Lessons from the MBA trenches

I am a worrier. And last summer, after I quit my job at The Globe and Mail to pursue my MBA, I worried about lots of things, including the possible impact of the move on my career.

But I needn't have worried. For while the move has indeed affected everything from my aspirations to my marketable skills, the effects have all been positive.

Now that Year One of my MBA program is over, I can reflect on the myriad career-related lessons that have come from my studies in and out of the classroom.

Here are a few of the key ones I have taken away:

Managers make decisions, analysts sit and analyze. That's what one professor, a part-time teacher and full-time executive, said during a lecture on how to tackle case studies. "Make an informed decision and move on," he said, adding that managers often don't have time to sit back for long and weigh all the pros and cons of each alternative.

If you are well-prepared and have thorough industry knowledge, you'll likely be able to successfully handle the outcome, positive or negative, of any decision, he added.

Of course, that doesn't mean you should make a decision in seconds. But weighing outcomes for weeks or months could be disastrous. Waiting too long could allow a competitor to enter a new market first or an investor to miss out on a bargain-priced stock .

As author Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking: "We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it . . . decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately."

While Mr. Gladwell and my professor surely have their detractors, their argument is clear: Indecision can be more costly than the wrong decision. Be smart and quick, and success will follow.

Learn from failure. When I received a poor grade on my finance mid-term exam, I re-evaluated everything -- my decision to quit my job to go to business school and my future career plans.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that every great leader, thinker and entrepreneur has made errors during their career. What makes for success, however, is how they learn from those failures to transform weakness into a win.

Over the six weeks following my lacklustre mid-term performance, I spent numerous hours studying, attending tutorial sessions and getting together with classmates to do assignments -- all in an effort to improve my grade and knowledge of the course material.

My final grade: a B. It's not in the top percentile of the class, but it's a respectable showing -- and evidence one mistake doesn't always cause outright failure.

Never underestimate the power of an informational interview. I was hesitant about cold-calling an executive to ask for a 20-minute meeting over coffee, but later realized that informational interviews are great ways to not only increase a network of contacts, but ask about the current state of the industry, future opportunities at an organization and advice on a job hunt.

They are also a way for job seekers to add a face and personality to a résumé -- giving them an advantage when it comes time for that executive to bring on a new recruit.

I snared a summer internship thanks to a successful informational interview that started out with a lunchtime conversation about the media industry and business school, and ended with me getting a tour of the office and a job offer.

Diversity does make a difference. The more diverse a group, the more ideas get brought to the table. Over the past year, I have worked with students from Europe, Asia, Latin America and South America -- all of whom contributed viewpoints invaluable to the end product (that likely wouldn't have been realized in a group made up solely of middle-class white men).

Don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. I never thought I would find subjects such as accounting, economics and finance intriguing but being forced to take different courses as part of my program's core curriculum has shown me the benefits of tackling the unfamiliar. Sometimes the only time that progress can be made is by delving into new territory.

Think not-for-profit to gain director experience. Since large organizations require directors with experience, one way for young business graduates to get in the door is to join the board of a charity. It looks great on a résumé and provides an inside look at how strategic decisions are made and governance issues are dealt with and can diversify your skills, make industry contacts and help out a needy cause.

Listen to your gut. Last year, when researching whether I should even apply for an MBA program, I had numerous people dispense conflicting pieces of advice.

They were people whom I respected a great deal. That made their comments ("it's too expensive," "it's a great investment," and "it's a risky move but one that will likely pay off in the end") all the more difficult to digest.

But I learned to trust my instinct, made a decision and moved on.

One year down, one to go. And my instinct tells me that my gut will continue to serve me well for years to come. No worries.

Richard Bloom is a former Report on Business writer who enrolled in York University's Schulich School of Business to obtain an MBA.