The basic and most fundamental things you need to learn from an MBA program

Learning is a life process. All of us do learn something and learning can happen anywhere and at any time.?

We all yearn to learn. Moreover, it could be in any form that you think of.??

When I was a medical student, I found out that learning is progressive and has to take successive steps.?

When a person is born into this world, learning takes place. immediately. Neuronal activities instantly kick in. The collection of neurons called the dorsal and ventral respiratory nuclei located in our medulla starts sending impulses via phrenic nerves towards the newborn’s respiratory muscles. Strong repeated impulses are sent to expand the contracted newborn lung.

A few seconds later, it is confirmed by a loud cry much to the delight of the medical delivery team and so much more so to the expectant mother. Without it, life would cease to exist albeit through artificial means.?

These neuronal inputs are so very important that the doctors even learned to devise a way to measure them by observing the breathing, heart rates, and movements of a newborn. They call it the APGAR score.?

I defined it as a concept of learning as connecting another concept with another to form a new one. Put these together in big blocks together and you create a web of knowledge. Lay the foundation blocks in the base and link them together upwards just like a pyramid. Climb to the top of your knowledge pyramid and you gain awareness of what lies beyond the horizon where no one can ever see nor even imagine.?

And that folks, is the power of information. Information rules the world nowadays, not money as most people perceive. Money is just simply a commodity with man-made values assigned to it. The more information you have together with how use that information can gain you an insurmountable influence powerful influence enough to bend destiny in your favor.?

Learning can change your life as long as you have the will to act upon it.?

In this article, I will write down some of the values I have learned from the MBA that I could use and be aware of in my daily actions as an individual.

Initially, I thought it was just a three-letter alphabet that I could add to my name to make it harder to pronounce.?

Fortunately, it wasn't the case.?

The change was slow, subtle but profound. The only way I noticed this was looking back to compare myself now and a couple of years ago.?

Of course, the concept of now depends on when will I compare it with the past, and the longer it takes, the more obvious the positive change is.?

I took the course on the premise that I would use it someday. I didn’t care then if I finish the program as long as I learn something but fortunately, I did finish on time.?

So I took it in 2019. My classmates and I were so fortunate that it was purely online as we were spared the hefty expenses of going to San Francisco to study. Not only that we were spared financially because were never knew that there was a Black Swan event.??

If you are curious about what a Black Swan event is, it is a term coined in 2001 by a famous author and mathematician, Nassim Nicholas Taleb.?

A Black Swan event is distinctly defined by a set of three criteria. It is an event that is notoriously difficult to predict, has a disastrous impact of an unprecedented scale, and individuals usually create explanations behind it to make it seem more predictable in the future.?

Three months later, as we were just about to finish a semester, the World Health Organization declared COVID19 a pandemic and sent every business establishment to its knees. However, we were not fazed as our program was purely online.?

At that very point, I learned something valuable. I realized that innovations such as online learning can be resistant to disruptions caused by a Black Swan event.?

More importantly, I began to be aware that many of our failures in life are caused by the Black Swans. I became conscious that such events are disruptors and have to make sure that these events can be prevented and circumvented should they appear. It changed me because my perception and definition of certainty have greatly evolved.?

Just like medicine, there is almost no 100% probability but is rather based on factually designed and validated studies that provide us with a certain margin of risks and benefits.?

Similar things happen in business and investments. It is purely a game of chances and risks. And whoever holds that information has the upper hand in the game. Hence, the unsubdued power of information.?

It is a game theory indeed.?

Nowadays, I learned to think a lot of possibilities before I make a move in about almost anything that I do.?

In medical research, there is a thing that we call temporality of events and such events are governed by a variable which we call the exposure variable. If we manipulate this exposure in different ways, we can observe predicted and unpredicted outcomes. In life, these unpredicted outcomes can count as a Black Swan event.??

The concept of the temporality of events is similar too with relationships. I'm a Family Medicine consultant and over the years I have counseled a lot of people probably in the thousands. The one thing that I found about relationships is that temporality of events is a sure thing.?

Most of the events are irreversible and most of them resort to regrets. Every time I counsel broken families, most often there are two probable causes. These two things are not a Black Swan event. It's either one partner cheats the other and the other reason is simply an unacceptably bad attitude. It is usually an intentional and/or unlearned behavior.?

So if you have a business or a relationship, be very very mindful of the consequences of the Black Swan or temporality of all things.??

For these reasons, the MBA program has taught my classmates and me to safeguard all things that are dear and important to us. Hence, we were taught to remain a bit reserved or unemotional when it comes to business.?

