Richard Reeves [Richard Reeves and John Knell] - 80 Minute MBA

Richard Reeves is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. He also teaches at Georgetown University. Before moving to the United States in 2012, he worked as Director of Strategy to the UKs Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. Richards previous roles include Director of Demos, the London-based political think tank; Editor-at-large and columnist for Management Today; Society Editor of the Observer; Economics Correspondent of the Guardian; and Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

John Knell is one of the UKs leading thinkers on the changing face of work and organizations, and as a strategy consultant works widely across the private, public and third sectors. Over the last ten years he has built an international reputation as a cultural policy analyst, working with governments, funders, cities and major cultural institutions around the world. He has also been developing the Culture Counts platform (www.culturecounts.cc) to support the use of the quality metrics he has helped co-produce with the cultural sector in Australia and the United Kingdom. He was previously Director of Research and Advocacy at The Work Foundation, where he played a key role in transforming the organization into an authority on work issues. He has authored numerous reports on work, organizational change and public policy.

www.nicholasbrealey.com
www.the80MinuteMBA.com

This new edition first published in 2017 by Nicholas Brealey Publishing

An imprint of John Murray Press

An Hachette UK Company

First published in 2009 by Headline Publishing Group

Copyright Richard Reeves and John Knell 2009, 2017

The right of Richard Reeves and John Knell to be identified as the Authors of the Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to reproducing copyright material. The authors and publisher will be glad to rectify and omissions at the earliest opportunity.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-473-67353-3

Ebook ISBN UK 978-0-755-36491-6

Ebook ISBN US 978-1-473-67870-5

This book is dedicated to all those who refuse to see business education as an oxymoron.

Wed like to thank the man who helped us put The 80 Minute MBA into the market, Brendan Barnes from the London Business Forum. The numerous clients with whom we have worked, and from whom we have learned so much. Our agent, Toby Mundy. And last but not least, Holly Bennion from John Murray Press, who has provided the perfect balance of what policy wonks call help and hassle in order to produce this new edition.

CONTENTS

(Quicker is better)

Youre busy, we know. Too busy to read many of the thousands of business books published each year. Perhaps too busy to attend very many professional development courses. And certainly too pressed to take a year or two out to do an MBA course. You may in any case be sceptical of how much you can really learn from the gurus, professors and corporate titans who line up to proffer their advice.

Were with you. Business courses and books can, of course, be enlightening and inspiring. But more often they are a mixture of the blindingly obvious and wildly utopian. In the years weve been researching and advising on organizational issues, weve realized the value of simply cutting to the chase. No throat-clearing, winding anecdotes or lengthy case studies: just the key insights and killer facts.

This book contains the distillate of an MBA course. Just as the creators of the Reduced Shakespeare Company brought the works of the Bard to the stage in shortened format, so we have attempted to bring the best of business thinking into a single, slim volume, drawing on a presentation of the same name which we have been delivering over the last ten years. The 80 Minute MBA should do what it says on the tin. So if you read slightly quicker than the average person (and we know you do) this book should only take an hour and twenty minutes to read. Like all self-respecting MBA courses, ours has a motto: citius est melius quicker is better.

Weve had a good time synthesizing the material remembering Nol Coward reckoned that work was more fun than fun and hope that comes across in what follows. But we are deadly serious about the potential of organizations and their leaders to create better work, more economic value and stronger human relationships. We can be sceptical, but, we hope, never cynical. An irreducible core of optimism runs through our work. Business life can be should be good.

But it is also clear that we are writing against dark skies. The 2008 global financial crisis continues to cast a long shadow. Businesses and governments alike have seen their reputations battered. Public trust in the major institutions of government, business, media and NGOs has hit rock bottom around the globe. The credibility of CEOs dropped to an all-time low of 37% in a recent study, and is plummeting in every country studied. Business leaders are now only 8% above political leaders (29%) in terms of public trust. For those in or seeking leadership positions in business life, the scale of the challenge is clear.

You dont have to be an Eeyore to see the size of the deficits confronting us. Our compressed MBA is constructed in clear sight of a broken planet and a broken financial system. But we are optimists nonetheless. Positive change comes not from blind faith, but through analysis and action. Our aim is to inspire you to be both steely-eyed about the challenges we all face, and excited about how your personal and organizational contribution can matter more than ever. There is much you can do. And there is no end to the fun and fulfilment that can be had in creating great organizations that can enrich peoples lives through the quality of the work they offer and the goods and services they craft.

The 80 Minute MBA, then, is not only about the skills and expertise you need to lead and run an organization effectively, but also about the ethics, values and motivations that should be a North Star for anyone seeking to deliver positive change.