An alumna of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad shared three important lessons that business schools don’t teach. Her social media post about what her MBA didn’t prepare her for has gone viral.
In a LinkedIn post, Ruchi Aggarwal, an IIM Ahmedabad graduate who now runs a mentorship consultancy in Mumbai, shared a turning point from the early days of her corporate career. It was a lesson she didn’t learn in the classroom, but during her time at global consulting firm McKinsey.
“When I joined McKinsey, I discovered my degree from IIM Ahmedabad wasn’t enough,” she said, adding, “I lacked the ‘executive filter'”.
She recalled one of her first client meetings. “During my first presentation, a partner interrupted me: ‘Ruchi, tell me the one thing we should do. Just one.’ I froze. I had prepared 15 recommendations, not one,” she said.
“I wanted to have backup recommendations – Like a menu! And I would let the partner pick the answer!” she added.
That one sentence taught her what the MBA didn’t: decision-makers don’t want clutter. They want clarity. “But in real client meetings, top executives don’t want to hear a menu. They want a curated, accurate answer,” Ruchi said.
“This is the executive filter – Where you can filter out anything else and share only the most relevant answer,” she added.
Ruchi then listed three things that a B-school doesn’t teach:
The ability to prioritise is more valuable than the ability to analyse
The courage to simplify is more important than the skill to complicate
The confidence to commit to one direction beats exploring every possibility
Aggarwal was among the top 10 selected by McKinsey during campus placements. Yet, she said, academic brilliance alone didn’t cut it in the real world.
“At IIM A, the question was always ‘How much do you know?’ At McKinsey, the question became ‘How clear can you make it?’ Success isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about having the right ones and communicating them clearly,” she said.
Take a look at her post here:
Social media users nodded in agreement. See the comments here:
It is safe to say that Ruchi Aggarwal’s post struck a chord online.