S#¡T they don´t teach @ Business Schools. LESSON #3

ABOUT MBA’S

A very popular business magazine in the Latin-American region published a ranking of the top 50 CEO’s in the world based on their job performance. The article states that this ranking is the first of its kind because it states which CEO has had the best stock performance in the market for their publicly traded companies.

What startles me is the following: of the 50 CEO’s only 14 had MBA’s, this means that a 7 out of ten of them where running the some of the biggest companies that trade publicly (with your money) without an MBA.

MBA´s are overrated; you mostly pay for the potential network weight you will come out of your school with. You pay for the experience ant theoretical knowledge of your teachers, and you pay for the lectures of guest you school receives. I don´t recommend an MBA, especially if you have a major in business. It's simply redundant.

To all you students out there, take the money you will be spending in your MBA and take 1-3 month courses in major universities and colleges, and especially the ones that have prestige and a high reputation of excelling in the subjects you’re interested in. This way you can travel to more Universities, make specialized networking circles and gain different ideologies based on the Alma Maters you choose for your courses. If you’re already working, the company you work for will probably give you 3 months off every so often, than let you go for more than a year. There are people that want your job bad, and this is only a curve that will get worse. In the great book of Tom Peters: Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age he notes that “I would close all business schools, if there was ever a tragic waste of time in a humans being life, it’s an MBA”.

The main reason for the lack of MBA’s in the list is the fact that 20 years ago they weren’t popular, usually if you were a college graduate, you had differentiated yourself enough from the rest, that was the edge. Now, you feel pressure to get that darn MBA, and possibly a Doctor’s degree or even a PHD.

It’s important for the professional to understand that now it can also be more important to develop a career in a company, this can weigh a lot in a CV. This is recommended to those of you who actually find a first job that you can possibly do the rest of your life, because you actually build a career in the industry, not only in the company. Think of it as a franchise player.

I predict than in 20 years there will be 90% MBA graduates on the top of that list, maybe all of them with some sort of other higher degree. Oh yea, and also 2 women, just one on the actual list, she has an MBA.