Why an MBA was Important to Me

was an untrained, inexperienced worker, and yet had responsibility for seven staff all looking to me for leadership and guidance. What resulted was a virgin manager being over-worked, under-paid and critically under valued. Why? Because of a lack of credibility – stemming from limited management competence. The time had arrived to re-invent myself, to redress the fact that I had not made the most of my youth and education. To face the fact I had no professional qualification, and to make the transition from ‘techie’ into manager.
I needed training and education in the nature of organisations. What is strategy and does it matter? What role did culture and organisational dynamics play in making organisations and managers successful? Why were operations always ‘sold out’ by marketing, and why did the financial director always seem to have the real power? If I was to be successful, I knew that I personally needed to know all of these things and more.
The thought of studying corporate strategy, marketing, corporate finance, and organisational change filled me with excitement, and if I could survive what I knew would be a hellish three years of distance learning, then I could survive anything. I had never been an academic, yet I was confident that I could readily tie together the theory to the practice – that I would make myself a capable manager and deliver to my staff the sort of leadership, methods and practices which they deserved.