THE 80 MINUTE MBA

THE 80 MINUTE MBA

Everything You’ll Never Learn At Business School

Richard Reeves

&

John Knell

Hachette Books 2009

Pp 159   Rs.195

This is the age of miniaturisation, of instant gratification. And no, it wasn’t instant coffee that started the ball rolling… for way back in 1050 AD we even had a system of instant worship in India: witness the arrangement for this in the Shiva temple in Ambarnath, near Mumbai. Information Technology came along and the small started getting more beautiful by the day – at least as long as one could see it. In all this rush towards the near-invisible it was inevitable that management (as huge as we would like to think it is) would also get encapsulated into its 80-minute variety. Perhaps the title is a throwback to the days of Jules Verne’s 80-day trip around the world with Messieurs Fogg and Passepartout though the adventures are hardly comparable!

The sub-title says “Everything You’ll Never Learn at Business School”. There may be a lurking issue of syntax in there somewhere but then we could let it go. Abridgements in any form do take liberties with basic structures anyway.

That having been said, Reeves and Knell have produced an interesting, engaging, even refreshing common-sense approach to management as a practice. No delving into esoteric theories, no sonorous case studies – a direct assault on the basics. A look at the chapter entitled Cash would indicate their basic, much-shared apathy towards Accountancy as a subject. Perhaps the longest explanation on any particular subject is devoted to deciphering what Credit and Debit stand for, and which side of the account book each would fall. Of course the entire book revolves around five basic elements that the authors have identified as the core of management. The first of these is Sustainability where the authors wax eloquent on the significance of going green and its relevance to the bottom line. This is followed by a section on Leadership. References are made to people ranging from Shelley’s Ozymandias to Darwin Smith’s “eccentric” tenure at Kimberly-Clark. Culture, Cash and Conversations are the three concluding chapters which cover employee relations, finance and marketing respectively.

The miniaturisation makes for novelty in approach, arousing a certain curiosity in the reader. It would serve fairly as a refresher, a no-nonsense pointer towards improvement in one’s attitude as a manager-leader. No more. No more than Charles Lamb could reproduce Shakespeare in prose. The book thus has a limited purpose – to arouse the practising, busy manager to new thoughts on his own performance. It is not intended to be, nor ever can be, a substitute for a full blown certificate course or degree in business administration – and in that sense, it is certainly not the knell for business schools anywhere.