Career in Management: A Professional Practical Discussion

My college professor, a well-renowned professional in his field, once taught me that “the more uncertainty you ride, the more you get paid”. And that day, the reality of work life dawned upon me. Any professional could have equally demanding jobs – a chef and a hotel manager, for example.

But what determines the pay is the level of uncertainty they deal with – conjuring up a flavourful dish for any order that comes your way v/s delivering a superior and overall satisfying experience to a walk-in customer. Of course, there can be many factors at play here: the skill of the chef, the scale of operations of the hotel, and your general attitude as an individual. 

But the biggest determinant of it all, and perhaps the most challenging one to control, is definitely uncertainty. This could be in terms of:

• customers’ tastes and preferences (deciding whether to have a pure-veg menu in a restaurant), 
• economic conditions governing the system (planning for spikes in demand due to seasonal changes), and 
• overall organisational structure (available resources v/s deployment combinations) 

So what is it that renders an organisation the ability to deal with uncertainty? In this article, I answer this question by describing a career field that is future-proof against any robotics and AI uprisings that people predict will take over the world, and is also something so indispensable to human beings that not even worldwide epidemic outbreaks like Covid-19 can dissolve it.

Illustration

Nothing drives the point home better than a practical example. So here’s one, illustrating the idea that will emerge from this discussion. 

Suppose you have 5 boxes that you want to shift from point A to point B. Let’s see how you can perform this bit of work:

1. You can lift one box, move it across A to B, get back and repeat the process. (Manual Process)
2. You can get a small cart (like a shopping cart), load all the boxes on, and take it across. (Equipment-aided Manual Process)
3. You can set up a conveyor belt between A and B, place the boxes upon it and let it carry the boxes away, then unload at point B. (Mechanisation)
4. If you are work-averse (that’s my made-up term for lazy:P), you can hire a couple of workers to shift the boxes for you. (Outsourcing)
5. And finally, if you are insanely rich, you can book a flight and send them away (I never mentioned how far apart the points were!). (Simple transportation)

So you can see that there are many different ways of performing the same bit of work. Now, how do you decide which way you are going to take? 

To being with, you are going to have to analyse what suits your requirements. These might be in terms of:

1. Cost: How much money do you have and how much are you willing to spare upon this particular chore?
2. Time: Is the job urgent or can it wait? 
3. System Integration: Does a particular way of working fit with your overall operations. For example, in the above illustration, you wouldn’t outsource the task if you weren’t lazy.

And when you do sit and analyse these factors and more, and make a decision that helps you get the most out of this situation, you have managed it well. And that is exactly what this is all about… Management.

Definition

To quote my class XII Business Studies textbook, “Management is the art of getting things done.” Well, the definition is pretty simple and straightforward compared to the elaborate web I spun around the term, I admit. But the foundation I have created will help you piece the following description together pretty well:

• As you can see, there are a number of different approaches to deal with a single problem. 
• And as if this fact wasn’t complicating the scenario enough, we have several uncertainties to deal with. 

I mean, who knows what will happen tomorrow? Let’s say, today I purchase a rare quality wood to make premium furniture, but suddenly environmentalists raise concerns and the government bans the use of that wood altogether! Or suppose I invest thousands in extending a branch of my Lebanese restaurant to a posh locality, only to find that the people there are dominantly vegetarian! 

All these are the types of challenges that businesses and organisations face in dealing with the world. And the simple source of these challenges is that the world is uncertain, and you have to negotiate it any way you can if you want to survive. That’s where management meets uncertainty. That’s where you use your decision-making skills to arrive at a solution that is optimally suited to your specific needs. That’s where you can make money.

Why Choose Management for Higher Education

There are several good reasons for pursuing a degree in Management:

1. Most of the Management courses do not come with any robust educational background requirements. This means that no matter what stream you were in, you can easily enrol into a Management degree. 
2. The starting pay might be at the lower end for a graduate student. But a postgraduate degree, especially from a premiere college, could get you a very high and promising pay-package.
3. It equips you with the knowledge to systematically solve problems that businesses face. This problem-solving capability is highly valued by businesses and they are willing to pay high numbers for it.
4. No matter which field you go to – be it IT, finance, marketing – every position in every field requires you to be a good manager. And that is why, this is one of the skills that can take you to insane heights. This is also why a degree in management is one of the most popular education in the country. 

