The Association on MBA (AMBA) graduates have the potential to bring creative, game-changing possibilities to the organisations they join or found, writes Dr John Mervyn-Smith.

MBAs bring a different talent to organisations that employers need to understand if they are to benefit from it. But to understand the nature of this talent we must first understand how it has been assessed. Specifically, this picture of differing talents emerged through our research with AMBA.

The group of MBA graduates that we profiled using The GC Index raised some interesting observations. In the AMBA group:

  • Pragmatic Leaders accounted for 5% of people.
  • Visionary Leaders (Strategist / Game Changers) were most common at 22%.
  • 61% having some Game Changer inclinations in their profile.
  • In total, 27% of the AMBA group had Implementer inclinations in their profiles.

This data supports a view that AMBA graduates are more engaged and energised by the world of ideas and possibilities than the world of practical realities. More specifically, they have the potential to bring to organisations creative, game-changing possibilities.

The leadership combination of Strategist/ Game Changer is an interesting and powerful one. These individuals not only have the potential to bring game-changing ideas to the world of work, but they see possibilities within a strategic context. These are the sorts of talents that organisations with an agenda of transformational change need to recruit, recognise, nurture and exploit.

To read the article in full please visit AMBA’s journal, Ambition.