Introduction
Welcome to The Every Day MBA. This book is a guide to applying world-class MBA principles and thinking at work.
Whether you have ambitions to do an MBA or already have one, in business and management those three letters certainly seem to exert quite a hold over the imagination. Every year, tens of thousands of managers around the world invest their time, energy and money to graduate with a master’s degree in business administration. No book can equal that achievement or capture everything that years of study contain. It can, however, highlight two things that graduates from top business schools have discovered:
- The most lasting benefit of an MBA is a change in your thinking.
- Informed self-awareness is the key to new behaviours, better decision making and continuing career growth.
Presumably managers already think, otherwise their actions would just be automatic. So what is so special about the change in thinking brought about by an MBA? One answer could be simply that MBA thinking accelerates promotion to the next level. True, but a more powerful idea is that the best MBAs are people educated to see a special relationship between thinking and action that can make a real difference to achievement at work, one’s career, and the impact of business on a changing world. So, using clear and concise language, this book will use the typical structure and experience of an MBA to challenge you to apply ideas and new ways of thinking about what you do.
Key points about this book
Each chapter covers a crucial area of management and leadership featured in MBA study. You will find overviews of concepts, key models, frameworks and theories, as well as real-world illustrations. You will be encouraged to practise the types of thinking developed in the top programmes around the world.
Three assumptions underpin The Every Day MBA and I want you to keep them in mind as you work through the book.
1 An MBA links practice and theory
Academic rigour mixed with practical, industry-specific knowledge of the kind that you develop simply by doing your job is a powerful equation. MBAs are good at combining these different kinds of knowledge. True, the more experience of the workplace you have, the more you can get from this book, but if you are at an early point in your career, you will find many ways to apply MBA thinking to the lessons that the first few years of management always bring.
2 An MBA challenges deep-set habits
What is required and rewarded early in a management career is not necessarily what is required or suitable at more senior levels. Success at entry and middle levels needs certain skills, but some of these habits can become barriers later in your career. Many of our habits are deep-set and are often taken for granted. They are difficult to spot and even harder to change or let go. An MBA is all about such personal development.
3 An MBA addresses what it really takes to become a senior manager or leader
Business is now a global phenomenon. In only the last 50 years the world has changed beyond recognition and no doubt it will be transformed again completely in the coming half century. Business schools are no better or worse at predicting the future than the rest of society, but they are great places to develop the critical and reflective thinking abilities required to work in uncertainty and change. It is not about what you learn, it is about knowing how you learn, how you think and how you act as a leader. With awareness and dedication, you can begin to prepare yourself for leadership roles now.
Structure of the book
The Every Day MBA is organised in four parts.
Part 1 (Chapters 1–2) is about management, MBAs and you, and how to apply this book. Like many at the start of an actual MBA you may be tempted to skip the first section and jump to the ‘real stuff’ in Part 2. Try to resist this because self-awareness and good preparation are key to learning. Before you start to read about the various parts of management practice, you need to invest some time becoming aware of yourself and your experience. Personal development is knowing how to reflect on practice so that you can see immediate results as well as preparing for the future.
Part 2 (Chapters 3–5) is about tactical thinking in management. We examine the core subject areas of the first phase of an MBA, highlighting commonly used models and insightful theories. Each part links to one of the types of thinking used by an MBA, and you will be able to follow suggestions to apply these to your management practice.
Part 3 (Chapters 6–9) moves on to strategic thinking and concerns the internal and external environment of organisations. This part of the MBA brings to the fore the idea of managing relationships, including the ones an organisation has with its customers and its competitors, as well as the complex task of understanding the rapidly changing nature of international business.
Part 4 (Chapters 10–12) looks at critical thinking in leadership and management. This might be the most challenging part of the book because it deals with visionary thinking in management. By visionary I mean the special kind of future-focused pattern recognition that flows from tactical and strategic thinking. Personal development means stretching your horizons and testing your assumptions as a manager, so the final chapter offers some advice for self-awareness and meeting the challenges of management and career.
Look out for plenty of suggestions for activities for reflective practice throughout the book. Again, you may be tempted to skip these, but they are essential because such tasks get you exploring what you and others do in your organisation. They may well challenge some of your core assumptions. In addition, at the end of each chapter there are suggestions for further reading and extra questions that will help your personal development.
A glossary containing management and MBA thinking concepts appears at the end. In the text, glossary entries are bold italics when they first appear.