MIT Sloan School of Management’s Executive MBA (EMBA) Program Director Jonathan Lehrich led a team that conducted behavioral research to test the viability of the school’s new part-time EMBA program. The team’s methods – using key metrics and milestones to determine whether to move forward – allowed the market to guide the program’s development. Here, Lehrich talks about what makes the program different and who should be interested in enrolling.
Jonathan Lehrich
Title: Program Director and Lecturer, MIT Executive MBA Program; Boston
Age: 43
Experience: 2 years as an MIT student, 7 years as an MIT employee
You are doing something different at Sloan with the EMBA program. What is it?
There are hundreds of executive MBA programs nationally and worldwide. So, the first question is, why does one need another one? The answer is, we feel, the fact is we proved, through our market study, that there is a need for a rigorous executive MBA program genuinely for mid-career executives who want to apply the science of management to their work immediately.
Traditionally, why does an executive enroll in an EMBA program?
There’s a lot of traditional reasons. Many executive MBA programs do exactly what they should be doing. They are aimed at mid-career people whose careers would be put in retrograde to actually stop working. If someone comes to look at this (EMBA) program and says, ‘I want to do this to get better at sales,’ I say we have a non-degree program you should be doing instead, otherwise you’re going to get microeconomics and financial accounting and system dynamics and everything else with everyone else. You don’t come just for one specific thing.
What are you interested in?
We’re interested in diversity. We’re interested in diversity of function, industry, experience; people who can contribute to each others’ learning. If you’re going to do an executive MBA program, you, as a student, as a mid-career executive, have to find the balance point between on the one hand, ‘everybody looks just like me and I’m not going to learn anything from this,’ to ‘I’m the weirdo, I’m the outlier.’ You should feel like there are enough people in the room that you feel, ‘okay, I’m in my tribe,’ but not so much like you feel you’re sitting at Thanksgiving dinner all the time. We have people in financial services, for example, who find that they’re in the room with a customer, a colleague and a competitor, plus people from 25 miles down the road from industries they didn’t even know existed. We are very proud that in the Class of 2013, not only are Google, Microsoft and Apple represented, but they sit next to each other. It’s very sweet.
How do you define a mid-career executive?
Nearly all of our students are 10 years of experience or more. We average 17, which is more senior.
Looking to get into the C-level positions?
That’s a lot of people, and then there are some people who are already C-level and think they can be doing their jobs better. We have a lot of CEOs, entrepreneurs, COOs, CFOs. And as far as an age range, we have people who start when they’re 34 and people who start when they’re 54. This is not for people who are just at the beginning of the career. You can’t really call yourself mid-career if you’re 29. But this is not something to do if you’re in your sunset years, either.
Has the value of an MBA diminished over the years? The popular thought is that the master’s degree, the MBA, is the new bachelor’s. Is that the case?
The issue of the MBA is now the new baseline is more true for people who are early in their career and are going full-time. And that’s exactly the reason they do it. Because it’s certainly true that for some industries that have very large intakes, and very heavy churn, you have so many applicants you just need it just to get past the first cut.
Five Things You Need To Know About An EMBA, According To Jonathan Lehrich:
The ‘E’ need not stand for easy. It is also not a lower case ‘e.’ This drives me insane. It’s not an electronic MBA.
- If you’re going to do an executive MBA, you should do it for the management education, not to get your ticket punched.
- An executive MBA should provide theory and practice. You should be able to apply what you learn immediately in your workplace.
- If you look around the room and say you’re really impressed with your classmates, you’re in the right place. Your classmates are your peers for life.
- When somebody says to you, ‘You don’t need an MBA, you’re already successful,’ that’s a good sign that it’s time to get an executive MBA.
