What does an MBA do really?

A post from a professor about the new cohort joining my alma mater at Ahmedabad got me nostalgic – and then not. I wished them well but also wondered what they expected on their first day into this journey.

When we advise people to do an MBA or not, there are three things that remain constant. Do an MBA if you are sure you are doing it from a good place. (If you see profs teaching from one textbook, run!(or pay less)). And, Quality matters. I hate to say it, but labels matter – still. Two, networks matter as much as content. (though not as much as incredible professors who can turn your world view upside down, faculty matters the most!). Three, your learning opportunities outside of the program may be fantastic, weigh the pros and cons. The days of an MBA being an obvious path are long gone. The MBA is renewing itself, but it is still playing catch up with the changes in the business world, so it is possible that a great role in a fantastic organisation beats this option. Rare, but possible, so do the math.

But that is not what you will really learn when you do a good MBA. What you will learn is to love and hate at the same time. To compete and cooperate in the same instant. To grow yourself as you grow others, to nurture yourself and others at the same time. You will learn that strength comes from being a show off and a sincere do gooder. And these contrasts will not bother you – but that will come after it feels like a roller coaster, or a trapeze act. At first it is mind bending to straddle both the intellectual but also the emotional range of being all of this, but that is the job. That is the learning. To expand yourself so that you not only stand for yourself, but stand for your team and cause too, even when they seem to contradict. This is when you learn to grow the pie. And it is your pie, your recipe.

The MBA will also show you how to handle uncertainty. At least a good MBA will do that. At first, you may resent them, hate them for putting you through so much. Some will call it pressure, and not be able to deal with it. Please quit, find something else that suits you. I know it sounds unkind, but it is meant kindly. Don’t put yourself through something you do not think you can handle. Get advice, get support. Because a real MBA is meant to build the kind of muscle that built the ark. Each one a Noah, that is the intent. Each one is a rescuer, a builder, a leader, a survivor – not just alone but for all of us. It is as big as that, any smaller scope is merely a matter of personal choice.

Doing an MBA is meant to be transformative. Not because learning about accountancy and organisations is life changing. But because the process makes you a different person. Only very few of us start off being that perfect leader of work, the value creator, the one who brings purpose and profit on to the same table. Most of us have to grow into it – and then into better too. The MBA is meant to seed that journey where you begin to pick up on your onw hunger. Once you have found your hunger, of course you are in trouble. Because now you do not have the skills. The MBA will teach you the basics, but skilling up takes decades of self work. Tough, but true – and so you learn to grate, before you become great (sorry, how could I resist that!). If the MBA has not seeded restlessness within you, a need to do better, dug a hole in your heart that you ache to fill with your own growth, then it has been of no use.

I realise, this is not an endorsement for an MBA when it speaks of hard times before good. Contradictions, Uncertainty, restlessness, awareness of one’s own gaps – if that is what it gives you, then why go for it? Because it gives you something that is bigger than all od these – ambition, and reasons to believe that you will be able to reach your ambition. You may not have sight of your career goals even at the end of your MBA, you may mindlessly join the rat race, or tactically do so till you discover yourself. But all along, you will hear a quiet whisper behind the questions of ‘can I?’, ‘am I an imposter?’, ‘am I ready for this?” – and that is this steady sound that says – I can. One step at a time, I can.

This is what you go to a business school for in reality. In addition to the course, the place, the brand, the network. You go there to become the person the world can lean upon, the person who can.