Most HR courses at business school are designed to focus on the 'what' of people management -- the theory of what makes people tick, conceptual frameworks on their hierarchy of needs and what makes for good leaders. What they miss out on are the practical tips on 'how' to be a good people manager.

In today's world, where talent is hard to find or very costly to bring in and retain, leaders and managers need to pick from practical experience and apply these lessons to get results rather than start from the theory and make the same mistakes others in the business made several years ago.

For instance, everyday, we face the challenge of employee retention in the context of a huge demand-supply gap in the talent market. This is leading to an explosion in HR costs as well as the need for creative retention strategies.

The first thought on retention for most managers is compensation review or retention bonus. If we look at the Maslow's need hierarchy, however, there are other needs -- like the ones for recognition, involvement in high impact activities and so on -- that can be fulfilled to successfully retain employees. The question again is, 'how'?

There are enough case studies in the world that document how companies have formulated these strategies successfully. These, however, rarely ever find their way into B-school curricula. Future leaders would benefit far more from understanding fundamentals such as:

• How praise can be used to help people achieve goals  and also retain them.
• How you can get people to support key initiatives by getting them involved in the very conceptualisation of these activities.
• How every person has an invisible sign around his necks that says 'make me feel important' and so, if you make him feel important, he will be loyal forever.
• How you can achieve what you want by helping people achieve what they want.
• God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak -- how important it is to listen when you are managing people.

B-schools should focus on providing more practical examples of how the real world has dealt with people-related issues rather than getting students to just study the theoretical frameworks and work through complicated case studies that have no residual learning impact.

This will improve the speed of reaction and result in a market where no one wants to wait and instant gratification is the name of the game.

Hina Nagarajan graduated from IIM, Ahmedabad in 1987