The masters of business administration degree are familiar to any experienced entrepreneur. In fact, many businesses insist that anyone applying for a managerial position possesses an MBA degree. However, there are also lots of people who believe that the MBA is no longer relevant or valuable. Here are seven reasons that we think these people are very wrong.
IMAGE: PEXELS
Learn New Skills
One of the most compelling reasons for studying an MBA degree is that it will equip you with the skills that you need in order to flourish as a business leader. Any MBA course will provide you with a grounding in the most essential subjects for a business manager to know, things like accounting, human resources, and of course, how to manage a business on a day-to-day basis.
However, there are also now a variety of more specialized MBA courses that are tailored for people who want to work in specific industries or roles. In order to enroll in most MBA courses, you will already have to have some experience working as a manager.
In fact, many MBA courses require students to currently work in a managerial position when they begin studying for their course. But no matter how much real-world experience you have as a business manager, there is always more for you to learn.
The MBA course is structured in such a way as to ensure that you graduate with competency in all the most important areas of business administration. Better still, you won’t just get the opportunity to improve the skills that you already have, but you will encounter other students and ways of thinking. This enables you to broaden your own perceptions of what makes a good business leader.
Gain A New Perspective
The most successful entrepreneurs are those who are able to adapt to evolving circumstances. Business leaders who are too set in their ways and reluctant to consider alternative points of view don’t tend to last very long. As soon as an unexpected obstacle comes their way, these entrepreneurs find themselves with a very limited toolkit to handle the situation.
By contrast, entrepreneurs who are able to adapt and consider other ways of thinking and working will find it much easier to adjust that approach to match the problem in front of them. Studying for an MBA degree will bring you into contact with new ideas and new ways of thinking.
Also, as we mentioned earlier, you will have the chance to mix with other students who might have a very different ethos and approach to you. Learning how to integrate all of these different viewpoints into your overall approach as a business leader will enable you to turbocharge your performance and achieve everything you are capable of.
Improve Your Career Prospects
The best entrepreneurs are those who are always seeking out new challenges and new opportunities. However, it can be very frustrating as a skilled entrepreneur to discover that no matter how good you are in business, there are many doors that will remain firmly shut unless you happen to know the right people.
While this will always be true to an extent, having an MBA degree under your belt definitely makes it easier to find new work. Many businesses on the Fortune 500 list now require anyone applying for a managerial or leadership role to have an MBA degree to their name.
This is not a hard and fast requirement throughout the business world, but it is not uncommon either. In other words, having an MBA degree is always going to mean more opportunities and access to potential jobs that would otherwise be off-limits to you.
If you have worked in the same industry or role for a number of years, then making a break for a brand new career might seem like a daunting prospect. However, it pays to keep your options open, and the less you are restricted in the jobs that you can consider, the more options you will have if you find yourself in a position of needing to find new employment.
Increase Your Earnings Potential
At the end of the day, every successful entrepreneur wants to make money. Anything that you can do to enhance your earnings potential and enable you to bring in more money is worth considering. Studying for an MBA degree won’t earn you any money in and of itself, but it will ensure that you are in the best position possible to apply for more lucrative work within existing organizations.
Some people choose to study an MBA degree with a view to launching their own business that they are at the helm of. However, the MBA degree will also enable you to take on higher-paying roles within existing companies. For entrepreneurs who are taking the plunge on their own business, this provides them with something of a failsafe.
Should the business that they are founding ultimately fail, as the majority of new companies will, having an MBA degree to their name means that they can instantly begin applying for senior and high paying positions in other businesses.
Earning any university degree is going to enhance your earning potential and mean that you can apply for jobs that you would otherwise have been unable to. However, the MBA degree is extraordinary in that it is an incredibly versatile degree.
Unlike many popular university degrees, there is not a list of jobs that MBA graduates can apply for. The degree indicates that they have general competence as a business leader, and this is something that is valuable to businesses across the board.
Challenge Yourself
The life of an entrepreneur is straightforward. Regardless of the type of business that you want to work in, or the kind of industry that you aspire to be a part of, you are always going to be faced with some significant challenges. Studying for masters of business administration will equip you with many of the vital tools that you need in order to be able to remain calm and formulate an appropriate response to any challenges that come your way.
