">

  • Tweet

  • Mail

  • Share

  • Salve

  • Print

Ascend logo

Where your piece of work meets your life. See more from Ascend here.

At that place are many reasons why you might determine to get an MBA. Some people pursue the degree in hopes of growing or sustaining their business concern venture. Others want to climb the ladder within their company, make more coin, or modify their career.

No affair why you lot decide to apply, earning the degree comes with a handful of challenges. Candidates ofttimes liken the feel to drinking from a firehose. The intensity of the academic class load, mixed with a never-ending stream of business concern theories, constructs, cases, models, and frameworks, tin can feel incredibly overwhelming — especially for students who also have full-time jobs.

Equally a result, the bulk of MBAs struggle to decide where to focus their attention while in school. Candidates written report retaining merely a small fraction of the curriculum upon graduation, and many fear that they won't know how to apply it to the "existent world."

If yous are a electric current or prospective MBA candidate, you can expect to face similar obstacles. To get the almost out of your programme, and avert burnout, yous'll demand to be selective with where you lot place your attention and decide what aspects of your education volition be nearly benign to your career. The cardinal to figuring that out depends on why yous chose to pursue an MBA in the get-go identify.

Below are iv common reasons people pursue an MBA, and how to make the well-nigh of your fourth dimension at school. Each "why" also offers an instance from a real MBA pupil who participated in my research written report.

one) To grow or sustain your business venture

Maybe y'all've simply started your own company. Or perhaps yous're trying to scale your concern. Either way, information technology's probable that you lot have a laundry list of urgent and important bug you're trying to solve at work. An MBA tin can assistance you solve these problems past giving you the "know-how" and the network to tackle them caput on.

If you want an MBA to grow or sustain your business venture, ask yourself these questions:

  1. What are the persistent bug I'm facing at my business?
  2. Which business concepts can I learn at schoolhouse that may help me solve these problems?
  3. How can I quickly introduce and integrate these concepts into my company?

Whatever coursework that helps you reply these questions deserves your immediate attention.

For example, take Steve, a co-founder of a engineering startup and an executive MBA student. At piece of work, Steve was wondering how to best go to market with his product. In class, he learned about ii business concepts that helped him solve his trouble in real-time: market segmentation and beachhead markets.

Steve had never studied business before, so the concept of market segmentation (the process of dividing existing and potential customers into smaller groups that will respond to item products, toll points, promotional campaigns, and distribution channels in different means) was new to him, equally was the concept of beachhead markets (segments of the target market that are ideal for introducing new products or services).

Steve was immediately able to apply both tools to his business to develop a go-to-market strategy for his venture. By focusing on his "why," which was his desire to calibration his business organisation, he was able to identify these learnings as something that deserved his attention and time.

ii) To get a promotion

If you're vying for a position with greater telescopic and responsibilities at your electric current company, getting an MBA could help you go there. Make information technology a goal to bring innovative ideas from business school back into your workplace. You can employ leadership or business concepts that you acquire in school to the part in which you piece of work.

If y'all want an MBA to aid you go a promotion, ask yourself these questions:

  1. Which work practices, if inverse, would accelerate my promotion?
  2. Which business concepts from school can I apply to change these piece of work practices?
  3. How can I leverage the improvements I make to advocate for a promotion?

Jen, for instance, was vying for a promotion at work while earning her MBA degree. While studying a case in school, she saw an opportunity to improve management practices at her own organization. The example wrestled with this question: Practice managers add value to their employees, teams, and organizations? Information technology suggested that good managers do, in fact, make measurable positive impacts and that the near important attribute of these managers is their ability to effectively charabanc others.

Jen introduced the case to her supervisor, and using her analysis as bear witness, she proposed that her organization develop a new direction training program that teaches managers how to jitney their employees. Introducing and piloting this idea helped Jen after build a case for why she deserved a promotion.

three) To change careers

If yous're thinking about changing career paths, you tin can use your MBA program to experiment with dissimilar roles and industries. While in school, focus your attending on studying business concern concepts that sit at the periphery of the companies, functions, or specialties you're interested in. It's also a dandy opportunity to network with people doing jobs that you lot desire to pursue, or who work at organizations y'all are interested in applying to in the future.

If you lot desire an MBA to aid y'all switch industries, companies, or roles, ask yourself:

  1. What does my electric current career path await like? How do I want to alter information technology?
  2. What experiments can I conduct at school (and at work) to try out this new path?
  3. How tin can I leverage these experiments to change careers?

For instance, Zara loved her career in engineering science and found that she was most fulfilled when she had the opportunity to remember strategically. Equally a technical product manager, she had a lot of experience executing strategies, but was rarely involved in actually developing them. She thought getting an MBA might give her a chance to test out a career change, and it did.

In her first-year strategy form, Zara wrote a paper applying Porter's Five Forces (a method for analyzing business competition) to her industry. She viewed this newspaper equally a risk to try on a new identity by putting herself in the shoes of a strategy analyst. Turns out, she enjoyed the experiment so much that she decided to major in strategy and refocused her coursework to build out her experience in the field. Subsequently graduation, this work immune her to easily transition into a new role.

4) To figure out your path forward

If you don't really know what you want out of your career, an MBA can help you effigy information technology out. Accept reward of your program by delving into diverse subjects and meet what sparks your interest. This is a great opportunity to interruption, wait in, and learn more about yourself and your career goals.

If you want an MBA to figure out your career goals, ask yourself these questions:

  1. What are some possible mail-MBA careers that might interest me?
  2. What are my personal values, and how do these possibilities marshal with those values?
  3. Which MBA courses would allow me to explore those possibilities?

Richard, for example, was working for a federal regime contractor. He knew he wasn't interested in pursuing that path forever, merely he wasn't certain what path he was interested in. While attention an online MBA program, he explored a variety of options, from entrepreneurship to finance.

In a business communication course, Richard developed and presented a production pitch to his classmates as a means of exploring whether he wanted to offset a venture. During a concern analytics form, he brought financial modeling techniques from his curriculum into work to explore his growing interest in financial analysis. Richard decided that entrepreneurship and finance weren't for him — at to the lowest degree not at present — and he kept exploring.

Getting your MBA doesn't take to feel like drinking from a firehose. By determining your "why" for earning an MBA, y'all can focus your learning activities on the information that is most important for you. That volition go a long way in helping you make your education relevant today, and for the balance of your career.