I am going to look at this through the lens of the full-time MBA, something I did from 2010 to 2012, but increasingly irrelevant and overpriced in today’s world.

What is the “job” of the Full-time MBA?

I’m a fan of the “jobs to be done” framework. It looks at the job that a service or product is performing. It’s not a useful frame to argue whether or not a business school is worth it. Instead its more useful to see what jobs the service performs and if there are better ways to pay for those jobs.

There have been a lot of arguments over why people get MBAs and what people are paying for. In my own experience and upon reflection, I think the MBA gives people three core things:

1. Confidence: Being in a positive, ambitious, and friendly environment that will help you overcome the everyday friction and self-doubt that most people face when trying to achieve anything, leading to an increase in confidence.
2. Hidden Codes: Learning some of the hard to understand behaviors, norms, calculations, frameworks, and styles of communication that enable one to aim towards large goals without getting laughed at by the established leaders in these spaces
3. High-Paying Jobs: Access to a number of high-paying jobs across a wide range of industries and functions that hire a new crop of MBA graduates every year and know the unique demands of this group of graduates

This system works extremely well, I think, because of the incredibly tight link between MBA programs and the companies that hire from those schools. The schools need a steady number of openings of jobs that pay six-figures and offer interesting problems and potential career paths. The companies need a steady crop of middle to senior managers that all behave in predictable ways and might produce future executives.

The secret force keeping this together is a large group of alumni at these companies. They want to keep hiring the students from their schools because it helps them stay connected to a University (often a source of nostalgia and memories of youth) and gives them a source of prestige within their company, especially if they discover a “rising star.”

Wildly Expensive, But Still (Mostly) Working, For Now

This state of affairs has been operating quite smoothly and without much competition for 50+ years. As the industrial economy has grown and globalization and financialization have created more attractive post-MBA career paths with 6-figure jobs, the MBA programs have been able expand and raise tuition.

It’s also notable that the MBA has steadily infiltrated the tech industry despite the popular meme that MBAs don’t know how to run businesses. Currently the four biggest tech companies all have MBA CEOs: Cook (Fuqua), Pinchai (Wharton), Nadella (Booth), and Jassy (HBS).

I graduated in 2012 and over the last eight years I’ve seen a steady flow of my classmates from more traditional industrial-era companies to BigTech. If there is one other thing you learn at business school, its where you can make the most money working a full-time job.

Despite full-time MBAs costing more than $75,000 per year just in tuition one can still make a good argument that these programs are worth it, especially if you are confident you want to work in the types of jobs these schools have access to. The median salaries of HBS grads is almost $150,00 and if you know anything about BigTech or Finance salaries, its quite easy once you’re in these worlds to find a job making almost a quarter million dollars a year within five years after grad school.

Networks are credential-making machines

Despite many people thinking the technology industry would make the MBA irrelevant, it strengthened it. However, the technologies and social networks it produced are enabling a new way for the worker to engage and own their own career in ways we haven’t really seen at scale. I predict that 2020 be seen as a major inflection point for many full-time MBA programs.

Consider that when I graduated college in 2007 almost no one used LinkedIn and my only source of potential connections was through my school’s alumni database or the connections of people I knew.

Thirteen years later the ambitious young person is part of many different networks. When I lived in New York I was part of many different communities:

• An informal group of people interested in organization change I met through my writing online
• Virtual and in-person events led by companies like Culture Amp, Live in The Grey and other startups on wide ranges of topics
• A group called IVY which held events for young professionals but kind of operated as a way to meet potential significant others
• A volunteer group with 100 other young professionals as part of a two-year program I was part of
• Alumni networks of two companies I worked for
• Two alumni groups for my schools

Now, as a citizen of gig world, I am part of many more networks. In a world where connecting with others based on interests, skills, and passion is easier than ever, connecting based on a common degree feels stale. Hence why I rarely open emails from my schools. They are stuck in a world based on credential and endowment size rather than having an understanding that in an opt-in world, where you devote your energy is a signal to others about what matters to you.

Schools are going to have a hard time adjusting to a world in which anyone in the world can now earn prestige from their desk. Some examples:

• Launching a startup and joining incubators around the world
• taking an online course with a engaging community
• attend conferences and meetups in your field
• Writing or sharing content publicly in your expertise
• Hosting or participating in online meetups
• Engage with people in your industry on twitter and sharing interesting ideas
• Attending online schools like Lambda Academy

Schools are certainly still in the mix but for many people its becoming a much smarter bet to at least test out one of these alternative pathways before spending months studying for exams and dropping 5 or 6 figures for a credential.

