of an MBA degree is in these valuable “life skills or lessons” that it teaches. The ability to work with different kinds of people with varying areas and degrees of expertise is not something you can learn in theory.

In many ways, the one or two years of the course is a high-pressure simulation environment preparing you for the challenges of the corporate life that lies ahead.