Is MBA necessary? Post MBA thoughts.

Feedback on MBA program, Is MBA valueable, Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao

Management is about making decisions so that a right course could be set to accomplish something. The decisions making and directions setting are fairly straight forward, if one is familiar with the situation. For instance, if you are planning to take a daily route to the office on a regular day, your decisions regarding the mode of transport and timings are straight forward decisions. If the day happens to be one  when your regular routes are blocked for some unforeseen reason, how will you manage to get to the office in time? For someone who is new to a locality, making decision at this time requires some learning about - newer routes, other modes of available transportation, times taken to reach the destination, etc. But, for a taxi driver, this information may be already known and the decision becomes commonsensical. Likewise for some people decision making is commonsensical and MBA is not necessary.

Within an organization there are different functions - Marketing & Sales, Finance, HR, Logistics, and so on. Each of these functional organizations manage one specific aspect of the company. What these organizations manage and how they manage is non-commonsensical to most of us. If one wants to bridge this gap, an MBA will help. This can also knowledge gap can also be acquired through work rotation and reading relevant books. But the time period of learning between these two approaches differ. For most of us, the non-MBA approach takes longer because of the commitment level.

For those who have decided to pursue an MBA program, there is a dilemma whether to invest the money or not in a full-time program. In my opinion, any investment in your education is never a waste, but the pay-off periods may differ. If you can manage your educational funds without being a burden to you and your family, go for a full-time program. A part-time may not be as intensive in training as a full-time course, but the interactions among candidates (from Sr. VP to front liners) exposes you to practical aspects of decision making better. 

Before I started on this journey, a question to myself was - does that lead to CEO, if not what is the use?  Perhaps I have found the answer to this - having MBA is not enough. The preparation for this role is a self-learning journey the way of Jonathan Livingston in Richard Bach's book. An MBA provides a starting point for the take-off, the rest of the journey is on the individual...

Is MBA necessary?

Is MBA Worth It? Should I do MBA? Who Should Do MBA? Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao

Is it necessary to get an MBA degree to get to the position of CEO? I believe this question summarizes what I have been trying to answer to figure out. Every time I consider the MBA option, I search for answers to very fundamental questions - what specialization, can't it be learnt or acquired, is management about a degree, what traits are required, and what do I expect my life to be after MBA? Additionally, considering the expenses, motivation and time that will be required to get the degree, the task is daunting, and I am convinced that the timing has to be right.

First things first - why I need MBA and what do I want it to do for me. I have tried to answer these for myself by talking to a few trusted people, reading books, searching Internet, and some by pondering over the daily experiences, but haven't been able to convince myself to commit to MBA.

First of all the cost associated with the degree is humongous. The first 5 years will be spent on breaking-even and the next 5 years will be spent on making up for the lost savings. Does this mean more work and more stress, and less time for oneself till one break-evens? This is the most draining thought.

To figure out if this knowledge can be acquired by reading, I have tried to search the available literature and landed on something called as a personal MBA. This is school of thought suggests skills and knowledge acquired in MBA programs can also be acquired by reading books from certain categories. More details could be found here http://personalmba.com/manifesto/

But the best advices and thoughts as usual come from people who are there where you aspire to be and they have done it themselves without that degree. I have been lucky to encounter such people. Their advice is very practical - MBA is probably the last resort, there is nothing to do after MBA, so do it when it is absolutely must. And, before MBA should happen one must understand that getting into management requires personality overhauling. One must learn to lead, articulate thoughts, face and work with the conflicts, find opportunities that enhances business prospects, etc.

The more I ponder over this, the more I feel - it has to wait for a while...If I am able to do all of these without going to the MBA program, then why need an MBA degree?

My after thoughts having an MBA degree are here:  http://ravijrao.blogspot.sg/2012/07/is-mba-necessary-post-mba-thoughts.html