So I just recently graduated from the UW Executive MBA program. It was a challenging but rewarding couple of years, and I learned a ton. If there’s interest, at some point I’ll write about the curriculum itself, but today I’m going to talk about the actual school experience.
When I first took the GMAT, and even on the first day of class, I had no idea what to expect from an MBA program. I knew there were huge gaps in my knowledge, and I was tired of trying to cram on every business subject as the need arose. Over the past two years, I learned a lot a about business, but also about business school.
An MBA is a High Level Overview
I entered the MBA program with the expectation that it would impart deep knowledge of accounting, marketing, management, finance, and so on. The reality is that each area of business is a huge field in itself. People have whole careers (and get PhD degrees) in specific areas of accounting, or marketing, or finance.
An MBA program is about exposing you to a wide range of skills at a fairly high level, not teaching you everything you need to know about anything in particular. I left with the feeling that I know enough to manage all of these different areas, and that I now have the base knowledge necessary to pursue one or more of them more deeply. But a marketing (or finance, or operations) guru I am not.
(E)MBA Students are Not Stodgy
I can’t speak for kids who go straight from an undergraduate degree to an MBA program, but the people in my EMBA program were, almost without exception, real characters. There was a lot of laughter in the class, and there was a wide variety of rich personalities. I don’t have actual stats, but I expect the average age of my class was about 45, with a standard deviation of 5 years. These were working professionals, established in their careers and lives, who were not afraid to be themselves. It was a lively and sometimes… surprising class environment.
We had classmates dressing in drag, demonstrating their ability to blow bubbles from their eyes into a water-filled snorkel mask, and mixing cocktails for class presentations. Heck, that was all just *one* classmate. There were 36 more! We really had a lot of fun, and that was something I was not expecting.
Structure is Valuable
A lot of the EMBA program focused on the basics: accounting, statistics, and just generally a whole lot of math and terminology. I could have learned that on my own. Heck, I could have learned it on my own twenty years ago. But I didn’t, and probably never would.
The structure provided by the program and the relatively heavy workload meant that I was dedicated to the reading and assignments on a pretty much constant basis. Left to my own devices, I would never have done the most difficult (and beneficial) work. It was the difference between an immersive language experience and just trying to read an “Intro to Spanish” book before a trip.
A Good Team Matters
I don’t know how other MBA and EMBA programs work. The UW EMBA is based around teams of five to six people who work together, as a team, for the entire duration of the program. Every group project is with the same group, and the group meets in between classes to review projects and to discuss individual assignments (while individual assignments were to be completed individually, most classes permitted and encouraged discussion).
That sounds a little insane. I do not know what I would have done if I hadn’t gotten along with my group. But I really could not be happier – my team had a broad distribution of backgrounds and skills and very different personalities, but we really bonded from the very beginning.
There are two great things about the team approach. First, it means that there is usually someone who is better than you at any given topic. It was a rare occasion indeed that my entire team was stumped on a difficult topic. And second, it gives you something to live up to. As a totally independent student, I would have put less work into some of the projects and assignments because my slacking would only affect me. As part of a team, there is a gentle sense of obligation that really fosters great work.
Graduate School is Not At All Like Undergrad
I can’t stress this enough. Being a college dropout, I had real reservations about returning to school. Would I manage to attend classes this time? Would a lot of the material be so remedial and boring that I would lose interest and fail?
The EMBA program was a great fit for me: the students were already working professionals, so everyone wanted to be there. Nobody was there because their parents expected them to get an MBA, or because they read somewhere that getting an MBA adds $X to annual income. These folks were already successful and were going back to school to get better and what they do. That made for a great learning environment.
The students’ life experience also meant that people were opinionated. In most cases, classes weren’t boring, dry, “in theory” lectures. For the most part, the professors had actual working experience in their fields. And the students knew enough to raise good questions, to disagree with professors on some points, and to contribute constructively to the conversation.
“Good Enough” is a Good Enough Philosophy
This may be controversial. I know there are people who think that anything less than 100% effort is a sign of personal failings, and that complete devotion to projects should be everyone’s ultimate goal. But not me. Especially not after the MBA program.
Way back at the beginning of the program, one of my group’s assignments was to write a charter. It sounds a little cheesy, but it was a good way to get six people who were going to have to work together for two years to be explicit about expectations, to define how the group would be run, and to communicate our priorities to each other.
I am really, really happy about one of the things my group decided right off: that our goal was simply to graduate. Not to get 3.8 GPA, or to be in the top X% of the class, but just to get the job done. Which isn’t to say we slacked off – it was a huge amount of work, and we did a very, very good job of it. But we had the freedom, when a group meeting was running past 9:30pm on a Wednesday night and we were all struggling with some arcane economics question, to just throw up our hands and say “good enough.”
In fact, it being business school, it’s probably not surprising that we sometimes took the time to figure out that a particularly irksome question represented 10% of the grade on a homework assignment that was 25% of the grade for a class that weighted homework as 25%, and that the class itself was a 4 credit class out of a 68 credit program. That question, then, was just 0.037% of our total GPA, and really any answer at all was going to be good enough. These are the calculations that put everything in perspective.
This Stuff is Actually Valuable
Someone in my MBA program once commented on the value of an MBA during job interviews. “If the interviewer has an MBA, they think it’s really valuable. If they don’t have one, they think it’s a waste of time.” I’ve already seen this in the real world, and there’s a lot of truth to it. But how about the real world, outside of interviews?
For my part, I’ve already had cases where specific knowledge gained in the program has helped me make better decisions, to communicate better with people in different business roles, and to better understand the implications of business decisions. I’ve already had times when the key question or issue arises from what I learned in the program. And I am already better at what I do.
I also have to admit to being a little surprised at the amount of value I got from some of the squishier material. Readings and discussions about corporate culture that seemed abstract and esoteric at the time have often come back vividly and usefully in my dealings with Fortune 500 consulting clients. People, structure, culture… indeed.
But Would You Do it Again?
I get asked that a lot. The EMBA program was expensive, time consuming, stressful, and challenging. It meant getting up at 6am every other Saturday, and educating friends that I was simply not available Wednesday nights, ever. It meant almost no football and only one day of skiing across two years. I missed a lot of social interaction… and I can only imagine how tough it must have been for people who have families and traditional jobs.
But yes, ultimately, it was worthwhile. I do think the financial return will come, and there is just a simple joy in getting better at doing things you enjoy.