The greatest gift one gets from an MBA

I joined DCU back in 1991. I was the class representative for the first class of the Master of Business Administration (M.B.A), International Business. DCU had a very different feel to it in those days. The campus consisted of in or around 2000 students and there was no multi story car park, never mind the state of the art campus that exists today. I remember dumping my car on footpaths close to the classroom and dashing in almost late!

When I decided to take the MBA…I looked at UCD, TCD and DCU programmes, but chose DCU for 3 reasons. 1) it had an intense German or French language module and 2) DCU Business had gained the reputation of a university most in tune with the business community and 3) The schedule, Tuesday 6-9pm, Wednesday 2-8pm and Saturday 9am-1pm best suited combining an MBA with full time work. It gave me the tools that I needed to move up in the pharmaceutical sector. Even before I had completed the MBA I had already secured an upwards move to the leading Pharma company in the industry. I went on to spend 25 years at AstraZeneca as a Sales and Marketing and Business Development Director.

As well as the all tools I learned at DCU, I’ve always felt that the greatest gift one gets from an MBA are:
1) the ability to tackle many issues and prioritise the important over the urgent. Juggling work, the MBA course and family all at the same time forced me to learn this skill quickly. 2) knowing the strategic issues in all functional areas from accounting through IT through Law etc. gave me the confidence to analyse and question all functional experts and the skills to cut through the noise and separate the wheat from the shaff.

Declan O’Donoghue
MBA 1991