Publications like The Economist and Financial Times regularly publish lists of the top Executive MBA programs in the world. What does this mean for you?

As you move from front-line work to leadership and management positions, you should certainly look at opportunities for education that will help you succeed. Nobody wants to go to a doctor who does not have a medical education, so why would anyone want a leader who does not have a leader’s education?

An MBA is a useful degree in that it exposes you to aspects of running an organization, offering you an enterprise view that helps you understand how the different pieces fit together. There is typically a leadership (or at least, management) component to your education, hopefully some ethics, and of course many of the more technical aspects like marketing, accounting, finance, etc. I think an MBA is a great degree for someone with a limited background in business, though of course there are other master’s degrees out there than can also be very useful. An up and coming leader should look at all the options.

That being said, I’m actually not a huge fan of Executive MBA programs. Why not? Because I feel they try to cram too much into too short of a time, and really do not allow for the kind of thought and reflection that should be part of a master’s degree education. These programs often involve 2-3 weekends to complete a course (Friday-Saturday-Sunday, with a couple weeks in between them) and maybe a 1 or 2 week period during the year where all the students come together. As a result, students do not really have a lot of time between topics to absorb what they just learned, think about it in the context of the rest of the course, and prepare for the next topic. Research and writing often get compressed, which might be good training for the workplace but really do not allow for great education.

The obvious advantage to these programs is that they allow full-time workers to attend classes while disrupting their lives as little as possible. The downside, I fear, is that the students can lose out on valuable education, and may not really be as well-prepared when they graduate as their degree would suggest. One option is to attend grad school full-time, without working or only working part-time, but that is not possible for many people. Another is a night school program that follows a normal academic calendar…not the best way to pursue more scholarly, heavily-research-oriented degrees, perhaps, but an effective approach for a professional degree like an MBA. (disclaimer: I earned my MBA this way, and definitely felt it was the best option for me. I was also a professor in a part-time master’s degree program that followed a normal semester schedule.)

The most important thing is to find a program that will help educate you and prepare you for moving up into leadership roles. If the only way to do that is an Executive MBA program — if it’s that or nothing — then go for it. If that’s what you do, then challenge yourself to make this as educational as possible, and try not to miss out on really thinking about what you are studying. If possible, though, look to other options to get a more complete education.

If all you want is a piece of paper at the end, there are plenty of ways to get that, but if you really want an education, you need to find the right program. An Executive MBA might be your best option, but if that is the route you are taking, you may need to put some extra effort into it.