H=MC, the Success Mantra for 21st Century Managers

Managers are the people who do Planning, Organizing, Controlling, Directing and Utilising limited resources in an efficient manner by taking day- to - day business decisions. The 21stcentury world is digitally built and equipped in all most all areas by 3G’s / 4G’s and also this is an era of high-end smartphones with Android applications. The present business environment is changing rapidly since the last decade.

The successful strategies adopted by managers (ex: Kodak Inc., Xerox Inc., etc.) which hallmarked the success in the past may not give similar results in present market conditions as dynamics of business environment has enlarged into a global one. The role and reasonability of the manager is widened along with scope to meet challenges in current business environment which is more complex, data driven, and due to the dynamics of the business changing rapidly.

Under such circumstances a manager must be ready to face growing complexities of problems by performing critical thinking, apart from the problem solving skills, which can help managers in achieving the complete success. Rubenstein, the co-founder of the Carlyle Group (a private equity firm in US) and Chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, believes 21st century managers have lost a valuable skill that can help them to succeed in business and life i.e. critical thinking.

The co-founder of Carlyle Capital, insists understanding of humanities can bring the success to the managers which can create and add more value to all the stake holders. The modern managers are qualified in STEM -Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics- . It would be surprising to say humanities are the source of success in handling crisis better to manage and take appropriate decisions, as he highlighted.

“The humanities can be described as the study of how people process and document the human experience”. As a subject it deals with Literature, Psychology, Sociology, Political Science and Philosophy etc. By studying these subjects, managers can handle complex problems by having critical thinking and having better human condition, while taking decisions.

The fact is performing of business analysis step by step using problem solving skills, analytics, big data might still not guarantee a better understanding of that analysis. He might then be end up taking wrong decisions which destroys wealth rather than its creation of wealth. Henceforth studying humanities can control human condition better which can produce accurate decisions which translates to more cash flows.

Finally as Mr. Rubenstein said “H=MC. Humanities equals more cash,”

By:M.Chandra Shekar

(The author is an Assistant Professor with Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad)