Adam Janikowski left his job as vice-president of investment banking at BMO Capital Markets in Britain to pursue an MBA at INSEAD in France.
Many people question the value of an MBA, so it’s ironic that throughout the program we are taught to question everything, including what we’re learning and why. Given the financial cost associated with doing an MBA, it’s imperative that we do this at every opportunity. With this in mind and the first of five periods behind us, it was time to sit down and reflect on what, if anything I had learned.
The first eight weeks consisted of mandatory core MBA courses; including statistics, corporate finance, accounting, economics, organisational behaviour and ethics. Having worked in finance for the past few years, it was the latter two, ethics and especially organisational behaviour in which I felt that I had learned the most valuable lessons since beginning the program.
During our ethics classes we were confronted with a case study involving a difficult business decision. One example was whether you should send a fax with misleading (but not false) information to a client because you had been asked to and your job hung in the balance, another was whether an ex pat working in a country where corruption is commonplace should offer a bribe to facilitate business. Given my western upbringing and education, the answer to both situations is a resounding no. However, at INSEAD, surrounded by students from culturally diverse backgrounds, not everyone agrees. I personally found the debates on ethics both fascinating and eye-opening. It is through these discussions that we are forced to understand other people’s points of view. Did it change my values and how I would do business? Not necessarily, but it did provide me with background and situational experiences that may help me react differently if I were ever faced with an ethical dilemma.
It is this exposure to and these conversations about morally ambiguous situations that will become invaluable as we pursue increasingly international careers. Most importantly, I believe that the true value of this course will not emerge when I am confronted with ethical decisions but will more likely help me understand why a colleague or employee makes certain choices that I might find ethically questionable.
As fascinating and useful as I found my ethics classes, the course I have enjoyed the most so far was organizational behaviour (OB). OB focused on leadership; specifically, the theories behind leadership and how they are applied. The course also taught us to think critically, both about ourselves and about the people and professionals that we want to become. Our professor, whom I consider one of the best teachers I have had in my academic career, had an amazing ability to force many of us out of our shells and to make us re-evaluate what we viewed as important, both in our working and personal lives. I believe that we are all not just better MBA students but better people for having taken this course.
