'Dream Quotient' of MBAs

In this post, I am writing about my experience while trying to prove my mettle as an MBA who joined IT as a management trainee. I am sure many of management graduates whom I have interacted in last 2.5 years of my IT experience or others who will read this post would agree to the following:

First thing first, any management graduate joining IT shall know that he is competing with every single individual in this field whether holds an MBA degree or not. To elaborate, take any field: automobile, teaching, sports, cooking or pharmacy; these can be called a profession but management is not a profession, it is the driver of all the professions but not a profession in itself. So, any person who has worked on the shop floor in any of these fields can very well be a manager in that field. Same holds true for IT too.

How an MBA at entrant level in IT shall react to this? Reaction shall depend upon the work & work culture. I have found a crucial difference between MBAs & non-MBAs in IT and that is 'Dream Quotient':

For this analysis, I have considered only two kind of people: people from technical background and MBAs. I believe rest are so less in numbers they can be ignored.

What I have seen over the last few years is, people from technical background while studying technical degrees like B.E. or B.TECH. (CS), have thought of becoming a software engineer in a reputed MNC, which if they pass out from an average institute, eventually achieve in less than 2 years. Then what? Then they just follow the ladder which their manager has gone through or has setup for them. This would be called bottoms-up approach. I would call it as a myopic, unadventurous and poor in dream quotient. My gut feel data is 80% of IT professionals from technical background would fall in this category having poor dream quotient.

On the other side, what MBAs learn in B-school is always from a point of view of an organization or CEO. When we are studying we often come across words like "Will you ever as a leader would ......?" I would call it as top-down approach. Unfortunately, we never see any problem as an individual trying to keep ball away from his court (indeed it is a top quality in IT, but we would take that later). Even if an MBA starts from the lowest level in an organization, his eyes would always be at what top management is doing. Dream quotient of an MBA is very high.

Along with the dream quotient, there is a pile of things which I could be pointed out as different in these two sides such as communication, presentation, orientation etc. (later more on this)

In field of IT, you will find more no. of people who belong to the first side. If they reside at a leader's position, do hinder the growth of second side. This can happen if you are in a services company & are living in trap of billing from client.

I thought, this difference can be helpful for the new entrants and people sitting in placements choosing script writers of their future. So, shared it.

I at personal level, am confident enough to find a way out.