The technology sector rightly places a high value on technical expertise. But, as professionals look to progress into more senior roles, deeper influence depends less on what you can build, and more on how well you can lead, communicate, and make strategic decisions.
Research from Harvard Business Review indicates that tech professionals who combine strong subject matter expertise with skills like empathy and collaboration are more likely to advance their careers and earn higher salaries.
A recent survey by Deloitte supports this finding, saying that while companies often focus on tech upskilling, crucial human skills like creative thinking, and emotional adaptability and resilience, are frequently overlooked in corporate learning programmes.
In emerging digital economies like South Africa, where organisations are navigating rapid transformation alongside resource constraints, leaders who understand both technology and business strategy are increasingly indispensable.
This is where an MBA begins to matter.
Dr Stephen Akandwanaho, Executive Dean: Faculty of Information Technology at Richfield, says that an MBA does not replace technical skills. Rather, it reframes how these skills are applied at scale: “An MBA is most powerful when it changes how leaders think, not what they know.”
Here are five ways an MBA can shift the trajectory of your tech career:
1. It rewires how you make decisions: An MBA strengthens structured thinking. It sharpens your ability to evaluate trade-offs, test assumptions, and choose a path that aligns with strategy as well as urgency. This mindset is essential when the decisions you need to make carry financial, operational, and reputational consequences.
Akandwanaho notes that strong leadership in tech requires “the discipline to step back, assess the system as a whole, and decide with intent rather than instinct”.
2. It turns technical insight into business value: An MBA develops commercial awareness, helping leaders to translate complexity into relevance. It teaches you how organisations generate value, where risk sits, and how performance is measured. This, in turn, allows you to connect tech-related decisions directly to revenue, efficiency, customer outcomes, and risk mitigation.
3. It builds communication skills: Technical expertise only creates value when it can be understood, trusted, and acted on. High-performance teams also need clarity, conviction, and direction. An MBA strengthens your written and verbal communication by forcing you to defend your ideas and test them in real scenarios. This matters in boardrooms, project scopes and approvals, and moments of change.
4. It develops people-centred leadership: Tech organisations rely on collaboration, yet it often happens that senior roles are filled by individuals trained primarily in systems and processes. An MBA develops your emotional intelligence. It improves your ability to lead diverse teams, manage conflict, and drive performance without being hindered by hierarchy.
This capability is increasingly being valued as organisations navigate remote work, cross-functional teams, disruption, and constant evolution. An MBA that emphasises leadership context and behaviour will prepare you for these realities.
5. It future proofs your relevance: Technical skills evolve quickly but leadership capabilities endure. An MBA builds durable skills that translate across roles and industries, equipping you to adapt as new technologies and business models emerge.
Dr Akandwanaho believes that this is where a digitally-driven MBA shaped by insights, strategic management, and real-world application is most effective: “An MBA that treats tech as a business driver, not a standalone subject, prepares leaders to operate in any future economy.”
For those aiming to progress in tech, the message is not that something is missing – it is that something can be strengthened. An MBA is a strategic investment in perspective, confidence, and long-term influence, enabling tech professionals to apply what you already know at a higher level of impact.
