Focus Your MBA On Creating Change?

You’ve got valuable business skills that have enabled you to succeed brilliantly in the corporate sector and now you want to leverage those same skills to make the world better. According to a new article from Stanford Social Innovation Review the work of transitioning is not as obvious as it may seem. Here's a snippet:

... it has taken years in the nonprofit sector to appreciate the challenge of applying business best practices to that sector. In fact, like the proverbial bull in a china shop, MBAs like me can, without appropriate understanding of nonprofits, actually wreak havoc when let loose in the often alien world of nonprofit strategic planning. Here’s how it usually works:

Step 1: MBAs arrive at the nonprofit with great fanfare (preferably to the musical accompaniment of Celine Dion’s “I’m Your Angel”).

Step 2: We offer advice and recommendations (based largely on forprofit business models that may or may not work in a nonprofit setting).

Step 3: We accept warm thanks for our work (and hear a host of reasons why our proposals won’t fly).

Step 4: We return to our comfortable for-profit worlds not knowing whether our work will have any real impact; still, we feel warm and tingly about having made a contribution to the greater good.

Obviously, this is a gross generalization. Still, nonprofits often deploy pro bono MBAs unsuccessfully.

It’s also true, however, that MBAs can add real value, and that the time for pro bono is now.

Cautionary words that still speak to the immense potential business folk like you can bring to social change.

Focus Your MBA On Creating Change?

Susan Herr