Why should you start an executive master program and stimulate your career when budgets are still limited? In five short reasons, I give you food for thought and help you to take your decision to start a career changing training. After summer, many business schools and universities will start their new classes, so now is the moment to choose which educational program fits you.
The world is changing rapidly and becomes digital. The influence of the web, mobile technology, and other new technologies is immense on business processes. Business is 80% IT. Trends like robotics are just one small step away from reality. Be on time and learn which trends have value and learn how to transform trends into business opportunities. Become part of the digital world and be a trendsetter in your own organization, become ready for the digital world with an academic IT master. It's happening now, not tomorrow.
Organizations have been struggling the last years and the budgets for training and development were under pressure. Now the economic situation is improving and organiszations are restarting to invest in their high potential employees, it is time to ask for a budget. If you consider yourself as a high potential (of course you do) and you are ambitious (of course you are), you can be the first to ask for budget for your own development. Just make a clear business case with the costs of a study and the benefits for you and for your company. Be the first, before the budget is given to others.
According to recent research of Prof. Jerry Luftman, 79% of the present CIO’s have an IT background. And 60% of the European CIO’s last position was in the same organization. If you are an IT-professional and you would like to make a career in your own organization, the way to C-level is open. The present CIO is still an IT-man or IT-woman. Not only their background is in IT, also their agenda is mainly IT-internally. If a CIO wants to operate on C-level, (s)he needs an academic degree otherwise his/her voice does not count. Get the skills now to work on C-level.
In executive education, the Master of Business Administration MBA is well known. These general management programmes consist of subjects like marketing, operations, HR, strategic management, finance, but the information management issues are not addressed in much depth. For many IT-professionals the MBA is a good way to move to general management. But for those who want to remain in the IT-domain, a general MBA is far away from their reality. Digital organizations or digital oriented managers (and the IT top manager should be one) need more IT than MBA’s are offering. An executive master with MBA subjects related to IT will fit. And IT masters with a business flavour might even be better.
More than ten years we are discussing business – IT alignment issues and the problems are still not solved. In lists of the most important IT management concerns, business – IT alignment is still number one. Other concerns in the top 5 are Agility, Cost Reductions and Privacy. Revenue Generating IT Projects and Innovation are much lower ranked.
If you understand how IT can add to business value and how to organise IT effectively, you are a hero in your organization.