That’s not to say this is easy to understand. This new dynamic of network-driven prestige is messy and often illegible to people who have not engaged with it.

Older people will often say things to me like “you can do what you do because you went to MIT.” They are still operating in the hierarchical prestige view of the world. Success is a result of having earned the right credentials.

They are often surprised when I share that I landed a writing gig on Twitter after sharing an essay I wrote on a similar topic or that hired me as a presentaiton coach after watching my YouTube video.

My essay and video were both proof-of-skill. They were able to exactly the person they needed. For good or bad, this type of dynamic is coming to every part of the economy which is going to put tremendous pressure on high-priced credential-awarding institutions but it also offers a tremendous advantage for the individuals and employers that learn to operate in a new way.

The Better Options Are Emerging

One of the reasons the MBA has remained relevant is that better options have not emerged.

Consider my friend who has felt stuck in his career for four or five years. He’s been successful but doesn’t really like what he is doing and has wanted to experiment with working on startups. He’s not a natural at reinventing himself and has been talking about doing a full-time MBA as the way to make that shift.

Top MBA programs are mostly driven people that aren’t sure what they want to do but are sure that they want to be successful.

I’ve coached many people like him over the years and 100% of them end up going to business school. Yet last week he texted me that he had decided to do the On Deck Fellowship. For $2,500 he’ll join a 10-week program focused on helping people transitioning to launching a startup or at least working in that space.

He’s saving $147,000, two years of salary loss, and is likely going to get many of the benefits that the MBA would given him, especially the confidence and hidden codes mentioned above.

As these better options emerge people are starting to realize that paying an insane amount of money for a grad degree is quite a dramatic way to make a career change.

On Deck is creating the space for strong connections to form and making the bet that people don’t need to hang out at a university campus for another 94 weeks to continue to develop those bonds, find their own opportunities and learn the skills they need to follow their path.

The driven young person is used to already accessing all sorts of apps, communities, networks, and services and as higher education becomes unbundled there will be countless new paths that emerge.

On deck is betting “finding the others” is a bigger problem to be solved rather than getting access to high-prestige jobs. If people can find the others and start working on what they want to be working on, especially the kind of people already doing that, the jobs and opportunities will come.

They even share their playbook:

Not that schools are going to do anything about it.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post The Inevitable Decline Of The Elite Full-Time MBA appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

However, I am incredibly lucky in that I was able to attend one of the top schools in the world – MIT Sloan. Given this, people ask me about business school all the time. Should I go? Do I need an MBA? My answer is nuanced, complicated and is more focused on getting you to think more deeply about what you are trying to achieve, but I’ll attempt to walk you through my thinking…

Let’s first look at some of the trends from my school, MIT (MIT Tuition). Here is the approximate two-year tuition cost of an MBA over the past 20 years:

• 2000: $47k
• 2005: $77k
• 2010: $98k
• 2015: $128k
• 2018: $142k
• 2020: $154k

What the hell is happening!?

When I look up the tuition every year, I have a harder time recommending that people go get their MBA. Part of this is my guilt for suggesting someone take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and part of this stems from thinking there may be better options.

The money equation (ROI) still works

A typical way to assess the “value” of an MBA is to focus on salaries.

Let’s say you have a job making $65k and you earn modest salary increases that raise your salary to $70k. This would mean by going to a full-time MBA you would be forgoing $135,000 in salary over two years. This type of analysis is fraught with flaws but stick with me.

Given that few people pay full sticker price, let us assume even a 50% tuition cost of $71,000 and living costs of $25,000 a year. Also, let us assume you are able to land an internship over the summer that pays you $25,000. This puts the opportunity costs at $135,000 and the real costs at $96,000. The traditional ROI analysis says that your investment is $231,000.

Next, analyze what you can make after graduation. Top-tier MBAs can usually find jobs paying them impressive salaries that can quickly offset this investment within five years. Let’s say that you make about $150k for 3 years after graduation. The incremental $240k (3 years x $80k more than the $70k you would have been making) covers your total investment. Then you are also looking at the intangible cost of the two-year educational process. There is obvious value in this, and I’ve always thought there was a lot of value in stepping outside of the working world – not to mention being exposed to new people, new ideas, new industries and new cultures.

