What does an MBA do to me?

"What does b-school do to ordinary mortals that organized businesses pay multiples of what they would do to the same mortal a b-year (ISB time) younger?"

At the time, I remember the b-grad i'd addressed this question to, mumbling something about "a valuable business orientation" .... "attitude" .."mindset", reinforcing my suspicion that this thing was a massive con job.

Right through ISB, I kept asking myself this question - mainly to disabuse myself of the notion that companies would pay top dollar just because I was an MBA. I wanted to get a feel of what i would "do", and gauge for myself how much it could be worth.

I managed to accumulate a few answers on the way, and here's my attempt to record them.

1. B-school, first and foremost, is a signalling mechanism - which basically tells the recruiter that here is a brightish young lad/lass who's managed to get through a very rigorous admission process, and has emerged -if not better- at least better suited to working in a business environment. In other words, even if a one-stop shop for ready-made above-average talent.

2. In spite of the widely propagated notion that good businesses are scientifically run, with loads of extremely important mathematical formulae applied with great rigor and detail, the wise recruiter knows it is not so (except in some industries). It isn't so, but it can't really hurt to have someone who knows the lingo. And I don't have to spend on training my engineers or accountants which i can't do even if I did.

(I think the possible exception to all this is a MBA-finance, which to my untrained mind, really does resemble something approaching a science, and those blokes get paid astronomical sums, which are actually a tiny proportion of the profits they could make in astonishingly short timespans for companies with minimal manpower and cash at their disposal.)

3. B-education, while not the most rigorous education system, does include a set of tools like data analysis, MR, optimization models, all of which are tools borrowed from other academic streams, but in combination with an understanding of business motivation help in establishing some credibility to business decision-making.

4. Probably the best thing B-school does to normal people is stuff them with a whole load of stories - of business going from bad to good, or vice versa - and lots of conversation about why whatever happened, happened. So it seems like there's always a precedent that mirrors your business issues, and some parallel you can use to understand your problems better.

5. Team Player: B-school has a weird way of teachin' you teamwork - a. it starts off by surrounding you with the brightest people you'll ever see together within a confined area. b. Of the few remaining dregs of ego that you might have left sticking to your insides, it swiftly proceeds to dispose by dumping on you a workload that makes you crumple up your pride and beg even the most knuckleheaded teammate to tender a helping hand. In essence, with b-school, you have a set of people who can work with a 700 lb, slightly blind gorilla with a migraine, if they have to. Fairly useful talent, come to think of it.

6. Finally, i think it has sort of infiltrated corporate habits, resulting in a situation where no one's really thinking about different kind of people who might do better in management positions. Its a mite unfair, but it kind of improves with schools like ISB, where students are a something-MBA - (a jewellery designer + MBA, a fighter pilot + MBA, an engineer-MBA). On the assumption that we do really manage to get bright people through current admission practices, I think it is a better way to go than to hire total nincompoops with just degrees to their names.