Ben Harrison

You joined the Leeds MBA as a senior leader without having followed the traditional university route. What gave you the confidence to take that step, and how has the experience challenged any assumptions you had about business education?

I joined the MBA without a degree, and I won't pretend that wasn't intimidating at first. On day one I was meeting people who told me they had been top of their class, their year, or their country at undergraduate level. I had spent 19 years working my way up from packing boxes in a warehouse, teaching myself software until I became the in-house designer in the marketing team, then taking on responsibility for IT management, more and more roles until I ended up second to the MD. I was the person everyone came to with their problems, and I could fix them all because I knew every system inside out.

So I honestly don't know whether it was confidence in my abilities as a leader that made me apply, or naivety. I had belief in myself, but I think what I really wanted was to prove to myself that I knew what I was doing - that the positive feedback I had been getting from staff and peers was warranted.

That isn't to say I stopped learning when I started working. I studied IT and accounting qualifications (many, many moons ago), a CMI course, and more online courses than you can shake a stick at. So I came in with experience, and a low-level understanding of the theory behind some of the concepts we would be covering.

The assumption the MBA broke for me was about what actually counts in a room like that. I had expected the qualifications people walked in with to set the pecking order, and for the gap on my CV to be the thing that defined me for a year. It wasn't. What people wanted from me was the experience, and there is no undergraduate degree that teaches you what a business looks like from the warehouse floor up.

I assumed I would be overwhelmed once I started, but from the first day of teaching I left every day with a smile on my face, excited to learn from some of the most interesting tutors and people I have ever met. I always felt pushed, but never past what I could carry, and I was carrying a fair bit, working a part-time role a couple of evenings a week, being a parent, and helping with due diligence on the sale of a company at the same time.

As someone who entered the programme already operating at a very senior level in your organisation, what would you say to other experienced executives who may be questioning whether an MBA is still worth it at their stage of their career, and what value have you personally gained from the Leeds MBA?

I joined the MBA at the point where I realised I had reached the ceiling of what my role could give me. My choice was to look for something elsewhere or to improve myself. Luckily, I chose to improve myself. I have always pushed myself on self-improvement, through diet, exercise and mentally, so for a competitive person this was the logical next step.

If you are senior and wondering whether it is still worth it, here is the part I would not have predicted: the value is not only in the teaching, it is in who is sitting next to you. You will come out of it with a friend who can sort your full tech stack at mates' rates, someone who can critique your sales pitch from experience because they have entered that market themselves, and someone who can help you construct your next LLM. Those are contacts you will lean on when you move into your next role, and you do not get them from another online course.

What I gained personally was the language and the structure for things I had been doing on instinct for years. When you come up through a business rather than into it, you make good calls without always being able to explain why they are good calls. Being able to explain why, with a framework behind it and numbers underneath it, is the difference between being the person who fixes things and being the person who is trusted to decide them.

I don't know what other cohorts will get, but we were such a diverse bunch that I feel lucky to call them friends now.

Before starting the MBA, what were you expecting from the experience, and in what ways has it been different from, or better than, what you anticipated?

I expected to expand my mindset and to find out what I had and had not done correctly across my career. It turned out to be much more than that. The MBA gave me confidence I did not know I had, and made me even more competitive against my past self than I thought was possible.

I remember sitting in my first accounting lecture on a Monday morning feeling like a fraud and thoroughly overwhelmed. Over the course of that first semester I began to feel like an equal with my peers, because the MBA isn't just about your education history, it is also about what experience you can bring and share with people, whether that is through a conversation over coffee or the papers you write.

Getting back into writing full essays was daunting at first, but I would take essays and the experience of working with groups and real companies over the dissertation some other courses ask for. You learn more from a client who disagrees with your recommendation than from another 10,000 words on your own.

The other thing I had not anticipated was how much access you get to facilities in and around the university. I genuinely wish there had been more hours in the day to go and try everything. The course went by far too quickly.

One of the strengths of the Leeds MBA is the diversity of the cohort. What impact has building friendships and working alongside professionals from different countries, industries and backgrounds had on your personal and professional development?

It has been genuinely interesting being one of the more senior members of the cohort. I am nearly 40 and I believe our youngest was mid-20s and the eldest in their 50s. The work experience some people had gained over such a short time was incredible. Where they had a narrow focus and a clear end goal, I came with a breadth of experience from every level of a business. We could work alongside each other, learn from each other, and really get to know each other.

That is especially true in group work. You will spend late nights in the library chatting and working through problems with someone from Saudi Arabia. The next day you might be the one keeping the peace when a disagreement in your group boils over. Then you will go for lunch at the cutest café with your Chinese and Japanese friends.

When you are lucky, you get everyone together at once, celebrating and learning from each other. Those are the most special moments in the MBA, where you gel with people from all over the world you would never otherwise have had the chance to meet.