MBA - Masters of Bugger All?

Tom Peters often talks about the relevance (or irrelevance) of an MBA in today’s world. Being an MBA myself, I also often think about this and my own motivation for pursuing this line of study. Dan Pink believes that it is probably because of the advice of parents who thought that “success was spelled MBA”.

Did I believe that? Do I still believe that? I’m not quite sure. I think (know) that my own definition of “success” has changed since 1998, when I started my MBA. I’d like to think that my motivation was the pursuit of knowledge. Since I’d completed an Arts degree prior I had limited exposure to the world of business and I had a thirst for undetstanding. In hindsight, I probably was blinded by the pursuit of what I saw as ’success’. My daughter Madelyn was born the year before I started and I think that my motivation to ’succeed’ was in-part, driven by the new found repsonsibilties of being a father.

Has it given me all the skills required to be successful in business? Probably not. I have definitely developed some fantastic skills and a deep undetstanding of a number of business theories and models. But Business School does not encourage, or teach you about “right-brained” activities. They don’t teach you how to ’sell’, ‘hustle’, ‘imagine’, ‘have fun’. Jim Carroll says that we should move beyond the thinking that led us to a world of MBA’s …

The world doesn’t need more administrators. It needs more MBI’s – Masters of Business Imagination!

His Masters of Business Imagination Manifesto is an interesting and compelling read. If I had a choice between an MBA and MBI now, I’d definitely choose the later.

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