Tag Archives: leadership

Stop Talking About Her, Talk About Her Work

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What are the issues that women professionals face in their organizations? What are the benefits they bring to the organization? How can organizations bring out the best from their women professionals? Here is my take.

© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

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Now that the Women’s Day hoopla is done, it’s time for sensible views on women in business. This article is a collection of lists: the real issues faced daily by women in business; the real value that women add, over and beyond what regular employees aka men add; and the real action that everyone in business can take to realize the potential of women for their business success, and for justice in its most modern form. The article does not provide any advice to women, as most women are already taking several steps on their own, and non-contextual advice is often less than helpful.

Here are some real issues faced by women in business, daily and cumulatively, presented as quotes modified from my observations:

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Business Schools – Training for What?

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Business schools across the world are finding themselves in a situation of introspection: what exactly is the need for their existence? More importantly, what do they teach?

Applications for this  year’s Common Admission Test (CAT) that is used as one of the key parameters for admission to the elite Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) came down to a record low of 190,000 this year. For whatever reasons, students seem to be finding b-schools less attractive compared to other options.

To the first question of what b-schools are needed for, there are a few things that business schools can teach. Firstly, there are the business subjects: marketing, finance, operations, human resources and systems, as any first year b-school student would be able to tell you.  Secondly, there is another subject that b-schools try to teach but don’t do so well: strategy. And the top strategy consulting firms end up trying to follow an apprenticeship model so that they fill the gap.

Besides the above, something that b-schools are yet to do well, is being a manager and a leader. That there is strong demand for people who can manage a good business and take all steps required to get things done is very real. Similarly, there is strong demand today for another factor that b-schools are not in the perfect position to teach: leadership.  And women’s leadership as well. Today, all of us – at least those who care enough to have a say in the matters – tend to preach the same old advice about leadership because we haven’t seen what true leadership can do. There is some hope here, though, as b-schools recognize the situation and respond to that.

As the first step, we need to realise that tomorrow’s leaders will face a completely different set of situations today. As I brought up in this thought experiment.

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