After reading about the connection between business and human life, you probably still wonder how business education (business knowledge and management skills) can help with managing life better. This time, let’s be more specific and look in details at a bunch of very illustrative real-life examples.
Studying business functions, management processes and decision-making, which is what business management really is all about, can teach us how to be good managers in order to run businesses successfully. Specifically, we will know how to increase market share, maximize profit, maximize returns to shareholders in the form of dividend, boost profitability, enter into new markets, launch innovative products which one day may become best-sellers or increase labor productivity.
But, in addition to gaining business knowledge, developing lifelong analytical and evaluative skills, and understanding processes that rule the contemporary world – which all these benefits come with learning business management – we will have the internal abilities to manage our life more efficiently, lift our standards and become a better human being in the end.
I am not arguing here that all of the schools around the world, in every country on earth, should make business management as a compulsory subject in their curricula, and that all of the students should be required to take this subject.
But, please let me introduce a few arguments which lay ground behind my thinking that business education actually should be as important as learning the first language or mathematics, so our world can become a better-managed and more organized place.
1. Business education enables people to earn more money.
The first reason how business management can help you with improving your life quality is very simple. No matter how old we are, or where we live, each and every one of us throughout our lifetimes has to earn money (with a few exceptions including mainly very young children and retirees receiving public pension). With better financial situation, our living standard and the level of comfort will increase.
It is because we cannot really start increasing quality of our lives without increasing living standard first – having enough money to buy decent-quality goods or services. For example, we may not have good quality sleep without having a comfortable mattress, quilt and a pillow, or if we constantly worry about not having enough money to buy food for this month.
Studying business management gives us an incredible amount of choices on a future career. We can work as all level managers for multi-national companies, set up our own companies to become entrepreneurs, take over a family business once our parents grow too old to manage their firm, pursue an academic career to do research at the university or teach business management to others.
Knowledge about Human Resources will give us an advantage during job interviews allowing us to secure a sufficient number of job offers to finally choose the best one.
Being familiar with negotiation techniques will help to make sure that we are properly compensated according to our education level and years of experience, the 21st century skills that we possess, and future development potential that we bring to the particular organization we are intending to work.
And, once we earn the money to fulfill our basic needs, we need to know how to properly and purposefully manage the wealth.
Business management students learn how businesses keep proper records of financial statements (Profit & Loss Account, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement) to make sound financial decisions in their business management classes on finance and accounts
With the ability to construct proper accounting documents, we can have better financial planning and control of our household budgets too. Therefore, we will get richer and richer, build wealth and ultimately become financially independent to live a comfortable life, instead of just spending our cash here and there on things we may neither need nor truly want, or with our spending being neither accountable for nor transparent.
2. Business education helps when starting a company.
Second, business management will help to start our own company at any time. We can do something out of passion that makes us happy and, at the same time, helps to solve other people’s pressing problems.
Studying business management makes students want to start a company not only to earn a profit but to change the world. Many young people, whom I encounter every day taking my business classes, have so many truly world-class ideas that can really make our world a better place.
A few of these business ideas include delivering fresh vegetables directly from Chinese farmers to people’s homes in order to boost incomes of farmers, selling healthy homemade sandwiches to busy Korean teenagers in Korean communities or teaching soccer and basketball to students from poor backgrounds to do something good for underprivileged.
By learning business management, we learn how companies organize resources (factors of production) to produce and sell goods and services that meet human needs (something we must have in order to survive, e.g. water, food, etc.) and wants (something that makes our lives comfortable, but we can easily survive without it, e.g. faster cars, new computers, etc.).
Learning about profit-making, risk-taking, business growth and Research & Development of new products while operating in competitive environment gives the business students an edge over their peers.
Business students can ‘speak fluently the language of business’ because they understand the nature of business organizations – the parallel world of companies which exists right next to us and surrounds us from different directions.
With vast knowledge of business functions (Finance, Human Resources, Marketing, Production (Operations)), management processes and decision-making, we can start our own business organization any time we wish.
We, business people, are aware of how our business decisions are influenced by factors internal and external to our company, and how these decisions impact upon us (sole traders, partners or shareholders of private limited companies or public limited companies), our employees, local society and other relevant stakeholders.
With the knowledge of contemporary examples and case studies at a variety of levels – from small local mom-and-pop-businesses to global conglomerates – we are familiar with successful and unsuccessful business models.
We are also fully aware what works in the business world and what types of decisions business managers should avoid.
Therefore, when starting our own companies, we can easily replicate existing successful companies, add value to existing products, services or solutions, or create a completely new product. It is because we know what goods are not available on the market, but may sell well in the future. And with our ability to do primary and secondary market research, we can quickly discover what goods potential customers are willing to buy and how much they are willing to pay for it.
We are also sensitive to cultural differences and possess global perspectives that makes our job so much easier as global decision makers. When trying to grow the business to expand to other countries, we will not try to sell any products that include pork, such as pork sandwiches or pork burgers, to customers in Muslim countries because we know that they would never eat pork-related products as they abstain from this meat due to religious issues.
