It’s almost been 5 years into the Corporate Jungle after MBA, and I have been through all troughs and crests at work to reach at a substantiality responsible position in the organization.

Let each one of us turn-back a few pages in our lives and go-back to the classroom of our B-School, most of us find it difficult to munch all possible “sandwiches of knowledge” (text books, reference books, business magazines, business daily’s, journals…etc..etc…etc) and then try our best to scratch the grey cells of the brain to remember a concept, formulae, definition etc. Ultimately, are in a lost state at interviews during campus placements and loose the opportunity (what in accounting is termed as “opportunity cost”).

Along with hearing (read it “not listening”) to most of the fundamentals of business administration subjects and then specialize in one of the subjects based on individual liking or potential, leading to qualification of an MBA, wrapped with other skills like soft skills, hard skills, warm-skills, luke-warm skills!!!!!!, with a feeling of being ready to take-on the JOB in the designated company. Satisfactory ending?....Not really.

Actually the test starts here, a time when you start feeling inferior to others in the company (peers or superiors), in terms of some skills that they possess and you lack. The most common phrase used would be, “they never thought me these things (skills) at the management school”. Let’s think practically, as most of us know, MBA is a “self-motivated” oriented professional course and B-Schools can facilitate towards maintaining the momentum of being motivated, rest lies with us.

So what are the essential skills that should be learnt by every B-School graduate, who wants to survive, grow and stabilize in his/her work place, post the B-School.

Below are the 6 essential skills (as per my experience and anyone reading the same can add another 7 or 9 or 10 more of skills that he/she thinks most required) that I have captured in precise length, since I think the reader can add own thoughts to make it more specifically applicable to himself/herself :

1.    How to make people like you and network

A skill so essential to succeed - that affects every area of your life (from dating, to family, to work) its amazing how little people care about this. I can hear some of them saying…”I thought some people were just born with it and the rest of us were out of luck! You mean it’s something you can study?” Well, yes!

There is great power in developing a substantial network of knowledgeable people, since tomorrow, whenever you have a problem to solve, to be able to reach key influencers at conferences and meetings, to make an impression on audiences, to project confidence and trustworthiness, and to make friends with other successful people.

The shy folks lurking in the corners among the group will never reach their full potential as Professionals. Let’s understand this, President Bush didn’t get the best grades at Princeton, but boy he knew how to network, and look where that got him.

2.    How to speed read and the power of YouTube, Google videos etc.

Yes, speed reading and speed comprehension is real. The nominal investment of time it takes to learn pays off in spades for the rest of your career. After all, how would your life be different if you were able to read an extra book each week?

The same goes with on-line video sites like YouTube, Google videos and hundred others. If each one of us spends an hour per day watching & listening to some of the executives speak, it would make you to learn how to speak, what to speak and when to speak, and also you would get to know the applicability of a concept that the professor would have taught today. Let’s take this, how many of us have watched the videos of Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple) presenting at the Macworld conference, which would teach anyone how presentation skills should be?

Similarly, there are “n” number of required reading books in the block that would make the first point (speed read) a reality.

3. How to set goals and manage time

Want to know how to get anything done in life?

The research that has come out lately is groundbreaking…everything from eliminating multi-tasking, using blocks of uninterrupted time where phone and email are off, prioritized to-do lists, urgent but unimportant vs. non-urgent but important tasks, etc.

If you have ever found yourself being busy all day only to wonder what you accomplished at the end of it, then you need to learn this stuff. Understanding productivity will give you such an advantage over other people it’s hardly even fair.

4. How to read a financial statement

   Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad) is fond of saying that the rich teach their children how to read financial statements and the poor do not. He is right. Most of us are always least bothered to read-through and interpret the financials of a company, since when it comes to numbers people feel the pain starts. But, let’s look at it the other way around; if you cannot read and interpret numbers, then you are in more pain at your job.

  It’s always a clear distinction at Tier-II B-Schools that Financial Statements are only meant for students specializing in Finance, this thought is absolutely wrong. Since, even being a Marketing professional once you are into the Leader bucket, you ought to know how to read a financial statement, since each one of you would be responsible for the P&L, read it aloud, it means you are responsible for the income and expenses of the organization.

   Let me highlight a experience of mine, being a Sales/Marketing professional I always thought it’s all about selling and why should I worry about knowing the financials of a company. On a day, as usual when I was presenting to Senior Management about the Sales forecast, “zoom”, came a question, considering these as the possible Gross Sales figures, what are the expense items to be controlled to have a decent Income Statement? I was “zapped”, really was unable to remember, how do an Income Statement look like? (Never really bothered to look at it again after learning during the MBA) what are the items in an Income statement? Post that whatever happened is a history, but that moment it was a feeling of being “failed”.

     5.    How to be successful in life

    Sounds sort of broad, doesn’t it?

    Yet some people have devoted a lifetime to understand what makes people happy and successful. There are the big three: health, wealth, and relationships. People need to find what they really want to do with their life (something few of us never really think about).

    We need to figure out how to do scary things that would be good for us, break bad habits (meaning breaking the narrow thought-barriers, working only for designated hours at the company, spending more time to plan than to implement, finding reasons/excuses for not finding an answer). There is a lot to learn here!

     6.    How to spread an idea and basic marketing

   Finally, I’ll just say that the basics of marketing are something everyone should understand. Even if you don’t think you’re in marketing, you are in marketing.

    If you have an idea at work, or want to get a raise, or want to convince your boss about your thought, then there is something applicable from the marketing world. Even just scripting out “Your Objective” in resume, that could actually get the Interviewer interested in your profile requires some basic marketing skills.

On the whole, I believe it’s up to each of us to take care of developing and keep grooming those “extra” skills, means reading, finding mentors, going to conferences, and of course blogs, which I personally feel is a great resource that makes you Think!!!!!!