ROI Analysis: Worth it ✔️

However, this logic can be flawed

Looking solely at salary is short-sighted. It makes a bold assumption that your sole goal for the rest of your career is to maximize every salary increase and promotion. This does not align with reality and increasingly, is harder to do as our business world becomes more fragmented and less dependent on full-time labor.

I am almost six years out from graduating from an MBA and I talk with my classmates often. Many are a bit lost – they have had had one or two promotions but have quickly realized they have no desire to be the CEO or even a senior executive. What was the rush? Priorities have changed – other things like health, family or kids have taken over importance. So the ROI analysis that many people do is deeply flawed.

Second, looking solely at money avoids a hard look at the underlying learning transformation you are paying for. Most people expect that they will undergo some amount of improvement in their ability, skills, and expertise over the two years. It is easy to look at the success of MBA graduates and assume that the MBA had some role in the process. However, the research on this is pretty damning. Professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina Fong (who both work in business schools!) published an extensive review of the evidence in 2002 and found:

What data there are suggest that business schools are not very effective: Neither possessing an MBA degree nor grades earned in courses correlate with career success, results that question the effectiveness of schools in preparing their students. And, there is little evidence that business school research is influential on management practice, calling into question the professional relevance of management scholarship

In many ways, the types of people that go to top business schools are already incredibly driven and would likely reach the same levels of success with or without the degree and dare I say, perhaps in a shorter time. I often run the thought experiment of wondering where people I know would end up with or without an MBA. My hypothesis would be that If I were to run a simulation of a driven person’s career over the next 35 years, I would guess 55 times out of 100 you might be more successful getting an MBA and 45 times out of 100 it would have had little or no impact on your level of success.

Deeper Reflection: ❓

So how do you get ahead? Is there a better way?

A question that is really bothering me lately given the massive sticker price of an MBA:

Is there a better way to transform yourself with that $150k you intend to spend over two years? Why are we so tied to a 300+-year-old way of learning in classrooms?

Design Your Own: Tim Ferriss had always wanted to go to Stanford Graduate School of Business but challenged himself to think about alternate options. He decided to not pursue an MBA and instead use the money he would be spending on tuition to build a “Real World MBA.” He decided to take the money he put aside for tuition and use it to invest in startups. On his podcast, he talked about how he lost $50,000 in his first investment, but at least he had “skin in the game” as Nassim Taleb would say.

Online Intensive Programs: Another option I have seen emerge is Seth Godin’s altMBA – when you get accepted in the program, you become part of a global online learning community of driven and passionate people and focus on “shipping” 12 projects over 30 days. Tuition for this program? $3,500. That’s less than the deposit for many of these full-time MBA programs. I spoke with Cody Royle on my podcast about his experience with the altMBA and he said the best benefit was “not a credential…but a real-world transformation” that has enabled him to write multiple books, become a freelancer and become an influential sports coach who helps people with talent management. 20 years ago he would have gotten an MBA but now he took 30 days, $3,000 and bet on himself.

One-Year MBAs: Business schools are not oblivious to the shifts happening in the market and many have added one-year MBA options in the last year. This includes schools like Cornell, Babson, Northwestern, Bryant and Miami. However, business schools are not completely ready to disrupt themselves and are charging much higher fees for the one year program – at Northwestern, the one-year program tuition is $103,316 versus $149,742 for each year in the two-year program.

Skill-Specific Programs: Georgia Tech has a one-year business analytics program that can be completed for less than $10,000 online through edX – not to mention the immediate usefulness of the skills, this seems like a steal for your effort.

Screw it, just travel: Finally, a lot of the value I found in the two-year MBA was putting myself in a different environment and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Could you take one year off and travel through the world, potentially work in some different industries, learn languages, develop skills for less than you would spend on tuition? One of my close friends did that for a mere $24,000. He could have kept going for six years for the full sticker price of a top-tier MBA.

So challenge yourself – how could you design your own “top-tier” MBA experience?

Is the MBA still relevant?

Judging by the high placement rates of top-tier MBA graduates, I would judge that the MBA is still relevant. As long as people want to hire graduates of the school and as long as people keep attending, it will continue to remain relevant.

