The 80 Minute MBA: Everything You'll Never Learn at Business School [Paperback]

A tricky book to review really. Some sections were very interesting, referenced good source material and stuck to the point. Other sections were below par and that's why I have reduced my score to 3/5. Leadership was a particularly frustrating read, with the authors wanting to spend time rubbishing leadership books and telling me what leadership wasn't. For a "do this in 80 minutes" book, I would have expected there to be less waffle and more practical, to-point advice.

First, this is a very readable book without any waffle or padding - I read it through on the first evening I received it. But chapters are variable in their usefulness. The chapter on sustainability spends far too long setting out the issues and not enough on the way forward with practical solutions. The chapter on finance/accountancy is so simplistic, wasting much space on simply reinforcing the debit/credit structure of a balance sheet, as to be of no great use. The chapters on leadership, teamwork and marketing are, however, extremly thought provoking - with a neat section at the end with references in that allows you to follow up your interest in any chapter. There are also some typos and one completely wrong graph axis.

Overall, for a cheap, short paperback it's OK - but tightening up the focus of a couple of chapters could make it very good.

I picked this book up in Hong Kong airport as I had been advised by a senior colleague to read something like '7 day MBA'. Well when I saw an 80 minute version, I thought even better.... I am afraid, by the time I landed in Bangkok a few hours later, I was sorely disappointed and felt cheated by the title and synopsis on the back cover. I have not got an MBA and this is the first book I read on the subject, but this is not what I was expecting. My suspicion is that the author's intention is to write an 80 minute essay to try to influence (from a left of center perspective) people who go on to do MBAs. Giving the authors the benefit of the doubt,that they genuinely want to approach this subject from an alternative perspective and not just pontificate to young businessmen,I still felt disappointed by the content.

The first chapter was about sustainability... basically an essay on the impact of global warming. Who is not familiar with the arguments about Global warming? Why restate them in such a shoddy fashion here? I would have accepted a short introduction and then a discussion of implementing sustainable ideas and some interesting practical ideas for achieving this... instead it wastes time regurgitating well known arguments that this is taking place and that the impact will be catastrophic. It referenced Thomas Friedman's "hot, flat and crowded", but lacks any of the original thinking on the subject conveyed in that book.... the data in this chapter was laughable... it references a graph that spans 2000 years, but the dates on the axis are 1850- 2000... given that it is the only graph in the chapter, I found this an appalling error/ waste of space.

at least the following chapters deal with topics that I had expected to encounter. As it is a short book I accept that it was always going to be light on detail. The economics and accounting covered is extremely basic.. e.g. a demand and supply curve are shown and explained...
the marketing information was perhaps the most interesting for me, as I know absolutely nothing on the subject.
I agreed with many of the ideas outlined in other chapters(I could sum it up as advocating a result focused way of working rather than counting hours, etc.), but again this read more like a biased op-ed for these ideas not a balanced discussion like I have with my colleagues when we discuss the pros and cons of home office, etc.

on the plus side the book was highly readable and once I got over the feeling of been hoodwinked, it was good company for my flight to Bangkok. The general resources section at the end introduced me to a lot of helpful websites, which perhaps made the book worthwhile.