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2. The gap between you and your business associates

Whether based on your college major or job assignments, most managers are identified with a particular business discipline. The most common are operations, finance, marketing, information and human resources. On a daily basis, you deal with associates who represent most of these disciplines. For example, marketers work with information systems managers to get data for product development, operations execs work with financial analysts to plan capital investments, and so on. You face even more representatives of other disciplines and industries if you are in direct contact with customers or vendors.

To grow and succeed, you must communicate effectively and work productively with colleagues, clients and suppliers who have very different priorities and perspectives. If you cannot accomplish this, you may be destined to either remain a lower-level specialist or, more likely, get replaced by someone with that broader perspective. If you want to make the leap from specialist to generalist, spanning business disciplines and industries, a top-quality MBA education may be your key.

At business school, students learn the "language" of each functional specialty. Furthermore, many MBA programs emphasize team projects in which you are part of a cross-functional group working through real-world business issues; each student learns how to achieve objectives with and through teammates who bring a different expertise to the table. Then, once they return to their companies, MBA graduates are often placed in special "rotational" programs where they work in a variety of departments, gaining hands-on experience with each of the organization's core functions.

A graduate business degree can prepare you for dramatic changes that may thrust you into different roles. For example, the chief operating officer of corporation owning newspapers, TV stations and other companies around the world says, "Chances are you won't stay in the same career for life. You need flexibility so that, if one career gets shut out, you can go for another. An MBA degree is a great way to help make this possible."