However, the top-tier MBA seems shakier than ever. It faces two risks, an increasingly homogeneous customer and a disconnect from the skills needed in our economy.

As tuition continues to skyrocket, it seems that demand is largely inelastic when it comes to two parts of the population:

1. people who are working for companies that will sponsor their attendance (consulting firms and investment banks) and
2. rich people and international elites

For these people one could argue that the current prices are way too low and that schools could double or triple the price and they would still attend.

This is the biggest risk of business school because one of the biggest secrets of these elite schools is that most non-sponsored student do not pay sticker price.

This is why I tell people to apply. On the off chance that you end up getting a full-ride? Then definitely go.

However, this fact is not well known and increasingly the MBA is attracting a certain type of student that knows how to jump through hoops and perform in a certain way rather than attractive a diverse set people people and a diverse set of background and experiences.

I grew up fearing debt and no one in my life really cared what schools I went to. The program I attended at MIT had a generous fellowship at the time, but if I were to do the same program today, I would pay at least three to four times more out of my pocket. In only eight years, I would likely have to take another $75,000 of debt. Just writing that sentence terrifies me a bit.

The second risk MBA’s face is an increasing disconnect between the real skills and experiences that enable people to thrive in today’s world. Top-tier MBAs are highly dependent on a symbiotic relationship with powerful, high-paying employers. As Godin stated when he launched the altMBA in 2015:

This is a small-group process that works online, designed to help people move from here to there—to stand up and become the leaders and the game changers they want to be.

I originally wrote this in 2017 and now in 2020 it seems that this gap has continued to widen with more and more cohort-based online courses like the altMBA filling the gap as well as other emerging alternatives like On Deck and even just “creating in public” on twitter as a way to enter a new industry.

The MBA may unintentionally help people make a transformation in their life, but the “job to be done” of the MBA is to groom students to work at a select group of finance, consulting, Fortune 500 companies and now, tech companies.

This is a job it does exceptionally well, but as technology and digital platforms continue to shape our economy and as creativity, experiments, original thinking and building a diversity of skills become more important, we may see many more options like the altMBA emerge to “disrupt” the top-tier MBA.

Do I regret it? (and some exercises to do before you go)

Short answer – no. I’ve written about some of the benefits I’ve gotten from an MBA – but they may not be what you would expect (full article here: Should You Go To Business School? The Only Reason That Matters):

• Lifelong friends
• Global perspective
• Taking a step out from the working world
• Contagious optimism / Overcoming self-limiting beliefs
• Thinking like a leader
• No-risk learning lab

These are not the conventional benefits you think about – because a lot of them are specific to me and were unexpected. With anything, I think you need to expect similarly. These type of experiences also have the confirmation bias effect of making it really hard to regret going to business school.

Some exercises I usually have people do when I chat with them about going to business school:

• Write down 25 ways you could get what you expect from business school now for $25,000 or less. If, after you write this list, you still want to go to business school, you should go.
• Write down what you want to do for work after business school. Now brainstorm at least one alternative to make that career shift without going to business school.
• Brainstorm five ways you could grapple with the insecurity of having an MBA-sized hole in your identity? Where does this insecurity come from? Is there a way to grapple with that insecurity directly?

I always give the rather worthless advice of “go to business school if you want to go to business school.” I’ve found that most people already have their mind made up – they are just looking for reassurance for what they have already decided!

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post Should you try get an MBA from a top-tier school? Its complicated. appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

You landed great jobs out of college, you had success, you studied for the GMATs, you put tons of time into your application essays and you got through the stress of waiting to hear back from a mysterious admissions committee. One or two crazy schools said, “Sure, let’s give this guy a shot.” You were ecstatic — you called your mom, grandmother and told anyone who would listen, “I got into business school!”

But, then what?

I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on my business school experience at MIT Sloan and want to offer what I thought were some of the most valuable insights and experiences I had. They are probably not what you expect (hint: no one will care what grade you got in finance in 5 years), but I hope they can help you get the most out of your experience:

1. Choose to be a leader

When I entered business school I was a bit mystified by “leadership” and what it really meant. I didn’t necessarily think of myself as a leader at the time since I didn’t have a formal leadership role with direct reports in my previous job. However, at some point during business school, I realized that leadership was a choice — a shift of mindset. It was not a formal title, position or number of direct reports.

