What they don't teach you in an MBA program

MBA education may not give you all the skills required to perform well in your job.

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Strategy and execution

A typical MBA program takes the candidates through case studies based on various management concepts and teaches the MBA students the art of strategizing. But strategy without execution is of not much use. Execution poses various problems which probably can not be predicted during strategizing phase. As an example consider the decision to lay off the employees. White it may be easy to decide which employees to lay off, it is certainly not easy to execute that decision. It has a sensitive human resources angle which is completely missed out in strategy part. The case study will teach you to look at the operating margins and figure out how salary payments are affecting this margin. But it will not certainly help you to understand if laying off is the best decision given the nature of various  other factors like employee relations and trade unions at play.

Soft skills

Though many MBA programs claim that they expose the students to various opportunities to work on their soft skills, rigor of a typical MBA program leaves much to be desired for those students who plan to improve their soft skills like communication skills. Many MBA programs also lay emphasis on working in teams. But these students work in teams made up of other MBA students from same institutes. Now working in teams in a typical corporate environment would require an MBA graduate to coordinate teams with very diverse backgrounds. This situation will also pose completely different set of challenges as compared to a team of MBAs.

Entrepreneurial Qualities

While a typical MBA stresses the importance of analysis and decision making, success in corporate life depends largely on ability of a candidate to deal with uncertain situations. As an example consider the case of marketing a technology product. MBA graduate learn about marketing and sales theories but many of them fail to understand that marketing also needs to be customized to product and customer. Can you decide which marketing tactic to use if you cant conduct a market research and if you are creating a new market for a completely new product?