Advice for new (or about to be new) MBAs

1. Attitude adjustment: As an MBA , other people will expect you to be a cool, confident, analytical thinker! — someone who isn’t afraid to interrupt a meeting to say “wait a minute, lets examine this before we jump to that conclusion”. Don’t disappoint these expectations. Set the bar as high as you can for decisionmaking in your organization. Demand to know the evidence, and why a proposal is better than the alternatives (including doing nothing), or “why we aren’t insisting on applying the same performance standards for all regions”! And, above all, use that standard relentlessly in your own work products.
2. Please stop analyzing decision options or behaviors (customers, competitors, colleagues, suppliers) as “good or bad”. That’s not a useful MBA analytical paradigm–except for ethical issues, Good or Bad depends on vantage point (them, us, society, customers, etc.). Get use to analyzing behaviors in terms of “economic consequences”, and impact on “business performance”. What will be the consequences of doing it this way or that? Just stop saying Good or Bad in this context.
3. To repeat the point a different way: “opinions are not good enough” for supporting an MBA’s recommended action. Evidence is required. “Opinions” are just not persuasive, and we expect more from MBA’s. When you are trying to persuade, think carefully about what you are recommending, and what evidence you need (and have) to support it. The CEO may decide based on her opinion, but if that’s all you bring to the table to persuade her, your likely going to hurt your chances of promotion.
4. In the work force, come to understand what you are very good at, and what you’re not so good at —  relative to peers. This self analysis of strengths and weaknesses provides invaluable and controllable leverage on your career if you use it strategically.  Eg   Forget trying to fix your deficits (unless you want to dedicate your life to becoming an expert in it). Nobody gets singled out for being competent at everything that’s been thrown at them (except flag officers in the military). People need to differentiate themselves from their peers by showing what they can do better than others who might have been asked to do the same activity. You may not understand yet what your differentiating strength is, but early in your career you need to learn what it is.

5. You can’t build a career by bouncing around jobs that are someone else’s idea of what you should be doing. Volunteer or advocate for jobs that entail activities that you do better than others. If you can’t do this, then your career is out of control.
6. Doing your job is necessary but not sufficient for getting noticed and promoted: Recognize that everybody who gets promoted must do something special, really extraordinary, something that is above-and-beyond expectations that creates an impression and serves as a data point for those who are advocating for you. Maybe its an analytic memo you wrote, or a report on something, or ideas brought into an important meeting, or design of a training plan for someone. Whatever it is, do something special. To do this you must go beyond expectations. Maybe expand the task to try anticipating the next question that management will ask— and use the opportunity to ‘go beyond’ by getting data on those next questions (even though you were not asked to do so). Don’t try to do this for everything. Pick your spots. Spend extra time, give up some weekends. Go above and beyond. Impress them. This is your rare chance to really produce something memorable, and produce something unexpected. This is your ticket to getting recognized. In all likelihood, you are going to have to prove yourself by doing something special other than managing. That’s going to come later.