3. Business education makes life easier thanks to business tools.
Third, business management can help improve our lives because business tools and techniques which apply as much to businesses as to human life, can help us to be more effective and efficient. These tools are giving us more free time to spend with the people we love: help your father make order in the garage, visit grandparents, call the classmates you have not seen since high school or hang out with friends from the same city.
When studying business management, we will be able to learn how to construct and use various business tools which aid managers with strategic decision-making. We will be able to apply them into today’s and future’s problematic situations, comment on the results and make final decisions.
The STEEPLE Analysis will help us to evaluate which country has the best environment for studying or working abroad – have the most strengths and favorable opportunities in regards to social, technological, economic, environmental, political and ethical environmental factors.
The concept of economies of scale will make us realize that by buying products in bulk, we can lower the average cost of each product due to higher negotiation power with the seller.
When we face a problem in our life, for instance, being constantly late for work, by constructing The Fishbone Diagram, we will be able to identify different causes of that certain problem. We may find out that our lateness is caused by inefficient transportation (e.g. traffic jams), technological breakdown (e.g. broken alarm clock) or even personal reasons (e.g. spending too much time on doing morning make-up).
The Decision Tree will help us to decide whether to sell our apartment this year on next year, as this business tool is used to show quantitative values of each decision allowing managers to choose the best option.
The Gantt Chart will help us to plan and schedule projects in order to finish them in the quickest possible way. In this way, we can save time. For example, when furnishing an apartment or building a house there are certain tasks that we can do at the same time – we can start gluing tiles in the kitchen and in the bathroom as these rooms are independent. However, there are also other tasks which cannot start until other tasks are completed – we cannot move in furniture before the flooring is completed.
All of the above tools are business tools used by managers to better manage human resources, organizational growth, business strategy or project management. But as you have probably realized, these aforementioned examples have just proved that the same business techniques can easily benefit us in daily situations.
For years, I have been constantly using business tools to better manage my life. And, I can assure you that I have saved plenty of time, money and energy, simply because I have business knowledge which other people do not have.
We can easily say that learning business management may be too difficult. Also, it can be challenging. This ever-changing subject is very dynamic as our society is getting faster and faster. But, from my point of view, learning about businesses is so closely related to our daily life, our society and other people, that we will not even make a sweat.
For example, we all buy products (e.g. food and snacks, etc.) and use services (e.g. take a bus, have a haircut, etc.). We are all surrounded by retail stores and supermarkets while walking down the street (unless we live in very remote areas). We are all bombarded with advertising when watching TV in the evening, surfing on the Internet or hanging out with friends in the downtown.
Therefore, the knowledge, which we learn about business management, can be easily applied in the context of companies which we are already very familiar with. I assume that we know, or are at least are aware of many internationally recognized brands such as McDonald’s, one of the biggest fast food chains in the world, BMW, a quality car maker from Germany, or Huawei, a phone-maker from China.
In fact, it seems fairly easy to learn business management because we are quickly able to make connections between theory and our closest environment.
4. Business education makes choosing the best option easy.
Fourth, with business management we learn the skills that will enable us to make good decisions, so our life quality will improve greatly as we will have less regrets about the past.
Learning business will equip you with many lifelong transferable skills that will allow you to make reasonable decisions based on facts, numbers and evidence. It will prove that what you are currently doing, actually makes a lot of sense.
Because business management is the study of decision-making, many decisions which are made within an organization, are surprisingly similar to the choices we make outside work.
With business acumen, we will become more analytical. Before choosing the best option, we will consider different scenarios by looking at a business problem from perspectives of various stakeholders.
Once we develop transferable skills – an ability to think critically, make ethical choices, be comfortable with constant change, think about our actions strategically considering available resources, and undertake long-term planning – we can easily make right decisions that will bring us closer toward achieving our aims.
Because business management students are exposed to companies operating in the society on local, national and international levels, as people need to earn money everywhere in the world, they are more emotionally intelligent to consider different possibilities before choosing what is best for them.
For example, a purchasing manager who works in the operations department of a company will have to decide, based on a budget available, what type of raw materials to purchase (high-quality, medium-quality or low-quality) in order to make a certain product in a cost-effective way.
It is pretty similar to the choices we make when it comes to buying meat and vegetables in a grocery story. We, similarly to the purchasing manager, also have a certain amount of money available that will allow us to buy a certain type of food in order to cook a delicious dinner.
Another example can be setting the appropriate price for a product by the marketing manager. Let’s think about quite similar situation when we are trying to garage sell our two-year old sofa. We, similarly to the marketing manager, must consider a right price under certain market conditions bearing in mind how much potential customers in our community are willing to pay for our second-hand piece of furniture.
