Stanley Bing - The Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of Business Arts

To Dick and Jane and Burt and Bill and Peter and Mel and of course Les.

Thanks for the memories.

A man may say full sooth in game and play.

Geoffrey Chaucer, 1390

Contents

The Curriculum

Preface

T his core curriculum and extensive elective courses are based not on ivory tower musings but on actual workplace experience augmented by as much research as seems necessary to back it up. The course is comprehensive but will certainly not take anywhere near the two years and up to $250,000 involved in those offered by well-established, time-consuming and tedious ivy-covered institutions stocked with professors who would be eaten for lunch by most serious business executives.

The course is designed for those who want to play by a different game plan than those who go from A to B and are content to stop at C. You will not be stopping at C. You will go all the way to Z and even beyond, if youve got the will and nerveand arent too sentimental. Its business, after all. Its not personal.

Supporting our conclusions will be the trove of research and speculation made available by the National Association for Serious Studies, a research organization and think tank established by this author.

A Note on the National Association for Serious Studies

T he National Association for Serious Studies is a national organization dedicated to a number of serious studies. It was conceived at the beginning of the century to establish credibility for the conclusions reached by the faculty of the Association on a variety of subjects, and as such is in essence no different than any other institution now providing intellectual weight to a variety of concerns of different philosophical, political, or commercial stripe. All conclusions and associated graphics are based on serious research and extensive anecdotal and direct observation by senior members of the Association, who, as is common in many research enterprises, have based their findings on what they discovered once they knew what they wanted to find.

The work of the National Association is overseen by its senior management, which is guided by a board of directors, each of whom is highly distinguished in his or her chosen field. Unlike other boards, however, board members of the National Association for Serious Studies are not compensated, except perhaps at the occasional social function at which somebody else picks up the check.

All data, analysis, conjecture, and graphical interpretations offered in this Curriculum by the National Association for Serious Studies are proprietary, and adhere to the highest standards of Internet journalism.

CURRICULUM OVERVIEW:
The Road to Power

T his book is divided into four major sections:

The Core Curriculum

The Advanced Curriculum

Tutorials and Electives

Glossary of Key Vocabulary

It is structured like a solar system, with the red-hot, primal magma in the center and the cooler, more evolved planets revolving around it at a safe distance. Like this:

The inquiring student may have some questions at this point. Lets get to those now.

Q: Can I really skip the expense and aggravation of getting an MBA by studying this Curriculum instead?

A: Yes and no. If you want to inhabit the exciting world of finance, an MBA is a nice thing to have. It takes out vast portions of your brain and replaces them with a certain kind of thinking that is useful in business. And that kind of knowledge, as valuable as it is in the construction of mortgage-based security instruments and acquiring assets with debt, is useless in daily life. On the other hand, a traditional MBA does not provide you with a seminar on how to use an expense account as an effective strategic instrument, or how to bullshit your way through a difficult situation. That is because MBAs are generally taught by people who assume that business, particularly Big Business, is a serious occupation where grim, gray operatives ply their trade and the irreverent, irrational, or subversive need not apply. They are right, to a certain extent. But they are also profoundly wrong in a way that will slow them down and make them vulnerable to those who are operating in a more intuitive, hedonistic, and personality-driven way.

We must also consider the terrible cost in financial and human terms that the traditional MBA exacts on its recipients and those around them. People go into business school as recognizable human beings. Only some emerge intact. The rest come out bland, or gnarled, or super-smug, or reptilian, or in a kind of daze they only wake up from when its too late, usually around age forty-five.

Throughout this Curriculum, a high value will be placed on retaining the basic nugget of yourself, so you wont have to spend the rest of your adult life wandering in an emotional and intellectual wilderness of your own making.

Q: Do people ever really make it to the top without an MBA?

A: Excuse me? Heres a list of people who never got an MBA:

Steve Jobs, the Mozart of the twentieth century, cofounder of Apple and Pixar;

Walt Disney, builder of worlds, the Steve Jobs of his day;

Muriel Siebert, scrappy, tough, the first woman to be elected to the New York Stock Exchange, defied the glass ceiling virtually alone for decades;

Richard Branson, adventurer and billionaire founder of Virgin;

Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, started with nothing and ended up building a multibillion-dollar enterprise; the leading female entrepreneur in U.S. history;

Sergey Brin , billionaire cofounder of Google, now working on inventing an edible hamburger made entirely of bovine stem cells;

Larry Page, billionaire cofounder of Google who now runs the company;

Michael Dell , billionaire founder of Dell Computers, which at this writing is not doing all that well. But he is;

Oprah Winfrey , billionaire entrepreneur CEO of her own production company, Harpo (Oprah spelled backward) and cited by many as the most influential woman in the world;

Larry Ellison , mega-billionaire cofounder of Oracle software company, owner of the entire Hawaiian Island of Lanai and new proprietor of the Americas Cup, which he has turned from an international sporting event into a corporate celebration of himself;

S teve Wozniak, billionaire cofounder of Apple;

Mark Zuckerberg , deeply odd founder of Facebook, billionaire in a hoodie;

Sara Blakeley , founder of Spanx undergarments and the worlds youngest self-made female billionaire;

Ron Popeil , the genius behind the marketing of the pocket fisherman, the Ginzu knife, and so many other products that would never have occurred to you.

Did we mention Bill Gates? Founder of Microsoft? Hes on the list, too.

None of these people went to business school. Most (except for Winfrey and Blakeley) never graduated from college. Who else is on our list of MBA-free titans?