As we come to the end of this rollercoaster of a journey and as many of us (myself included) experience the many ups and downs of the career search...I’m often confronted by this discussion of the true value of the MBA….most recently, I’ve also had a lot of potential applicants email me and ask me about the ROI of the IMD MBA…. I think it’s best said by the MasterCard advertisement which I will openly and happily duplicate here (as they say copying is the best form of flattery)!
There are some things a business education can teach…for everything else, there is the IMD MBA! J(Mastercard version: There are some things that money can’t buy, for everything else there is MasterCard)
So a business education can teach you corporate finance, it can teach you strategy, marketing, operations, economics, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, etc etc and lots more….a business education can teach you about leadership, it can help you potentially change your function, industry or geography….now we all knew this coming into the program….
What I didn’t know or what I have thoroughly enjoyed this year is the many things you didn’t expect a MBA to teach you....such as:
1. Many of us started the year wanting to be leaders and having a finite, well defined perception of what a good leader stands for….but through our leadership experiential , PDE sessions and even today’s elective “Leaders Domain” , all of a sudden we are questioning whether we want to be leaders but more importantly why we want to be leaders and what it means in the bigger picture of our lives… the MBA taught me to be much more open and introspective about leadership...
2. My ROI for the MBA is not simply that I learnt about cultural nuances and factors that pose challenges in business but simply the fact that I have lived those challenges sitting in the dungeons late at night trying to accomplish impossible tasks with the most diverse groups…..take that for multi-cultural awareness and competency!
3. We love to think about business in silos and as individual practices because functional expertise is comfortable….try one integrative exercise and the boundaries between different disciplines disappear forever! Try one ICP project and you will understand how there is never an easy, simple or single answer to a business challenge...
4. Ahhh….the job search……I have learnt to be patient, strategic and optimistic through the various up’s and down’s but I’ve also been challenged to think about what I REALLY want to do with my life and to be authentic to who I am…..its not about another job…its about what I want to do….it also teaches you to enjoy every moment of your life without having to anticipate external validation…
5. The business of business is business………so what does it mean to create value and welfare for others…. whom do you have to make happy at the cost of others…..and most importantly, are you ready to be disliked for most of your decisions which might be in the best interest of one group vs the other?
6. People are people irrespective of where they come from and when you experience 45 different nationalities every day, you slowly realize that across cultures, everything is the same and everything is also different…..my friends back home ask me how I can be so close to some of my classmates I know only for a year….well….try sharing some of the experiences we’ve had and its difficult not to be so connected!
Sorry, I know I probably don’t make sense….but this is exactly why the ROI question for a MBA will never make sense…..the learning’s I have this year aside from my business education itself will take me a lifetime to digest and process…….this is probably why my ROI calculator for the IMD MBA will have far more inputs than any calculator can process!
Cheers,
Vikas Menon
Saving is not the only thing which has to be our main motive. But Investing at the right place with the right amount is more important.
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