What a Management Degree Entails

A degree in Management will give you an in-depth knowledge of the way work is organised and executed in an establishment. This represents the ideal way of working, without taking any kind of system constraints into account. This is knowledge developed and accumulated over decades of careful analysis and study of working. The application of the knowledge, undoubtedly, depends upon a lot of varying factors that are linked to uncertainty, and will depend upon the situation and the person dealing with it. 

What adds value to this literature knowledge is case study analysis – it serves as a trial ground to test your learnings by applying them to real-life situations. Here, you get a problem along with the operating constraints of the particular organisation, and you come up with a solution based upon a careful analysis of the constraints and the knowledge that you have gathered. It might get a little messy sometimes – you may not be able to arrive at a satisfying solution, and might have to resort to a compromise, but real life is messy and this learning helps you to deal with challenges with your work in future. 

Role of Specialisations

An organisation is basically a system with many separate parts that are working together to create a collaborative output. Each part has its own unique challenges and requires particular skills to deal with them. 

Remember, an organisation is not looking for a person who can perform 10 tasks of different nature. Instead,

• they just want the person to do 1 task for them, 
• but do it repeatedly, 
• along with its associated activities, 
• in a way that his/her output is more than that of an average individual performing the same task.

Hence, out of the plethora of areas that you can upskill yourself in, you need to understand which activities you will be performing repeatedly and what will help you do what you do better. Based upon that, you can gain those skills and see the rocket of your career take off!

Popular Management Specialisations

So having discussed about management education and the role of specialisation, it is time to discuss some popular management streams that you can specialise in to get a rewarding career. 

• Finance: This is not your mundane accounting work. Every organisation needs funds, and there is a multiplicity of sources from where they can get the funds, along with places where they can spend it. Now, raising funds comes with a cost (interest), and utilising funds provides returns. A finance manager basically handles this by determining the most appropriate source of funds (to achieve cost economies), and using it to generate maximum returns. 
• Operations: It refers to the principal revenue-generating activity of a business. In a hospital, for example, treating patients’ ailments is an operating activity as it is the main source of income, while maintaining cleanliness is essential but not directly income-generating. Operations management deals with the former activities. These are different for each business, like civil engineering is operations for a builder while baking is operations for a bakery. Specialised studies exist for each of the many businesses, like Hospital Management, Hotel Management, Tourism, etc.  
• Marketing: In the age of information, manufacturing a product does not mean it will sell. Competition and product substitutes always exist in the market. To attract the customers, an organisation needs to understand what their customers need, and communicate with them in a manner that pulls them to buy a product/service. A marketing professional does exactly that by understanding customer needs and orienting the entire product/service in such a way that delivers superior customer value.
• Human Resource: While a machine might be doing most of the production work, it requires a human being to operate it. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are just tools that can mimic a human’s ability to think and make decisions, but it is the human who sets them to work. And humans are not as straightforward as machines. They are emotional, and work life can be stressful and motivation, elusive. Hence, we need a person to find a talent that is suitable for the job, retain that talent with the organisation, and keep it motivated to achieve more for them. 
• Supply-Chain: Flow of materials in and out of the organisation is directly related with the overall earnings. If input materials don’t reach the firm, production will not take place. If the output materials do not reach the customers, there will be no revenue. Hence, Supply chain management has emerged as a very popular field of study that aims to optimise the flow of materials in and out of an organisation. 
• International Business: Globalisation has blurred the boundaries that contain our territories. Businesses are going global, and each country represents a different geography, demography and regulatory framework. Hence, this field of management specialises in establishing businesses on a global scale by expanding to other countries. 

These are some of the popular management fields that are offered by most Management Colleges. Aspiring students pursue these studies to excel in their field of interest. Each specialisation requires the person to have a unique set of skills, and building upon your interests and aptitude helps you to craft a great career path in your chosen field. 

Conclusion 

Management is an activity that is omnipresent in different forms throughout the work environment. Mastery over this skill can help a person shine. It all depends upon the individual’s interests, personality, hard work and innovation. Mix all these in the right proportions and the world will become your oyster!

By: Pranav Garg

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