I actively thought about and worked to cultivate my leadership style, digging out feedback from the past to understand my current style. In addition, I was inspired by a talk from the late Don Davis, the former CEO of Stanley Works. I remember him using the phrase “servant leadership,” a philosophy where leaders focus primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities they belong to. This style resonated with me and helped me define my own personal leadership style, one which I continually reflect and refine on.

Developing this style doesn’t start and end in business school — it’s something I grapple with every day. To stay focused on developing this style, I often ask myself the question “how would a leader I admire act?” in the workplace.

2. Get out of your comfort zone

Business school gives you a range of opportunities and a safe space to look like a fool. From participating in a choreographed New Kids on the Block dance to learning how to dance the Irish Jig from a world champion classmate (seriously) to taking an Improv class where we learned how to deal with uncertainty and emotions, there are countless moments helped me stretch myself and grow.

This philosophy applies inside the classroom as well. The class that stood out the most was “Literature, Ethics and Authority” taught by an incredible comparative literature professor. I took it solely because I had never taken a literature class before. I was blown away. We dove into a range of stories from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience to the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Throughout the class, we tackled tough questions of fairness, justice and equality. After viewing Hotel Rwanda we had a lively discussion on the battle of individuals versus institutions as seen through General Dallaire’s struggle to get NATO countries to take timely action during the Rwandan genocide. There is no business situation that compares to Rwanda, but these discussions helped me to develop a deeper understanding of an individual’s role in the world and some of the potential limits we face in solving the world’s toughest problems.

3. Start crafting your “story”

In business school, I underestimated how much I needed to market and sell myself to employers. I was a top performer at a consulting firm before graduate school and I thought everyone would want to hire me. I was naïve and I was wrong. On paper I was great, but I wasn’t convincing anyone. I faced a string of painful rejections and I ended up landing a job towards the end of the recruiting cycle.

Upon reflection, I realized I got that job because I had thought deeply about what I was bringing to the table and what made me unique. I now like to call these my “superpowers” and I continually refine them by thinking through what value I am offering to my current or potential employer. I now also directly ask some version of this to people that I interview: “What are the three things that make you stand out? As you move beyond the structured hierarchy of entry level roles, convincing people that you bring value to the table is more important than ever in creating opportunities.

4. Start gaining a better understanding of “what matters”

If you can’t define “what matters” you will have a hard time managing trade-offs when you start working again. The best time to start thinking about this is during business school because there are endless amounts of good opportunities. If you are able to say no during school it will be much easier once you are in the working world again. The most successful people I know can always answer the question, “What do you value most?” — and it doesn’t have to be overly complex. It may be as simple as taking a lunch break every day or never missing a dinner with your family. As long as you define what matters to you, you won’t resent the hours you spend working after graduation and you will have more energy in all aspects of your life.

I’ve given you four pieces of advice, but if you have to remember one thing it’s this: practice gratitude. Catch yourself when you are caught up in the stress of competing for some of the most incredible jobs in the world to remind yourself just how lucky you are.

Now embrace that burden and dream big.

I originally wrote this for CommonBond.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

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The post So You’re Getting an MBA… Now What? appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

common question I hear is, “Should I go to Business School?” My answer is always the same, half cynical and half serious:

“You should go to business school if you want to go to business school”

Simple, but I really do believe this. Advice from other people can be valuable, but most people tend to tell you to do what they did. If you’re confident that business school is the next step for you, you will always have that thought lingering in the back of your mind. Go do it!

There are two questions I ask everyone who solicits my advice:

1. “What do you want to do after business school?”

2. “Why don’t you do that now?”

Even if you know what you want to do, there are still a number of benefits of going to business school (which I will get to). I was always impressed by my classmates who knew exactly what they wanted to do — they were able to take advantage of every resource, connection, class, and project to help them build their skills.

For people that are less sure, like I was, business school can be a confusing place. Many prestigious jobs instantly become more attainable. For those that have been crushing it in their life, it is incredibly hard to not pursue those paths, whether it is working at Google, McKinsey, Goldman, or the hottest startup.

I’ve been having a lot of conversations with classmates three years after graduation who are all facing the same issue: they are in a great job, but something is missing. I have a friend at Google who loved his job, but when a few things changed — a new manager and position, he realized he didn’t care where he worked — he just wanted to work on a great team.

