Top
finance professionals back qualification
Two
leaders in the field are benefiting from their MBAs and say in
today's market, the more education, the better, writes Kate Watson
Frances Wong, finance director at Mattel Asia-Pacific Sourcing, says her EMBA helped her gain a much boarder
strategic perspective
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Chief financial officers and finance heads aiming for the top
job within an organization would do well to add an MBA to their
skills, according to two top finance managers.
Danny Leung, financial controller (racing) at the Hong Kong Jockey
Club, got his MBA 25 years ago in Toronto, Canada, following his
undergraduate studies while working full time as a financial services
accountant in the Canadian operations of a United States pharmaceutical
firm.
Mr Leung was tasked with cost accounting and looking after the
company's capital assets. But he also trained fresh graduates
with MBAs who had joined the company as financial analysts. Their
salaries were almost twice his at the time, and envy prompted
him to enroll in an MBA.
¡§It was purely out of jealousy,¡¨ Mr Leung said. ¡§I determined
that education had such a high ranking in the company that is
was important to have an enriched academic background in order
to support my future career growth.¡¨
He signed up for an MBA programme with a finance major, completing
it on a part-time basis, and said that the MBA had given him the
chance to push himself to achieve a better career.
¡§If I hadn't achieved that level of education, I would probably
have had to work my way up and gain seniority over many years,¡¨
Mr Leung said. ¡§This isn't a wise proposition, because in good
times Americcan companies hire, but in bad times they cut headcount.
If you want to stay in the upper tiers of middle to senior management,
the more education you have the better.¡¨
Frances Wong, director of finance at Mattel Asia-Pacific Sourcing,
did her executive MBA (EMBA) through the Richard Ivey School of
Business in Hong Kong in 2001-03. The programme included two weeks
in residence in Hong Kong and one week on the campus in Canada,
and covered marketing, finance, accounting, organizational behavior,
IT, strategy, statistics and business in China.
Ms Wong's decision to pursue an EMBA was personal. ¡§I had been
working for many years and wanted to upgrade myself. I was curious
as to what I could get from the MBA programme and how that would
help me in my career. Because of that curiosity, I jumped right
in. The programme was hard work. I did it part time, cut out all
social activities for the two years and studied at night and during
weekends,¡¨ she said.
From a finance perspective, her EMBA has had an impact on her
daily work as a finance director, teaching her the importance
of compromise, of understanding the other parts of the business,
not just the finance department.
¡§I believe the programme opened my mind. I see things differently
now, from other perspectives, and that has contributed to my being
a more well-rounded manager, ¡§she said. As an example, she highlighted
the differences in priorities between the finance and design functions
in her organization: while the finance department emphasis product
development spending control, those working in the design department
focus on coming up with the best product design, which could mean
higher development costs.
¡§This is a simple example, but one of the things the MBA taught
me was the importance of compromise, of understanding the other
parts of the business, not just my department. I now better understand
why the design department can't give me a price,¡¨ Ms Wong said.
If she needed vindication of her decision to pursue the EMBA,
it has come in form of compliments from colleagues in the company's
human resources department who noted that Ms Wong's behavior had
changed. ¡§They told me that I am looking at things in a more open-minded
and longer-term manner, and I 'm looking at other stakeholders
to take care of their needs,¡¨ she said.
One area of the programme that she found particularly valuable
was the study of strategy, which she has continued to implement
in her daily work. The opportunity to study strategy through the
EMBA's case study approach helped her to gain a much broader strategic
perspective beyond her focus on finance.
¡§Without this MBA, I would not have coped easily with the changes
in the company, the way we operate, and the external and internal
environments. For example, we are changing the way that we work
with our vendors, ¡§she said.
¡§The MBA has helped me to cope better with such changes because
I can look at things in a more open-mined and longer-term way
and from other people's perspectives. I hope I inspire my staff
and others I work with to be business partners.¡¨
Mr Leung said he would probably not have been hired without his
MBA, and he was gratified that he made the move to gain the qualification
so early in his career.
¡§I have had room to move around in roles and in the eyes of my
employers I have probably had wider reach as far as employment
opportunities are concerned, being able to fulfill general management
or country management roles,¡¨ he said.
Firms open to helping future leaders
Companies are open to working with individuals on tuition reimbursement
and time requirements for MBA study programmes, provided the MBA
being sought will apply to their work and that the company and
the individual will both benefit.
It would be less apt to reimburse tuition for those who want to
pursue an MBA for their own personal benefit without any application
to their work or benefit to the company, and more likely to try
to help the individual pursue their personal goals without affecting
their daily work.
Reimbursing study fees is also one way of encouraging individuals
identified under succession planning for advancement to a C-level
or top management position. Tom Mehrmann, Ocean Park's chief executive,
said: ¡§We would certainly encourage that for those individuals
in the organization who have all the relevant work experience
but lack the analytic skills or the degree that would separate
them from a field of candidates for succession purposes.¡¨
This approach to educating possible high fliers is also taken
by Clariden leu, a private bank whose Singapore-based director
of human resources in Asia, Daniel Odermatt, said that requests
to pursue an MBA subsidized by the bank must be approved by its
chief executive.
¡§This isn't because every single cent needs to be approved by
the CEO, but if someone wants to pursue an MBA he or she may have
higher ambitions in terms of management and it's good that the
bank's CEO knows that, ¡§he said.
¡§We are happy to subsidize MBAs as long as there is a clear goal
and need, but we want to carefully select these employees and
make them known to top management because they may be good candidates
for succession in the future.
¡§It's a customized individual analysis that leads us to this decision,
it's not a set number of MBAs that we say we must have every year,
Mr Odermatt said.
¡§Our emphasis is on the fact that an MBA could be one of several
actions taken to develop someone towards a managerial role in
the bank, but it is based on a systematic analysis of the employee's
potential and performance.¡¨
SCMP
18th February, 2009
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