When shopping, we will be able to make fairly rational decisions because we have knowledge and awareness about pricing strategies, and we can think from a shop manager’s perspective. We will know that the psychological price of USD$2.99 for 1kg of grapes instead of USD$3 was set purposefully to ‘make the grapes look cheaper’, while in fact, the difference between USD$3 and USD$2.99 is very small.
5. Business education makes us confident that when we make a purchase, we buy good products from good companies.
Fifth, after learning about ethical and unethical business decisions, we will have the ability to distinguish good companies from bad companies, therefore business management will help us to be good to our bodies, natural environment and the society by not buying from unethical businesses.
The business course encourages the students to appreciate ethics. Through an ability to identify what is right and what is wrong – in order to make morally correct decisions – we act with integrity and honesty caring for rights of people while respecting cultural differences. Responsibility for our own actions allows us to bring us, as humans, to the next level.
While critical thinking skills will help us to think twice before taking certain actions – also looking at a problem from different perspectives of various stakeholders – our principled characters will make us feel responsible for unavoidable consequences.
Therefore, having ethical considerations in mind, we will feel perfectly comfortable to buy the products that match our expectations of being morally correct, for instance, with packaging made of environmentally friendly materials or without chemical ingredients. Thanks to business ethics, we will not waste time and money on buying stuff that either does not match our lifestyle or we will most likely later regret that we had bought them.
We can use The Position Map and The Force Field Analysis to quickly decide whether to buy a certain type of products from a certain type of company.
We all shall always say ‘No!’ to illegal and immoral products that are harmful to a human body and destroy natural environment.
6. Business education benefits us at work.
Sixth, business management will help us to become better at work gaining chances for promotion or to find a better-paid full-time job so we can boost our income to improve our financial status.
With the holistic view of the world of business, we will be able to look at a business organization as the whole; understand how individual and group stakeholders interact and how they may be successfully managed to avoid stakeholder conflict; how certain decisions cause certain outcomes; how managers can ethically optimize the use of available resources as the amount of scarce resources is shrinking.
By understanding how companies change, innovate and fulfill strategies, we, as current or future employees, will possess knowledge about business processes. With higher-level thinking skills and experience gained when learning business management, we can increase our chances for getting a promotion.
Our business skills will include understanding employees’ behavior, ability to collect, describe and analyze business data to test hypotheses and interpreting complex information to make better business decisions. These will also boost our emotional intelligence which is so necessary for senior level managers and directors.
7. With business education everything is possible.
Seventh, knowledge about business strategy will help us to achieve personal goals, so we can find happiness in the long-term perspective (self-actualization) by getting what we really want, fulfilling our dreams.
With sound knowledge and understanding of the business tools, techniques and theories, we will be able to solve real-world business problems and make strategic decisions that will benefit an organization in a long-term.
We will have more complex understanding of processes that rule the modern world. Therefore, we will be able to explain how to solve critical issues and decide on appropriate solutions. For example, we know how companies set business aims, long-term goals for a company to achieve, and business objectives, short-term and medium-term targets to achieve these goals. It helps us with setting our personal goals, for example, what I need to do within the next few years in order to become a Marketing Director of a multi-national gaming company in the next ten years.
We can easily make sense of the forces that drive and restrain changes in an increasingly fast multi-cultural world where interests of certain groups of stakeholders may contribute toward a success or failure of a certain project.
The business students fully understand and evaluate the consequences of business activity in a globalized market, and make the best out of this knowledge and skills for their personal lives.
Does it make sense to study business management?
In conclusions, going to college to study business management was one of the best decisions in my entire life.
With detailed business knowledge about how companies search for ideas on creating innovative products, how these products are later manufactured, promoted and sold on the market to final customers, I have got much better understanding of major processes that rule the current world. This same modern world which has become so highly dominated by money transactions and big corporations.
With the unique skills, which I have developed in the business school, and then when studying business journalism and corporate communications in the graduate school, I am able to think critically about what happens on the market.
And with that, comes a skill of judging, based on rational evidence, which companies are worth-cooperating-with, as well as which products, services and solutions are worth-buying.
And finally, thanks to different business theories, tools and techniques, which I not only know in a book theory, but being able to skillfully apply them into my own life, no matter to earn more money or to be more aware when shopping for groceries, I have powers to improve quality of my own life at any stage.
And with higher life quality comes greater happiness – something that all of us as humans strive to achieve, with even having many people out there willing to pay high price for a short moment of happiness.
With all the above, I strongly encourage you to study business management, especially by taking high quality international education programmes at international schools (if you are a young person), and then going to a business school at the university afterwards. Studying business can greatly benefit your life as it has benefited mine. Or you can also passionately read Super Business Manager (if you are middle-aged).
Because, at the end of the day, business education – no matter, if you think that decision making is an art or science – will equip you with a super useful toolbox of lifelong skills that you can later use to become a super business manager of your own company or manage successfully another person’s company.
Or, what is absolutely crucial, to super manage your own life.
