4 Reasons Why Engineers Go For An MBA Degree

By T Muralidharan

Every person goes through three stages of evolution at the workplace. They are:

• Do it yourself
• Get it done
• Make it happen

The ‘do it yourself’ mindset is usually noticed in executives.  The second mindset is of managerial capability. A middle manager’s job is to get things done. The next mindset is of entrepreneurial capability. At CEO level, the focus is to make things happen.

In any organisation, as you grow, you have to graduate from executive level mindset to entrepreneurial level. This evolution will determine your success. An MBA course will facilitate this evolution. How? Read along to learn:

People Management:

Engineers are very comfortable doing things. However, after 3-4 years, when you assume a managerial position, your job is to get things done by people. For that you have to understand people processes. However, engineers are usually not good at people processes. This is where MBA helps you.

MBA is actually born from engineering. Subjects like production management are part of the engineering domain.  For example, consider production engineering. The concepts of work flow and, activity and time measurement that you find in Production Management specialisation of MBA have actually originated from production engineering! So, as long as you are in technical or operations roles, you do not need an MBA. But if you want to manage people, then you need an MBA.

Customer Management:

As you move into managerial roles you have to learn to handle the customers. To manage customers better, you have to understand their business. When engaging with customers you can engage with them through your problems or through their problems. If you want to engage through customers’ problems, you have to understand their business context, which is fundamentally different from yours. MBA helps you to understand customer’s business context better. With the help of MBA, you can have an intelligent conversation with customers and find solutions that are relevant to them.

Monetization:

Ultimately all organisations work for money. Every task at workplace has monetary implications attached to it.  This financial conversion of activities falls under costing and accounting.

As you grow in professional life, it very important to understand the financial angle of every transaction that takes place at work.  It is important to convert everything in monetary value to get organisation’s attention. For that you need to understand the basic principles of costing accountings etc. This is another area engineers learn from MBA.

Entrepreneurial mindset:

As an engineer you know how to create something. But you will not know how much it takes to make it. As you reach the top positions in an organisation or take the entrepreneurial route, you will have to learn to talk in terms of numbers. More importantly, you have to learn to convince clients to believe in you. This is the art of negotiation. There is a structured part of negotiation. And that skill is learnt from MBA.

MBA helps build commercial acumen. Commercial mindset is necessary to get maximum value to the company. Once you have realised the importance of MBA, the next question is – when is the right time to pursue MBA?

If you are aiming at the top B-Schools of the country, then start taking B-School entrance examinations immediately after engineering. After all, you are competing for 99.9 per cent. If you start working, you may not be able to crack it.

If you are willing to pursue MBA in any other MBA college, then there is no point in joining immediately. It is better to work for a few years and then take up an executive MBA programme from a reputed institute.

About the Author:

T Muralidharan is a graduate of IIT Madras & IIM Ahmedabad. Currently, he is the CEO, TMI.