The Decision of Doing an MBA……. MEMBA 12

The decision to go for a master’s in business administration (MBA) degree comes at a cost. Combining study with work, family, church and side hustle is a difficult thing. But why studying for an MBA in the first place? Good question! I think is a question I need to constantly remind myself the answer I came up with before commencing the MBA journey.  I vividly remember having the discussion with a senior colleague before embarking on the journey. He wondered how I was going to do that knowing how busy my work schedule is. I remember asking myself how I was going to combine an MBA programme with my “super” busy schedule. I could not figure that out before commencing because of lack of sufficient information.

It is now two months down the line, and I am trudging along, still brainstorming on how to create space for the programme in my schedule.  There are several options I am considering and a few initiatives I think I can put in place. One of the many initiatives I am considering is delegation. I believe I should explore the possibility of distributing and assigning more tasks to people. Why this is a laudable idea, it would require providing people with adequate training to be able to do what they are required to do. I believe with training and constant retraining; delegation will be possible.

Back to the question of why I need to have an MBA in the first place. Not too long ago, I was speaking to my supervisor, and I can still hear his voice telling me that enough of excel and SQL works. He told me that the company needs me to be strategic.  So, I believe doing an MBA will make me more strategic and so I started it.

So far, it has been all good. Much of the course content has been good. The MBA programme started with a short emotional intelligence brush-up session If I could call it that.  The brush session was an eye opener as it explains to some extent why we behave the way we behave. I especially found the discussion about anger trap, very interesting.

What about analysis of business problems (ABP)? ABP teaches how to be methodological in decision making and how to base our decisions on data rather than on emotions or gut feelings. Although the cases can be very long and confusing, but I think I am enjoying every bit of it. Clean Spritz, Ace Motors, etc. have been wonderful cases. The analysis of business problems introduces me to the eight (8) steps for decision making. The steps are: Understand the context, identify the problem, identify the objectives, Identify the decision criteria, identify the alternatives, evaluate the alternatives, detail the action plan.

I find the eight steps to decision making very fascinating and educative. Understanding the context is very important and tells me that you might have different outcome for the same problems if the context is different. In other words, there is no one-size fits all solution for a business problem.