My LinkedIn feed has been full of MiniMBA results posts recently. Lots of A grades. Lots of justified pride. It’s also reminded me of my own MiniMBA result from about five years ago.. an unspectacular Grade C. Not a near miss and not something to boast about. I messed it up.
Oddly, it’s not a bad memory. I really enjoyed the course and threw myself into it. It was a sharp refresher on marketing fundamentals and a welcome antidote to some of the woollier thinking that creeps into our profession. The exam, however, didn’t go my way.
When Mark Ritson released the results, he made a point of saying there was very little correlation between exam performance and being a good marketer. He went further, noting that some of the best marketers he knows were, in his words, ‘shithouse at exams.’ It was a genius thing to say.
Because the people who got A grades would enjoy the moment, update their profiles, and not even register that he’d said it. But those of us who did badly remembered that line forever.
Seeing all those results posts now makes me smile. I’m genuinely pleased for the high scorers. But I’m also quietly grateful for my unglamorous Grade C.. and for the reminder that great exam results are not always a good proxy for judgment, curiosity, and effectiveness in the real world.
In the end, my Grade C faded.. but Ritson’s line didn’t. That’s good storytelling.
Andrew Greenhalgh 