From The­ory to Pra­cti­ce: How to Turn Your EMBA Lear­ning into Real Wor­k­pla­ce Im­pa­ct

The well-worn phrase “no plan survives first contact with reality” is well-worn for a reason. Even the best strategy is built on incomplete knowledge. Circumstances change. Assumptions prove wrong. The real world happens. So can an Executive MBA from Copenhagen Business School (CBS) really help when the rubber hits the road?

It’s a question of perspective

An Executive MBA is deliberately broad. For CBS Associate Professor Mogens Bjerre, that breadth is fundamental to its practical value.

“An MBA is not a single-topic education,” he says. “The fact that you get a number of different lenses, or glasses, means that you can see quite a few different problems from different perspectives.”

A challenge that initially appears financial might also be a question of supply chain, people, technology, marketing or innovation. Often, it’s several of those things at once. The value of the different frameworks covered in an EMBA is not that any one will provide the answer, but that, together, they enable leaders to see more of the problem.

Vocabulary and syntax

Christian Emborg is a Business Development Specialist, CBS EMBA alum and member of the Alumni Advisory Board. Before beginning his EMBA, he describes himself as a commercial specialist rather than a generalist. During the programme, he was repeatedly forced to examine his own company from perspectives outside his professional comfort zone.

That also changed his relationship with frameworks he thought he already understood – for example, Porter’s Five Forces, which he first encountered as a teenager. “When I was 17, 18, 19, I thought, ‘Oh yeah, whatever,’” he says. “But during the MBA, I really understood that, of course, this is the right framework to use in my thinking.”

He later used Five Forces to help his team understand the dynamics behind complex decisions. The model hadn’t changed. His ability to recognise when and how it could be useful had.

Recent CBS EMBA graduate and Senior Manager at the LEGO Group, Daniel Tewfik, describes this broader shift as learning “not just vocabulary, but syntax”, which enables him to synthesise day-to-day developments in a different way. In this sense, learning is less about accumulating models than about becoming more adept at choosing among different ways of seeing.

Be prepared to change your mind

Those different perspectives can expose something more uncomfortable: the gap between what leaders know and what they assume they know. “You think you know your business, you think you know your organisation,” says Mogens. “But you may not necessarily have the data supporting that.”

For Christian, rigorous strategic work remains the cornerstone. But rigour cannot eliminate uncertainty. No matter how carefully information is gathered, it will never be complete. A strategy is put into motion in a world that continues to change, so leaders must be prepared to adapt.

Mogens calls this “strategic flexibility”: not elaborate contingency plans for every possible future, but the willingness to abandon a strategy when the evidence no longer supports it. 

This brings Christian back to the advice he has carried with him since his EMBA: “More of the same gives more of the same.” A framework is just that. It’s a starting point. It should never stop you from questioning whether it still works. 

Understanding it yourself is only the beginning

Another barrier between learning and impact has little to do with the quality of the strategy itself: other people. The deeper your understanding, Christian argues, the easier it is to underestimate what it will take to bring others with you.

His example: your Integrated Strategy Project.

“You worked four months on this,” he says. “You know it inside out. And then you expect everyone else to understand it in an hour or two. This will not work. You have to break it down. You have to understand that people need time to digest it, especially if it’s a completely new direction.”

Mogens sees the same mistake far beyond the classroom. A leadership team might spend four days at an off-site discussing strategy. Its conclusions are condensed into a presentation and shared with the wider management team over a day. By the time the strategy reaches individual departments, employees may receive a two- or three-hour workshop. “And then the strategy has been rolled out,” he says. “Pardon my language, it’s BS.”

The problem isn’t simply the amount of time allocated to communication. The people receiving the strategy weren’t present for the analysis, choices and debate that produced it. They may not share the assumptions on which it rests. Sharing a conclusion is not the same as sharing the understanding behind it. “There’s nothing as easy as making things complicated,” he says.

You must evolve from student to facilitator

“Those who excel with the MBA understand that they can use everything they learn, the full toolbox, not just for their own sake but for their team’s,” says Mogens.

For Christian, that distinction captures something fundamental about applying learning in practice. “You make the ISP alone, but when you implement, you’re not alone.” And when colleagues have helped understand and solve a problem, they are already part of what happens next. The alternative, Emborg says, is to sit with “your crystal ball” and then tell everyone else what to do.

That mindset shift is important. Education may give an individual a broader toolkit. Workplace impact comes from making that toolkit useful to a team. 

Keep asking the “stupid” question

Mogens and Christian agree that staying curious long after your EMBA has ended is vital. “Be brave enough to ask the stupid question,” says Christian. “Be the one to raise your hand and say, ‘Why do we do this? Is it necessary?’”

Mogens points to Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s willingness to question assumptions others take for granted: do people have to sit on planes? What would happen if they didn’t?

Perhaps that is where theory becomes most useful in practice. The frameworks provide structure. Different disciplines offer new lenses. Data helps challenge assumptions. But none of them removes uncertainty or the need to bring others with you.

The lasting advantage may not be having more answers. It may be knowing when to question the answer you already have – and being willing to ask a better question.