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 Fabian Leistikow
MBA in General Management - Dual Award, Berlin School of Economics
University previously attended Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Degree obtained Law degree
Country of origin Germany
Age 33 years
Career history
Fabian Leistikow worked for three years as a company lawyer in the telecommunications industry. Currently, as team manager at a renowned international French research institute, he is in charge of recruiting and integration policies.
To MBA or not to MBA?
The decision to embark on an MBA programme while in full-time employment has very little to do with finding a cosy way to spend your evenings. The workload is extremely demanding, and every student finds the MBA takes up evenings and weekends, and leaves little time for friends, family, or partners, playing in your own band or making the most of gym membership. I knew what was waiting for me, yet the decision was an easy one to take. After I had completed my preparatory legal practice and taken my final law exams, I was fortunate enough to find just the kind of job I wanted. Nonetheless, I swiftly realised I was facing a choice about the direction my future career could take: should I specialize as a lawyer or embrace an interdisciplinary approach? In concrete terms, I had to decide between pursuing a career in labour law and shifting the focus of my work entirely to human resource management (HRM). The experience I had in an internationally active telecommunications company had awoken my interest in HRM, and the Berlin School of Economics' MBA programme offered precisely the tools I needed to be capable of working efficiently within international personnel management.
Was it worth it?
The MBA programme delivered what it promised, both in terms of the course content and the demands made on the students. The programme provided a set of tools enabling me to understand internal business procedures and processes. I will never forget the discussions with my fellow students - when doctors, economists, lawyers, engineers, literary scholars, biochemists and agronomists tackle a topic together, it not only leads to a remarkable debate, but also to remarkable conclusions. Naturally, general issues produced controversial discussions, changing the way I see my own work and, above all, altering my perspectives on the work of my fellow students. Ignorance or even mistrust gave way to mutual esteem and a determination to use the knowledge resources suitably instead of restricting myself to retracing familiar paths within my own discipline.
The MBA programme at the Berlin School of Economics also had one further interesting aspect - the partnership arrangement with Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK.
But the lecturers and seminars did not merely enrich the programme through use of the English language, they also generated an awareness of how, even within the same discipline, Britain and Germany adopt quite different problem-solving strategies. Anyone interested in a career in an international setting, as I am myself, found this an extremely valuable addition to the course. And, naturally, although course members may have already known each other from the lectures, the study periods in Cambridge offered a chance to get to know each other much better and find new friends.
Is the MBA a springboard to a career?
Even during the course of my studies, it proved possible to give my career the kind of push I had hoped for. Changing to an international research institute in Grenoble, France enabled me to combine the subjects of labour law and HRM in one job, and to actively apply at first hand my newly acquired expert knowledge in international management. It would be a bold claim to say that an MBA programme is automatically a springboard to career development. Neither would I want to maintain that one could then easily cope with every situation in a company, let alone those in a company abroad.
Yet, nonetheless, the course of studies at the Berlin School of Economics and Anglia Ruskin University has certainly helped me cope with difficult situations, both in my personal and work life, through the knowledge that a comprehensive set of tools is available specifically to diagnose sources of error - and this itself may well be one element in lasting job satisfaction.
'When doctors, economists, lawyers, engineers, literary scholars, biochemists and agronomists tackle a topic together, it not only leads to a remarkable debate, but also to remarkable conclusions.'
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