Rather than suffering a baptism by fire, it is much better to learn how to roll with the punches in a much less stressful environment. An MBA course will present you with plenty of challenges to overcome, but the stakes are much lower if you are unable to surmount them. If the first real test of your leadership abilities firms not in the controlled setting of a classroom, but in the real world of business, the potential impacts can be catastrophic.
Develop Important Traits
As with any university course, studying for an MBA degree will present you with innumerable opportunities to develop key skills. While all of these skills are useful in the world of business, you will also have the opportunity to develop skills that are just as applicable in your personal life as your professional life.
- Communication: Not everyone is naturally good at communicating with other people. However, if you want to flourish in the world of business, then you are going to have to learn how to communicate with others effectively. Business leaders don’t just need to be able to communicate clearly with their own staff in order to give them clear instructions, but they also need to be able to communicate with other businesses. There are few, if any, businesses that can survive in isolation. Regardless of the industry that you work in, you are always going to be dependent on at least one other company to supply you with raw materials or to take your product to market.
Over the course of studying for an MBA degree, students will have to develop their communication skills. This is true of any university course, but it is something else that the MBA is especially good for.
Even if you do plan on launching a business that genuinely can’t survive all on its own, there are clear and obvious advantages to being able to communicate well with other people within your industry.
Irrespective of how successful your business might be, sometimes it is simply the way that you talk to people that determines how they react to you. If you are a good and practiced communicator, then you are more likely to get favorable deals with other businesses and to foster strong long-term relationships.
- Budgeting and money management: It goes without saying that any business leader needs to be able to manage their money effectively. However, this is a skill that is just as applicable to your personal life as your professional life. People who aren’t great at managing their money are inevitably going to find themselves facing much more or stress and worry in their general life. Over the course of an MBA course, you will learn how to budget for a business appropriately.
It is undoubtedly true that budgeting for a business and budgeting for your personal needs are two different skills. Still, there is enough overlap between them that learning to be disciplined in this regard in the setting of an MBA course will also enable you to manage your personal finances much more effectively.
If your only experience as a business manager thus far is is as the leader of a small business that you have started yourself, it is quite possible that you will be used to viewing your personal and professional finances as one and the same. For many small businesses and startups, there is little to no distinction between the money for their business and the personal funds of the business owner.
Studying an MBA course won’t just make the distinction between these two finances clear to you; it will also equip you with the skills and understanding that you need to effectively manage both of them. While the focus of an MBA course is obviously going to be on the business side of things, many of the lessons that you learn are applicable to your daily life.
- Effective time management: Like budgeting, proper time management is a skill that is just as applicable to your personal life as your professional life. In both arenas, those who are able to manage their time effectively aren’t just more productive. They are also far more trustworthy to others. People or businesses who aren’t able to effectively manage their time will inevitably find themselves falling behind with essential tasks and ultimately letting other people down.
Studying any university course requires students to be able to manage their own time effectively and to delegate tasks to themselves appropriately. Any student or business leader who is unable to manage their own time properly is inevitably going to end up letting down other people.
In the realm of business, this can be a fatal mistake and ultimately lead to a negative perception of you and your business developing. Of course, proper time management is not the primary focus of an MBA course, that it is one of the essential incidental lessons that you will learn.
You Can Study Online
The internet has revolutionized learning in several different ways. One of the most significant changes that it has ushered in is the ability for students to study their chosen subjects remotely. Studying online is beneficial for a variety of different reasons. Not only is it a more affordable and more flexible way of studying, but students can receive the same quality of education as they would have if they had opted to study at a regular university instead.
This MBA course from Aston University Online is representative of the kinds of online MBA courses that are out there for ambitious entrepreneurs. While many people now consider the MBA degree to be hopelessly outdated and irrelevant to modern entrepreneurs, this is a degree that can still offer enormous value to graduates.
The seven reasons we have outlined above are just some of the most compelling reasons for aspirational entrepreneurs to consider studying for an MBA degree. Whether you aspire to run your own business or work as a leader in an existing organization, this course will teach you everything that you need to know.
If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
COMMENTS