7. Another tip: Use your training to be analytical about your role and how it is fitting into the bigger picture. ALWAYS understand exactly what you and your manager are doing, why it is being done, what the stakes are in the organization, what’s been the history on this issue here and elsewhere? Prepare yourself with getting “perspective”. Don’t be satisfied with someone telling you that you “don’t have a need to know” something. Framing the problem correctly, and getting perspective on  it will make your work products better, and will may help you get practice seeing what the issues look like from higher level.
8.  Become a more nuanced analytic thinker. Understand the difference between “efficiency” and “equity”. Most business decisions have options that span these two objectives. Look for them. Understand what behaviors and incentives create “more for less”(efficiency solutions). Also understand what stakeholders are going to win/lose if these efficient solutions are pursued (the equity outcomes). Learn to weigh the options this way. The more “principled” one is, usually implies that these trade-offs in decision making may become more difficult. Learn to understand and become able to unpack decisions in terms of the nuances: (1) what options are there for the decision, (2) what impacts are there for each option on both “efficiency” and “equity”, (3) which stakeholders win and which lose. Simple black and white answers are seldom helpful. People will learn from you. That’s really good.
9. Passion: Yes its good. But most employers want you to be passionate about your work, about helping their business succeed— not necessarily passionate about other stuff.
10. Don’t embarrass yourself. Understand the difference between Cost and Price. Price is what the buyer pays. Cost is what the seller incurs to make the product or service. Profit is the difference. MBAs understand this. Also understand and never forget that there are two ways to lower price and get more customers: cut the money price they pay (sales, coupons, discounts, etc.) and to cut the time price they must pay to shop, to get information, to make comparisons, etc.
11. In a business setting, don’t use the verbs “to prove” or “to feel” or “to believe”. Proof is a really high standard, and it is nearly impossible to ever “prove” anything (generally it is sufficient to say we have data supporting something, not proving it).  More importantly, using any of these verbs tends to cause some people to conclude you are poorly trained, sort of like confusing cost and price.
12. What interviewers like to see is inquisitiveness and full engagement. Focus on the person, answer their questions succinctly, and ask good questions as the interview unfolds. And, above all, show you are listening carefully! If the interviewer asks a question you dont understand, then ask to clarify. If you dont understand a response the interviewer gives, then ask for clarification. Make sure the questions are following the conversation— don’t bring stock questions to the interview. Use your brain to query them—like you would if you were talking to friends over coffee — If possible, control the interview. Get enough information to decide whether you want the job. Don’t be a passive interviewee. Actively engage. Let them know they are dealing with a proactive, take-the-initiative type of person by the way you conduct yourself. Everyone wants to hire people who can quickly engage the issues, and who can demonstrate that they can use their brain.
13.  Remember that incentives can almost always be constructed to change behaviors. Change the money price or the time price to encourage shoppers. Change the on-the-job incentives to reward higher productivity. Change taxes on sugary beverages, change buyer behavior. Whenever choices are being made, Incentives almost can be constructed to influence behavior.
14. Experience suggests that “being perfect” is nearly always the enemy of being effective and efficient. What this means is that how much time you spend doing a task should be related to the incremental benefits and costs of spending additional time. “Perfect” almost always means trying to find the solution that avoids all risk of being wrong. To be perfect, or to avoid all risks of being wrong means spending far too much time collecting data, waiting around too long, passing good opportunities by, etc. etc. — going well past the point where it made sense to quit looking, waiting, and being indecisive. Planning is good, but “perfect” is usually way too high a standard for moving forward. Learn to pull the trigger when its clear which option is best, even if it may not be perfect or without any risk.
15. Before you go investing (and risking) your time and your career to start a business/organization, learn that business and its customers well. If possible, take a job that lets you learn. If you already have a job but want to start a business, find something you already know or understand and make a list of the systemic performance problems. Look to this list as opportunities for creating value in an industry you have some knowledge of.
16. When you write memos, or other documents, learn to tell a simple summary story. What you write and how tight it reads is your brand in the world of work; make it disciplined, consistently good, and matter of fact. Write the summary story up front: what’s the issue(or options), what’s at stake, what’s the answer you’ve come to, what’s the evidence that drives the answer. Write that simple story so that your uncle could understand it. Then follow that with section headings (that frame your story) followed by paragraphs that have topic sentences followed by evidence to support them. Remember the audience for your work, and that senior people may read only the first paragraph—tell your story AT THE BEGINNING—nobody cares about a summary at the end! If you can’t tell a simple story, then you haven’t thought about it enough, or researched it enough, or gotten enough expert advice, or youre answering the wrong question. Be a disciplined and reliable staff analyst, and develop a reputation for writing tight, disciplined deliverables.
17.  Always be a ‘student’. Insight, new knowledge, understanding…..they await the curious mind. When you see some new behavior, or new tactic… ask yourself WHY? Variability in performance across business units, across people, across organizations… is the symptom of something to discover. Why did we win the contract? Why is this situation happening? What is it telling me? If we are dealing with variability in business unit performance, then that variation is a key to knowing how to improve overall organization performance. Be curious. Ask ‘why’? And, for heaven’s sake, set the bar high for others on this point. Learn by asking questions. Be the  curious one in your organization. Help others see the benefit of knowing ‘why’.
18. Understand your job, and your job description, but dont think that’s why they hired you. They hired you because you’re an MBA — and as such they think you have growth potential for the organization that others dont have. You are going to be expected to see things that others won’t be expected to see, to speak up about it, when others won’t, to present logical and data driven arguments that will be persuasive whether written or verbal. At the core of these abilities and behaviors should be a compulsion, wherever you work, to get to an understanding about how and why that organization works, or doesnt. What is the business model, what are the key drivers of success. How does it compete in the marketplace? What is holding it back? Watch, listen, and get to understand it. Hold your tongue. But remember that while its not your job to understand how the business works, your ability to do this may well be a key to far you can rise in your career. Keep asking yourself “why?”. Let it haunt you. “What are the fundamentals of this organization? How does it really compete successfully? What is biggest risk the business faces? What kinds of people work best in key jobs? Where should the budget priorities be to make us bigger or better?” Think about these questions, collect the data as you get to know the organization better, develop and modify your views, and don’t foist them on others too quickly. It is practice for your next job, and the next one after that! Good luck!