Post-MBA and being consequential

Unpopular opinion: an MBA gives you the tools to both grow your career but also scramble it.

Prior to my MBA, I was a economist on the consultancy track. My superiors had laid out a five year plan for me with specific targets and skills development. I was on a strong path at a young age and my position/salary showed it.

I applied to business school because I wanted to expand my understanding of business functions and focus on the intersection between environmental risk and financial markets.

Both of these objectives were met however the MBA also gave me skills and experiences that have amplified an even deeper and darker need – to be consequential.

The stories and case studies that make up the modern MBA are filled with consequential people and ideas. Tools and frameworks for determining ‘is this consequential?’ are the core of the key MBA subjects such as strategy, corporate finance, negotiation and marketing.

The student body seems to grow in consequential focus by asking questions like ‘What consequential thing did you do at your internship?’, ‘how does that extracurricular activity link into your broader plan?’ or ‘what major business idea do you have?’.

Everything has to be important, ground-breaking, mega. No small dreams.

It is intoxicating when you are in it but, like any intoxicant, the hangover is hard.

Post-MBA, I have regularly assessed my opportunities and risks against this abstract concept of being consequential. I have taken risks that are hard to justify in the absence of the small probability of me becoming consequential. I stopped thinking about my career in five year increments or a path through an organization.

Most of all, I have focused far too often on about what action might be consequential and who has become consequential to my detriment.

So my 2019 aim is to evolve again. To take the tools and learnings of the MBA and leave the focus of being consequential behind. To see that a life lived is not the pursuit of being consequential but a series of small acts of service.

A life lived in the present, not in the future.