MBA story: What MBA taught me which Engineering didn't!In 2011, I enrolled in a 1 year MBA program at Great Lakes Institute of Management Chennai.

MBA story: What MBA taught me which Engineering didn't!

In 2011, I enrolled in a 1 year MBA program at Great Lakes Institute of Management Chennai. The schedule was similar to my Engineering days, with classes running from 9am to 6pm. 

However, the MBA program introduced a new challenge, daily assignments due by midnight. This required us to hustle, delegate tasks among our college assigned team members, and meet the deadline. If this was not enough, additionally, every student had to participate in extra curricular activities, which was graded.

Contrary to my engineering experience, where I chose my project partners (usually my friends or those who didn’t object to my ideas), the MBA program required me to collaborate with other batchmates. This pushed me out of my social comfort zone, enabling me to understand, respect, and finally develop superior solutions than what I could have achieved individually. Most importantly, it led to develop friendship with batchmates who were league apart from me. 

The image below summarizes the narrative I've shared above: At 11pm, we held a strategy session focused on Sun Tzu's - Art of War. Dressed in full formal attire, I (bottom right) am seen attentively receiving feedback on the session from Aditi Basu