The last post: The benefit of an MBA I couldn't get on my own

This is my last post of a series on if an MBA was worth it, even though there is still plenty more I could say.

The MBA's benefit I couldn't get on my own

Let’s acknowledge that when some people talk about their graduate or doctoral degree, they sound like complete tools. “That guy” might introduce himself the following way: “Hi, I’m Fakey McToolbag, and I completed my MBA at [Insert top-ten B-School].”

This is not a ‘toot-my-own-horn’ essay. It’s a true & objective list of what I got out of the Foster MBA program that I could not have received through my own self-directed learning from books or online tutorials. 

Let’s also be real and acknowledge a formal upper-tier MBA program gets you access to some things that self-directed study just can’t… such as (brace yourself for buzz-words) access to networks of people, certain hands-on experience, job-placement systems, friendships, and a unique way to learn about yourself.

I have 4 main topics, and if you read any of them, I hope you read the last section.

Network of People. I used to think “it’s not what you know but who you know” was a lame buzz-phrase. Then I joined a small group of 140 people who (I felt) were all way more accomplished than me, sharper than me, tested higher than me, and had more forms of technical skills than me.

Being a part of that group mattered because I would have to do things that were new and difficult for me, and these new colleagues could sit down and show me how to manipulate that computer code in a software program to create a survey, or how to manage that horrendous workload, or show how to use some function I didn’t know existed in Excel that sped my work up 10 times faster. Again, that is a very abbreviated, narrow list.

Networks of people outside the networks I would naturally make taught me more on how other nationalities, political or religious creeds think or do business as I worked with them on really hard, time-consuming projects. (Bubble-check: What percentage of your friends are of significantly different political or religious views?)

Examples: 
With a Coast Guard officer, former Navy submarine captain, Indian software engineer, Chinese aviation engineer, and Indonesian Banker, we told a 2-Billion dollar commercial bank where to build their next branch.

·         In a small group of a Chemist, Navy Veteran, Taiwanese Banker, Japanese Medical Salesman, and Indian IT Consultant, we decided how to price a John Deere Tractor.

·         With two guys from the East Coast and a guy from Mumbai we hired and trained 13 students for a year to have them recommend a market sector & industry to invest in.

·         With a South African engineer with multiple physics & mathematics degrees, a native mandarin-speaking accounting manager educated in British Columbia, and hilarious Boeing engineer we made a science fiction movie storyboard illustrating macro-economic principles and international currency problems.

My changed network matters because the less homogenous it is, they more unique lessons they teach me. In 1:1 or small, private settings, I got to learn what people’s completely different worlds were like.

·         I sat and talked with an Indian classmate about his experience and opinion on the cast system.

·         A classmate (both a mother and Muslim) and I got to hear a classmate from China tell his observations of the abortion policies and practices in China.

·         I talked with another native Chinese classmate about his experience being a believing Christian in a country that oppresses religious freedom, and discussed our varying Christian beliefs.

·         […and some white guys from the east coast had to explain to me what a Derby Party was. Who on the west coast goes to a horse-racing event celebration dressed like Easter Sunday?]

Rather than listen to TV Speakers, I got to shake their hands and have a 2-way conversation with pretty high-caliber individuals.

  Examples: I got to shake hands with Steve Forbes & ask what topics he felt my generation of students didn’t consider in presidential elections that he felt we should.

·         The Founders of Tableau Software shared their vision to a group of 200 students on how to find the place in the tech world where you can make the disrupting, revolutionary product.

·         The CFO of Alaska Airlines took my same finance classes a few years ago, and got to explain where he did and didn’t use the theory from class.

·         The Treasurer (the guys who handle all the extra cash the company has) of Apple and Treasurer of Microsoft got to explain the challenges facing new MBA’s and our economic & political environment.

Each set of bullet points are small snapshot of a much larger set of experiences with people that I wouldn’t interact with if I just tried to do my own self-study.

