An MBA is not a mere tool / route for grabbing a lucrative employment with an MNC or a decorative feather on the cap to impress the significant others. An MBA, at best prepares one for a disciplined rational approach to analysing and comprehending situations in career and life in general. This approach help evaluate a basket of opportunities and choose the one that best fits one’s skill set, life / career goals, market opportunities, personality traits, passion and need to achieve happiness and meaning in life. It helps to see things in perspective and venture into unchartered territories. One should desist from carrying a myopic view.
MBAs tend to be more confident and see life in a different light due to the diversity of exposure one gets.
Traversing an MBA program many times endorses ones’ own secretly views that one would have held close, for fear of ridicule, disapproval or out of sync with the fashion of the day and thus reinforces independence thought process and self-confidence. It gives an opportunity to see your diverse experience in life through the glass of variety of disciplines (finance, economics, behavioural science …..).
Management is common sense applied logically and rationally, seen through a structured filter of multiple disciplines taught in a MBA program. A disciplined approach brings consistency and predictability, enhances confidence and acceptance levels leading to results. It helps take a rational view than a temporal emotionally charged knee jerk reaction. One would be able to see the woods in addition to the trees that make up the woods. This approach brings maturity in understanding and decisions in complex situations.
Quality MBA programs should induce participants to be incisive in their analysis and understanding, questioning on possibilities (eg. negative interest rates) and implications, holistic evaluation on consequential fallouts of decisions, contrarian thoughts, new possibilities and experimentation; not mechanistic skill acquisition for its unadulterated deployment. A mechanistic approach only helps in transactional management (maintenance) and not transformational and creative. What is significant is, to develop a questioning mind, searching for answers, introspection, debate, evolving new paradigms and standards. This is possible only if one is constantly in sync with environmental developments (an open system approach) and being able to predict emergence of new models and interconnections. Product of quality MBA programs should expect to nourish their entrepreneurial competence fed by unhindered exercise of their mind. Ability to see the invisible would be one of the most valued contributions from a quality MBA program. One need to develop the skill to reconcile contradictions.
You will discover and educate others more as you go along in your career!!