That same friend recognizes now that business school may have delayed him coming to this realization. All the things that made the two year experience exceptional (exposure to diverse perspective and time to reflect) also made career planning more confusing.

Business school is an option multiplying machine. Of course, this is one thing I found attractive — it expands your pool of opportunities. Since I didn’t have a clear understanding of what I wanted to do when entering business school, expanding my options seemed like the best idea.

But expanding my options did not solve the age old question of “What do I want to do?”

My one caveat about business school is always:

Business school will not help you decide what you want to be when you grow up

You may figure it out during the two years of conversations, classes, and projects but I don’t think business school is well suited to answer this question — and it shouldn’t be! The burden is on you.

Like me, a lot of people go to business school because they want to go to business school — and I think that is fine! So for these people, I offer what I consider the six best things about going to business school:

1. The life-long friends: A lot of people talk about “the network.” This is definitely real. My classmates are doing incredible things in their career and every one of them will pick up the phone to have a conversation or help me in my career. That support system is invaluable. However, the real power comes from the friends you make from spending 12 hours a day together, struggling through the same assignments or choreographing a dance for an upcoming cultural event. I will guarantee that you leave school with at least one or two life-long friends. These are people that will be in your wedding party, take vacations with you or offer a place to crash when you visit a new city. This paid off for me when I faced some health challenges after graduation. The unexpected love and support of my classmates was amazing. I had life-long friends, not a network

2. Shrinking the world: It is very easy to expose yourself to different industries and perspectives during the two years you spend at business school. Whether through clubs, classes, speakers or just conversations with classmates, you will likely learn about industries you never knew anything about and jobs you never heard of. At MIT Sloan, almost half of my class was international. Beyond the obvious benefits of travel recommendations for life and inside food knowledge, working with diverse groups broadened my perspective. One of my groups composed peolpe from the US, Mexico, Israel, and Korea — which made the world seem a lot smaller and the world’s challenges a lot more solvable

3. The ability to take a step out from the “hustle”: Business school is certainly fast paced, but it’s also a step out of the increasingly complex and competitive working world. I am a big fan of taking breaks or walks during the day to increase my productivity and creativity: the benefits of this are well known. I haven’t found any research on the impact of a two year break during your career, but my hypothesis is the benefits are profound. I like to think of business school as a two year walk, where I had time to reflect, think, learn, dream and wonder

4. Eliminating stories of why you can’t do something: Being surrounded by such successful people can be a double edged sword. If you start comparing yourself to your classmates, you will always find someone more accomplished or impressive. However, the fact that you share a beer or lunch with them makes you realize they don’t have superpowers, they just don’t spend any time creating excuses. It made me realize that the only thing that will hold me back from what I want to accomplish is my own beliefs. Everyone, including me, is capable of greatness

5. Thinking like a leader: Being accepted into an amazing business school gave me a lot of pride. It also gave me the self-imposed pressure that I need to embrace this opportunity and do something with it. Prior to business school, my definition of a “leader” was something defined by a title or number of direct reports. During a leadership class I took, this idea was destroyed, as I realized these people haven’t cornered the market on leadership. I was filled with the anxiety and excitement that anyone could be a leader. I embraced this mindset and try to ask myself “How should I act in this situation, as a leader?” For me this comes out by having integrity and being authentic to who I am. I’m passionate about building positive and meaningful work environments where people can flourish — so I try to embrace this spirit in every interaction I have in and out of work. I’m grateful that I literally had a class to think about leadership and what it means to me

6. An experimental lab: I looked at everything as a new learning opportunity. The improvisational leadership class that made me dance around in front of my classmates taught me how to be more fearless. The healthcare project I did made me realize I didn’t want to go work in healthcare. The choreographed dances I did with my classmates for the New England Cultural Function (yes, really) made me realize I love making a fool of myself for the sake of having a good time. Finally, the many hours I spent helping others with their job searches and interviews made me realize I love helping others achieve their dreams

Going to business school was not a rational decision for me. I didn’t calculate two years of lost salary and factor in the ROI of tuition payments and future salaries. It was just something I had always wanted to do, a dream that I had.

I went to business school because I wanted to go to business school

Why do you want to go?

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

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The post Should you go to business school? appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.