There’s a System: I learned there is a super secret system that MBA schools, their alumni, and really big companies have made. It’s code-name is “On-Campus Recruiting” or “Career Services.” The companies that hire MBA’s know the types of students the school will produce, so they directly connect to each other and bypass the traditional job hiring process. Here’s what the MBA school system plugged me into.

·         MBA only career fairs with interviewing & job offers on the spot. There are 2 main “National Career Fairs” hosted by the National Society of Hispanic MBA’s and National Black MBA Association. I went to one in a huge expo center in Philadelphia, talked with dozens of employers, interviewed with a few including USAA, and lo and behold I have a job at USAA. I’m a believer.

·         “Office Hours” where employers send “pre-interviewers” to the MBA school so students like me could sign up to talk with the recruiter to a little get-to-know-the-interviewer-&-company. Using this resource correlated very highly with getting a job interview.

·         Career Services & Alumni from your school. If I was interested in working for a specific company in Seattle or Austin TX or Denver CO, I would email my career services partner and she would reply in a day with 2 or 3 MBA school alumni who had agreed to either meet up with me or call them to ask them all about their job & the way people end up working there.

·         “MBA Rotational Jobs” that cut out at least 1 or 2 rungs on the corporate ladder. Just about every large company has a rotational program. Some call it a Career Development Program, or Leadership Development Program. If a company has a standard hierarchy of Individual Contributor (like me when I was at Fidelity) > Senior Member > Manager > Director > Program Director > VP > Executive > President. These programs boost a person like me 2 to 3 levels up from where I was previously working. Know more than a dozen of my classmates including me get an MBA Rotational job, and have jobs at (or approaching) a director-level job.

This system is a real thing and a huge benefit. Companies trust that my classmates and I are director-caliber people or will be in a year or two. It feels like a total slingshot up now being in a role where I actually get to lead, create, and decide things.  There’s a lot of other pieces to the MBA School / MBA Employer system, but that’s enough to get my point across. …And being in a role where I can lead, create and decide things leads me to my next point.

Practical Experience: My experience in school was one where I got to lead, create and decide things at a level that I would not otherwise been able to.  Here’s 2 examples out of “at least two-hands worth” of internship, projects and consulting opportunities.

·         I and 3 other students completed the founding of an investment fund with a 6-digit dollar amount. We wrote the governing documents, hired the student analysts, wrote the curriculum and lead them on how to do research, then presented our findings & investment strategy to our donors.

·         Teaching Experience within a top-10 undergraduate program. I taught undergraduate accounting classes as a teaching assistant to over 300 young adults over the course of 4 quarters. I worked with professors to prepare lessons and materials, quizzes, and exams, and got deal with kids who think they could someone get special credit for trying really hard. False. This was important to me because I always have (and continue to) entertain the idea of finding a place to teach finance or accounting at a small university and build a managed investment portfolio. It let me try the teaching in and see “how the sausage is made.” Overall, I really liked it. I felt like I genuinely helped people in a difficult time of life where they were searching for guidance, and made something difficult not as bad. The experience taught me something I needed to learn about myself.

This leads me to the last point I would like to make, despite having a list of a few others I could have included:

A Full-Time MBA program at a Top-25 business school

I know Christine better, and she knows me better, and I know myself better: And we understand & love each other better, and I feel better about myself. Here are some reasons why:

·         I know what I’m capable of, as well as where my limits are.

·         I know what Christine is capable of, and what difficult things can strengthen or weaken our relationship. I feel empowered with more ways for us to be close.

·         We learned how we do living in new places from moving apartments across state lines 4 times in the last 3 years (SLC to Seattle, Seattle to Austin, Austin to Seattle, Seattle to San Antonio). It taught us how to expand our perspectives on how people live. It taught us how quick people are to judge how others live without understanding the context of what their living circumstances are like. It taught us how to adapt, and love wherever we are.

I could talk about the professors & their caliber, the study tours and access to some many other things, but this is already too long.

So, was an MBA worth it for me? Unequivocally, yes. But that is just one person’s experience.