MBA - Really?
“Now that you have an MBA, you will never be as successful as me!” – Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO, Oracle Communication
I did grow up strongly disagreeing with statements like these. Like most of the non-medical students, IIT + IIM had always been a dream for me as well. Having cleared the IIT, IIMs (or any popular B-school) should have been the obvious next stop. Guess I had matured a little too early!
No, neither do I have anything against the MBA grads, nor am I against the idea of doing an MBA myself! But yes, I was against the idea of doing it a little too early in my career! I did not want to pursue a course I didn’t value as much, and do it only because people around me were doing it. That’s herd mentality if I am not wrong, a characteristic not very rare in the MBA grads. “Crazy you are, everyone’s doing it! That’s like the most suitable course to be pursued! And you are shrugging it off. You are wasting your career!” – is what people thought aloud.
Doesn’t it sound more like an MBA grad looking at the market and saying “I examined 30 popular biscuits and all of them were made of wheat flour, were baked, and used salt and sugar, except one that has some brown stuff in it called chocolate with a heavy vanilla flavor. My finding tells me our biscuit range should have wheat flour, should be baked, use salt and sugar. Only one guy has chocolate vanilla and he is the outlier – let us ignore it”
Not that I am a biscuit with chocolate and a heavy vanilla flavor, but probably an ambitious person who has his own way of doing things. Trust me, I wasn’t being different because it was the “in-thing”, I was just thinking on a different plane.
Three years down the line, I am really proud of my decision. Having had my share of interactions with the early MBA-grads, it won’t be too wrong to say that their “Out-of-the-box thinking” is probably written somewhere in the book and has a set procedure enabling one to come up with a fancy thought in no time. I won’t be surprised if a lesson such as “How to think Out-of-the-box?” forms a part of the MBA curriculum.
MBA curriculum has a lot of portions which are really valuable and equally exciting though. Finance, OB, Marketing – they are all very good, but probably of more value only when you know how and when to apply the knowledge. (And also know about the pieces to be ignored completely!)
The content above is strictly the opinion expressed by the author (inspired after reading an article in BW) not aimed at hurting anyone’s sentiment.
I did grow up strongly disagreeing with statements like these. Like most of the non-medical students, IIT + IIM had always been a dream for me as well. Having cleared the IIT, IIMs (or any popular B-school) should have been the obvious next stop. Guess I had matured a little too early!
No, neither do I have anything against the MBA grads, nor am I against the idea of doing an MBA myself! But yes, I was against the idea of doing it a little too early in my career! I did not want to pursue a course I didn’t value as much, and do it only because people around me were doing it. That’s herd mentality if I am not wrong, a characteristic not very rare in the MBA grads. “Crazy you are, everyone’s doing it! That’s like the most suitable course to be pursued! And you are shrugging it off. You are wasting your career!” – is what people thought aloud.
Doesn’t it sound more like an MBA grad looking at the market and saying “I examined 30 popular biscuits and all of them were made of wheat flour, were baked, and used salt and sugar, except one that has some brown stuff in it called chocolate with a heavy vanilla flavor. My finding tells me our biscuit range should have wheat flour, should be baked, use salt and sugar. Only one guy has chocolate vanilla and he is the outlier – let us ignore it”
Not that I am a biscuit with chocolate and a heavy vanilla flavor, but probably an ambitious person who has his own way of doing things. Trust me, I wasn’t being different because it was the “in-thing”, I was just thinking on a different plane.
Three years down the line, I am really proud of my decision. Having had my share of interactions with the early MBA-grads, it won’t be too wrong to say that their “Out-of-the-box thinking” is probably written somewhere in the book and has a set procedure enabling one to come up with a fancy thought in no time. I won’t be surprised if a lesson such as “How to think Out-of-the-box?” forms a part of the MBA curriculum.
MBA curriculum has a lot of portions which are really valuable and equally exciting though. Finance, OB, Marketing – they are all very good, but probably of more value only when you know how and when to apply the knowledge. (And also know about the pieces to be ignored completely!)
The content above is strictly the opinion expressed by the author (inspired after reading an article in BW) not aimed at hurting anyone’s sentiment.
posted by Khan at 12:03 AM
3 comments
