Book review: The Real-Life MBA by Jack and Suzy Welch

The Real-Life MBA By Jack and Suzy Welch
PAGES: 256
PRICE: Rs 1,385
HarperBusiness

There was a time when MBA schools were mushrooming all over India as the next big thing in education to fetch that elusive six figure salary and a well heeled job. Things have come a long way from there, but still doing a full-time or a part-time MBA, or even an executive management programme is very alluring to most professionals. It's in this context that the book becomes very relevant and timely.

I found doing my MBA - after a few concrete years of work life in the corporate sector - was insightful, practical and particularly rewarding. In this book, authors Jack and Suzy Welch, who have synthesised their collective experiences of teaching, coaching and mentoring managers globally for over 30 years, have gone to great lengths in elucidating the real-life principles and practices of what doing business and being in business means and how that's what doing an MBA is all about. In a very easy, lucid style, they start with the favourite analogy of mine that everything is a sport and a game, and it's always about the "GAME" - strategising, analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the opponents, and tactically placing your talent and teams to play to win, while following the rules. It's easier said than done. And Jack and Suzy tell you just how.

From there on to leadership and building winning teams... Building high performing teams, sustaining and scaling them up is as much of an art as science. Building a great team surely starts with hiring right and how carefully the right culture needs to be proactively built. It's also interesting to see how the book unambiguously puts its weight behind building a positive culture and teams having a positive outlook all the time, no matter the various business challenges that an organisation or teams face from time to time. The need to cull negativity and negative personalities very early is critical to building a promising culture for a "wow" team that creates and sustains high performance, and has fun while doing that. The concept of enjoying all this as a fun game, is so refreshing and Jack and Suzy make it amply clear in the book about the need to be sporting in one's life journey.

The final part of the book is absolutely the game changer - Life being all about "You". Life being on two superhighways and identifying one's AoD (Area of Destiny) and trying to be in that zone all the time is simply brilliant. It's so true that most people struggle to intersect these two superhighways of capability and happiness, and live a life of constant upheavals, frustrations, and resentment. It's so important, as Jack says, to reinvent and find that balance of life by making the right choices and facing up to the consequences. To find what one is really good at and to zero in on that is not easy, while it may be easier to identify what one enjoys doing. And to find an opportunity at the intersection of that both is even more difficult and trying. But there is absolutely no doubt that doing what you are good at and what you enjoy most is surely at the core of leading a happy, successful and satisfying life. It's only then that one's passion comes to the fore to drive excellence and add the necessary energy, zip and zest to life, and the ride on the highway becomes rather easy. The book provides an excellent narrative and some great examples of people who made some remarkable and outlier career shifts to be in their zone of destiny - "AoD"

Overall, the book is an excellent read, practical to the core, and offers enough to drive the reader into the AoD's on the superhighways of life.

The reviewer is Country Head (India), Kronos Incorporated