For those with a technical background like 29-year-old Gautham Reghu Ganesh, the ESSEC Global Master of Business Administration (GMBA) program is the perfect place to acquire the language of business.
To add value to a company or understand how your company can add value to a customer, you must first have a firm grasp of how the different facets of an organization function, Gautham Reghu Ganesh, declares.
Today, Gautham is a key account manager at a global leader in automation technology, Festo. His role at the Singapore office both taps into his wealth of engineering knowledge and challenges his managerial skills. He handles the biggest accounts in the country and coordinates the company’s activities across the region.
The scope of work is far broader and more complex than his previous role as a project manager. Still, as an ESSEC GMBA alumnus from the class of 2020, he proudly shares: “Everything I learned at ESSEC has helped me understand the language of business. Today, I have a better grasp of what they’re talking about and how I can change or add value to the company."
USING THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS
The Strategy & Digital Leadership track’s rigorous curriculum drilled him in different areas from finance to marketing. It gave him plenty of opportunities to flex his newly acquired business muscles.
One of the key takeaways for him was learning how to define a business strategy. This value was most apparent during the Capstone Business Game at the end of the academic year. In this experience, students had to simulate having their own company and organize different sectors like R&D, supply chain, and marketing to gain market share.
His team performed outstandingly, precisely because they clearly defined and retained the strategy they outlined from the start — a lesson to all of them about the importance of having an overarching vision to guide each business unit.
EMBRACING A DIVERSITY OF PERSPECTIVES
Although there are lessons that can be learned on-the-job, or through online platforms, Gautham is adamant that the experiences gained during an MBA program are not easily substitutable with a few years of work experience. After all, the exposure to different industries and, in turn, perspectives, is far higher during an MBA.
For example, as part of his GMBA curriculum, he spent a semester in France and worked closely with candidates in the GMBA Luxury Track. This experience helped him understand the mechanics of how higher prices can, in fact, command higher demand — something he would not have had exposure to if he remained at his job.
His stories abound but can be summed up as follows: “Different skill sets and different experiences bring out different kinds of ideas, and when you put all of them together, the synergy is just amazing. You create things that you would never, ever imagine creating if you were all the same kind of people.”