Career Diversity

Have you always wanted to get an MBA? Are you were the person who doesn’t remember a time when an MBA wasn’t a part of your career path? Maybe you got on the bandwagon when you got to your job and saw the big things that the MBA graduates seemed to be doing? Or maybe you don’t even know at this point if an MBA is for you.

Regardless of the duration and depth of your interest in a Master of Business Administration, your “now what” first step is the same. Drum roll please…you have to answer “why”. Why? It’s that simple or it’s that complicated depending how much clarity you have about your reasons for desiring a MBA.

When I ask “why”, I am not necessarily interested in the original reason you wanted an MBA, but rather I want to know, at this moment in time, why you think an MBA makes sense for your career. You might have been planning for an MBA in the tenth grade, like I was – I had picked the school and the graduation date (which by the way, I nailed), but clearly also like me you had no real idea of the value of an MBA. Regardless of your original reasons, you now need to get very clear about why you want an MBA and you need to be able to articulate that for yourself, and eventually for others.

I know some of you are thinking “I don’t know what I want to do with my career, that’s why I want an MBA”. To start, consider the following questions;

• What do you want out of your career and your life?
• Where do you see yourself in 10 and/or 20 years?
• What impact do you want to have on your family? Community? On this world?
• What are you good at?
• What do you value? What drives you?

None of the questions above mention the MBA or even directly relate to the MBA. But before you determine that you should quit your job and pack up and move across country for a two-year MBA program, you have to explore who you are, what drive you and what you want out of life. When you make progress on this, you will be better equipped to truly assess why an MBA is right for you.

At this point you may not have answers to all of these questions. No worries. It will come in time as long as you diligently seek it (that sounds very Zen!) So I encourage you to:

1. Read – read articles and books about personal and professional growth, successful people and business and related industries
2. Talk – talk to your people, who work in the areas in which you are interested, who you respect and aspire to be like, or who have pursued an MBA – this may help to shape your vision of the life that you do or do not want to have.
3. Listen – listen to family, friends, peers, managers and mentors – get feedback from other people about your strengths and areas of development. [Disclosure: I am not suggesting that you listen to all of them, but rather that you gather data that you can use to form your own opinions.]
4. Work – work really hard – at work, in your community activities and in your personal life. This will give you additional data points to determine what you like, what you don’t like, what you are good at, what you will never be great at. [Willingness to work hard and demonstrated work ethic are prerequisites to an MBA – if you don’t have these yet, forget an MBA for now and get to work!