I’m much more intuitive and insightful in an emotional sense as a result. But it was the MBA which gave me the tools to do the job.”His business dealings have left him amazed at how many senior managers in major companies have no awareness of the latest business thinking “They might not have read a business book for 10 years. They might be a marketing man with no real idea how accounts work. What an MBA does is give you an insight into all these areas and see how they are put together.”His ambitions for the Association of MBAs include wanting to make membership a real benefit for holders and to raise its profile. “If those with MBAs are truly characters at the forefront of business thinking, then an association of those characters should be influential. What I would like to do is to start working more closely with the business leaders we do have, so that we can do more than just be a talking shop.

We need to put on large functions that are recognised forums for business discussions, to be far more vocal in promoting higher business education, and to be involved in bringing together and coordinating with other business organisations.”All of which, he says, is not so very different from what he did as a fighter pilot, which was to “think clever, be flexible and solve problems in circumstances which minimise the risk to yourself and maximise the effect of what you are trying to do.”. Then I was speaking on the corporate stage and because of what I was saying, lots of people came up to me with their own emotional stories, and were very open with their thoughts and experience. First of all my Gulf War experience introduced me to a whole load of emotions and reflections I’d never had. “What you learn as a prisoner of war is that you have to forgive yourself the failures of the past because none of us is perfect, and you have to accept you are in the present.

You can have a vision for yourself in the future, but you mustn’t bring hope inside yourself because that makes you soft and vulnerable, and you will die.”One of his aims in taking an MBA was to gain “a greater awareness of how things worked” and, having got exactly what he was looking for, is now critical of MBA-bashers, such as the American academic Henry Mintzberg, who say that management isn’t a toolkit to be taught, but all about experience with people.”I mean, look at me. On capture I had 15 soldiers with Kalashnikov machine guns – and these fire 30 bullets every half a second – starting to shoot at me from about 100 yards away, ending up 20 yards away. Bullets were bouncing four or five inches from my head, kicking sand over my back When I was captured I thought I was going to be raped… So, no, I’m not worried about a report saying someone once wanted to kill me.”But he is noticeably more thoughtful about life, and his own place in it, than most ambitious 42-year-olds in the throes of their career, prone to musing on things such as why the world is keener to reward accountants than artists, and the perverse nature of celebrity “I feel I’ve failed I failed to drop my bombs. And did I get elected chairman because of my skills compared to everyone else? Of course not.”But despite being “not much of a one for committees” he clearly intends to be more than just a media-savvy figurehead. “I hope I can help take the Association from where it is now to a better position in the future. I hope I can provide the energy to allow others to feel sufficiently motivated to feel they can do things without restriction.” As someone who feels able to “ask the stupid questions” and get everyone back to first principles, he probably can.So how did this former bomber pilot end up in the rather less adrenalin-fuelled world of management education?Clearly his war experience was life-changing, although he has never had nightmares or flashbacks, and the report which came out of Iraq earlier this year – that Qusay Hussein had wanted him killed when he was in captivity – leaves him unmoved “I always thought I was going to die anyway I was shot down by guns and missiles Fifty feet above the ground, I ejected.

And he is not ashamed to mention the word “marketing” in legal circles. “There is a sense in which some lawyers see marketing and related services as a cost that takes away from profits, rather than something critical to the health of the business. As an MBA graduate with general management experience, I know this isn’t true.”Matrix Chambers, like many of its competitors, is a substantial business with over 20 support staff and 47 practising barristers on its books The annual turnover last year was £9.2m. “There are so many issues, from health and safety to managing computer systems and even developing corporate identity for the chambers.

I think of an MBA as being good professional training for a job like this.” As chief executive, he is looking at ways of developing management programmes for some of the most senior people within the business, perhaps adapting some of the modules from MBA courses. Management, like it or not, is on the agenda for barristers and clerks alike “This is the way forward Rumpole of the Bailey is on the way out.”. For most MBAs, graduation marks the start of a job search that will make all those months of hard work and mounting debt worthwhile. According to one estimate, though, you are unlikely to find your dream job simply through an advert because at least 80 per cent of new positions are the result of networking. In the higher levels of achievement, which most people in the Association obviously are, I’m very average I was gobsmacked when they asked me on the board. We look hard at the quality of students; we don’t want just any old business experience. We’re aiming for experience in managing people, and a budget, a sense of what they’ve achieved and the capacity to move on to greater things.”Professor Andrew Lock, Dean of Leeds University Business School.