We were taught to take care of our network of friends as they are always our network. I learned the value of networking and connecting with people. Before, I was shy about talking to people outside my circle of friends. The skill I learned is about the belief in yourself and the confidence that one can bring.??

Confidence is a two-edged sword. The lack of it is like the blunt, unsharpened steel of a blade that cuts through nothing but air, hence it is useless. However, too much of it can kill one and the plausibility of one being dead is tantamount to being useless from that point.??

Confidence is usually paired with skills or learned knowledge. It is a perception or a belief of varying degrees of probability that an action leads to its intended outcome.?

In my experience as a medical research professor over the years, I have come about two different kinds of people.??

The first set of individuals are those who indeed have really good skills but they think and feel that they can't accomplish anything. The people and their peers around believe that they are great at accomplishing things.?They acknowledge the praises but deep inside there is that persisting belief that they are not worthy of such praise.

They also strongly feel that once they acknowledge such positive comments and failed to deliver on one or two occasions,?they would feel so guilty, and as a result, they would lose all confidence in such tasks.?In psychiatry, it is called the Impostor syndrome or simply the Impostors.

I do see quite a several individuals who are good enough to be skilled but just lack the mental capacity to take things into action.?There are two solutions to this and one of them is a defense mechanism.?

To take an action, these individuals will overlearn the skills to accomplish a task. While their action seems commendable, the problem with this is that too much time is wasted in honing a skill that is otherwise already more than adequate in the first place.?

Hence, if they needed ten types of skills needed to complete a goal, for example: starting a business, it takes them "forever" to prepare up to the point of giving up and not doing anything.?

Now, at this point, I wanted you to ponder deeply.?Try asking a number of your friends whom you think have the skills to start a business and have not done so. Most of them would mostly fall in this category.?

Most will tell you that a lack of capital is the main reason not to start when big businesses began with a single idea.?Big businesses are not built overnight. You know that. Everybody knows that.?

They are built ground up on a process of evolution.??

It is just like the developmental milestones of a newborn. The brain has to learn four basic domains of survival. It requires physical and cognitive, language, and sensorimotor development to grow up.?

The only difference between ones with Impostor syndrome and newborns is that newborns don't require confidence but unconsciously develop it for survival.?

The question now is the "what if".?

What if we place those with the syndrome into survival mode? What if we take away one or two of their security blankets that hinders them to move forward???

Surely they will be put in a tight situation where there is no backing up as an option. The mind will start to race up. Impulses will be high in the fear centers of the brain. The brain's fear center, the amygdala will be so pumped up that it will resort to doing planned actions.?Inevitably, the Impostor will make a move as the brain simply goes into survival mode.?

Have you ever wondered why we have coaches? And why do military officers give the shock treatment to recruits??Tough love isn't it??

So it's either they learn it the hard way or have a coach with you.?

The next set of individuals is the opposite.?They don't have much of the necessary skills but too much belief in themselves to accomplish a task.?

Let's put it into an analogy. One example is one driving a car on a speedway and this person wants to put the vehicle beyond its speed limit. However, due to too much focus and self-belief on the set speed, failed to acknowledge that the tires are only capable of handling as such.??

There is a possibility of success but increases the chances of a tire blowout.?And yes, there is a saying "speed kills".?

These individuals are known as the Dunning-Kruger type of individuals. They have the confidence but the problem is that it is just way too much. It may be difficult to treat to some degree as too much confidence may lead to the arrogance of being corrected.?Unless of course, the person has a high degree of self-awareness and receptiveness.?For some of those who indeed survived failures, one way to change is to learn from mistakes.?

We all learn from mistakes. All of us do and most of us acknowledge it.?

These are the two extremes of confidence concerning one's skills.?

Most of us are in a point of a range between the two extremes and success can be achieved with a sweet spot between the two.?

To sum it up, if there are three things that I've profoundly learned that changed me as a person in the MBA, it would be a good amount of planning, the right amount of confidence, and a good set of networks.?

But if there is one and only one thing that I would put on the top list as a skill, it would be networking skills.?I believe in it because having to choose your networks is like an option that you can choose a family that takes care of you and will inevitably put you in the right confidence and will genuinely help you in succeeding in your goals.?

In Family Medicine, there are five basic pillars that you can hang on to consider that your networks can be called a "family".?It is also called the APGAR and is different from the APGAR score of newborns I discussed a while ago.?

The APGAR score for your networks to be treated as family member stands for Adaptability, Partnership, Growth, Appreciation, and Resolve.?

Should you have almost all of them ticked right on most of your networks, then there is a higher chance that your business will be born into this world and survive to become a titan.?