Should You Get an MBA?

Since I’m the CFO of a publicly traded company, a lot of people ask me if they should get their MBA. It’s a good question, but a tough one to answer. I struggled with this same question for the first part of my career as I tried to determine whether business school or the school of hard knocks was better for me.

Unfortunately, the answer isn’t clear cut. A lot depends on your particular situation in life and what your goals are for your career. An MBA prepares you for a career in business, and it’s definitely recommended if you’re going into leadership. But there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind before filling out that application for business school.

Evaluate What You’re Learning in Your Job

In my first decade at General Electric, I faced a fork in the road six or seven times where I could either continue the path I was on or leave to go get my MBA. Every time, I looked at the experience I was going to get from the job ahead of me and felt that it would be more valuable to me than an MBA. So I kept pushing the MBA off and thought I may never get it.

Then, in my second CFO position, I started to realize just how much I didn’t know. I felt like I wasn’t going to learn everything I needed to learn as a business leader within the confines of a company like GE. I decided then that I should finally look more seriously at an MBA. At this point, however, I was too far into my career to go back to school full time. So I chose an executive MBA program.

In hindsight, I’d do it exactly the same way. Are you learning a lot in your current position? Stay and keep learning. Your friends and colleagues may all be rushing into business school, but in your job, you’re getting paid to learn about business. I wouldn’t give that up easily.

Examine Your Career Goals

Many people go to business school because it’s what they’ve been told to do. They have no idea whether their goals align with getting an MBA. You first need to figure out where you want to be in the next five to ten years. Then talk to mentors and supervisors to see what it would take to get there. An MBA may not be necessary for the career path you’ve laid out for yourself.

On the other hand, if you’re stalled out in your position with no chance of moving upward without going to business school, you have a choice to make: find a new job or go get that MBA. You may find a better job, but soon you’ll hit a ceiling. That’s when you need to make that decision.

The Value of an MBA

Views are changing on the value of an MBA, but to me it’s a no-brainer. Regardless of where you’re working, whether in the corporate world or in a small business, you’ll absolutely benefit from the frameworks, mental models, and the network you’ll build. 

You can learn a lot about these things online, for free, but there’s absolutely no substitute for exchanging ideas with a group of like-minded, similarly driven individuals in a campus setting and in a structured manner led by professional educators.

The Advantage of an Executive MBA

I love the executive or part-time MBA format because you get a lot more out of it. You’ll benefit from the frameworks, mental models, and the network you’ll build.

You can learn a lot about these online for free, but there’s absolutely no substitute for exchanging ideas with a group of like-minded, similarly driven individuals in a campus setting and in a structured manner led by professional educators.

When you go for your MBA after only a couple of years in the workforce, you don’t have enough experience to properly frame up and contextualize what you learn in business school. That’s no offense to anyone who’s done it—it’s simply math. 

You’ll get more out of an MBA once you’ve seen a few business cycles, experienced different economic environments, worked in or with different regions of the world, hired (and fired) some people, managed direct reports, or managed direct reports who have direct reports of their own. 

These things all generally take more than two or three years to experience. It’s been about six years since I got my MBA, and I often wish I could go back to school with the experiences I’ve had since then.

What’s great about the executive or part-time format is you get a much richer experience not only because you yourself have experienced more, but your classmates have as well. This leads to more valuable discussions in the classroom and in your group assignments, and you also get better interactions with your professors. 

So, What’s It Going To Be?

If you ask me, I would recommend that if you’re working toward any type of leadership position, you should get your MBA—and the longer you wait to get it, the more you’ll get out of it.

For more advice on getting your MBA, you can find What They Didn’t Tell Me on Amazon.