Considering an MBA? Here are 5 things I learned.
It has been 7 years now since I completed my Masters of Business Administration from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. After completing an undergraduate finance degree from NYU Stern, I worked for a couple years in financial services and decided I wanted to switch things up with my career.
I had bold, ambitious dreams and I wanted to fast track my success.
Hence, I looked to the coveted MBA.
As a Canadian who graduated in New York City during one of the worst financial crisis in history (the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis) I decided that coming back home to Canada would be prudent and might offer me the stability and opportunity to grow. So after years away from the True North, I decided it was time to come back home and go to one of the country’s best MBA programmes. Given that I did previously have a business education with a double major in Finance and Economics, I must admit that it wasn’t as much about the education as it was about gaining the prestige and title associated with an MBA. It seemed like the next logical step. I was only 24 when I got accepted into the programme, which made me one of the youngest in my class. So was it fruitful?
Here are five key learnings from my experience completing an MBA. Or an easy acronym I developed, it’s a game of CHESS — Collaboration, Hard Skills, Execution, Schmoozing and Switch.
Collaboration.
It’s all about team building.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
It is close to impossible to attain an MBA degree without doing extensive amounts of team work and projects. For those of you who have studied independently for most of your academic career or work independently most of the time, the MBA will come as a big shock. Not only do you have group assignments where you will all receive one grade, you will very often be spending late nights together trying to hammer through a presentation you have to deliver together. The reality is business is not done alone and it is critical to learn how to not only exist with a team but to thrive and deliver exceptional results. We learn to work with each other’s strengths and weaknesses and bring unique perspectives and opinions to the table.
One of my favourite aspects of the MBA is the collaboration and team building activities that build friendships for a lifetime. It is also fun to go through the hard times together. (Of course, there are always the laggards and leaders but that’s the real world, you learn how to optimize based on circumstances beyond your control!)
As my mum always says “ 1 + 1 = 11” — Never underestimate the potential of a team!
Hard Skills.
Develop your management & analytical capabilities.
The MBA is an extremely fast paced curriculum with demands of you that mean you can often not take your time to study things the way you would like. This teaches you skills required of you in the real world for many of the corporate positions you will occupy. You learn to look for key facts, analyze and synthesize this information quickly and then derive key insights. A core part of the MBA is learning through case studies. The reason for this is that case studies emulate the stories of real businesses and the situations they encounter. Through breaking down the case, MBAs are tasked to come up with the decisions they would make if they were company XYZ and how they would handle the problems at hand. This method of teaching forces you to dig deeper into concepts learned in class and apply them to a real life scenario. The MBA is less about memorizing and more about practical knowledge. If you come from a liberal arts, engineering or any other background for that matter, you’re likely to gain a lot of knowledge about business, which you may not otherwise have been exposed to.
Execution.
Getting it done under pressure.
“Execution is everything.” John Doerr
My MBA was a lot of work — assignments, group presentations, exams, networking, interviewing, case prep etc., the list was endless. I went to a university with a stronger academic inclination. This taught me how to just sit down and get it done. Very often we are faced with challenging problems or topics we are not experts on given the breadth of a business degree, but regardless you will just plough through and finish it.
I have never faced more unreasonable tasks and deadlines as I did during my MBA and this just made me tougher and more resilient — excellent skills for the real world.
Switch.
A great platform to career switch.
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” — Steve Jobs
As with most things in life, there is a reason we pursue degrees, challenges, competitions, etc. In my case I was looking to change what I do as a business professional. I wanted a switch. Several of my colleagues came from engineering backgrounds but wanted to facilitate business at their science heavy firms. Artists wanted to learn how to run their own art gallery. A lot of folks come in it to learn the fundamentals of business. For me, I had already covered most of that by virtue of my undergraduate degree but I wasn’t sure what was next for me. I was not in love with the finance industry. It didn’t speak to me and I wanted to figure out what I can do. This is where the MBA came in super handy. After I graduated from my MBA I stayed within the business realm but moved into the technology industry working for a large enterprise software company. It was the perfect launchpad to enter a space, which had I not completed my MBA would not be an option.
I should also note, though I was a Canadian, several international MBA students pursued their MBAs to hopefully gain a job in their new country — in this case, Canada. And it worked. I know other countries don’t always offer the same liberal work permit options but it is definitely something to consider when researching where you will go to study. A foreign MBA can be very expensive ($100,000+) and having to repay the loan back on a different currency income can be hard to do.
That being said, with the right research and coursework an MBA can equip you to be ready for almost any industry that is looking for business leaders so that you can make the switch.
Schmoozing.
It’s all about the network.
As with anything in life, it’s often about who you know, not what you know.
MBAs are trained to be master networkers.
On the slightest opportunity there will be a “Consulting Night”, for example, a room of students will fill up sprinkled with a few professionals from the BCGs and McKinsey’s of this world and boom you have to learn the subtle art of pushing your way through the crowd and finding something meaningful to talk with someone who is sure you’re really just interested in the job not them in particular. How do you sell yourself in those situations? What kind of conversation do you have? How do you make it genuine enough? After enough rounds of networking, it becomes something you could to do in your sleep.
If you’re an introvert, the MBA will definitely hone in on your social skills. Hiding is not an option.
I hope this sheds some light on those of you contemplating an MBA. It definitely has its benefits but only you will know if it’s right for you.
What’s most important is to be clear about:
Why do you want an MBA?
When you want to do it?
Where you will go to get it?
How it will get you to the goal you hope to achieve afterwards?
