So What??

“In 68% of the households, the decision for buying milk is taken by the male member of the household”, went my presentation for the Organisational Traineeship Segment. Suddenly, a voice boomed somewhere, in the class. “So What?” I was stumped. It was the professor who was evaluating the presentation. I said, “This suggests that the advertisements of the pouched milk have to be directed at the male members of the households.” He seemed to be convinced, because he had given me a B- for the presentation, not, by any standards, bad.
Earlier, in the first term, of MBA, our professor of Quantitative Analysis, would always encourage us to ask the question “So What” after every statement we made. So in effect it would be,” the probability of the Indian cricket team defeating Pakistan is 1 on 100, So What?” Well, in this case, it would not be tough to answer, since everybody knows, that a few heads will roll, may be a few reams of paper will be wasted in lambasting the team and then the team would win an “overseas” test series, whitewashing Bangladesh 3-0, and again everything will get back to normal. But, if the statement goes as “The standard deviation from the mean of the number of customers going for repeat buying of the latest brand of snacks launched by Amul Dairy is 2.09”, So What will become really tough to answer. That is exactly what happened during the end term exams, for the first term, when we had a similar question. Anyways, I had suspected that question to make its presence felt in the question paper and had prepared for the same and had in fact scored a B+ in the end term examination.
But finding an answer to such a weird question often becomes difficult. Especially when it comes bang in the middle of a presentation or a case discussion. One tends to lose focus searching for the answer. But another and more important reason for the loss of focus is the sadist smile that plays on the lips of the teacher or the evaluator, lurking somewhere in the background. Classmates, especially those who are intent on screwing you, too often take recourse to this question, more often than not catching you on the wrong foot.
Another reason, why I find this question all the more disgusting is the fact that, this question often opens the gates for a flood of another set of weird questions. Continuing with the incident, in the beginning, just after I said what I said, the teacher asked “and how exactly do you think, you can direct the advertisements at the male members?” “By slotting the ads during prime time news”. “But do you have any data about the television viewing habits of the males in India?” “Yes, Sir, A national survey has quoted this data…..”. “But how can you generalise that to the people of the city, you have surveyed?” “Well that was a question in the questionnaire, sir”. But do you think………..and the saga continued, till the teacher brought me to the subject domain of research methodology, something which I have always found not to be my cup of tea. And the saga continued till the teacher said, “pass kaise karte ho tumlog”.
I had the answer ready. I wanted to say, “sir, its management school, and we are made jack of all trades here, rather than master of one.” But I refrained from speaking out. Because I would have found myself speechless, had he asked, “So What”.