Personal MBA - A little jewel in a cluttered world of business education

For the longest time, "earning" a traditional MBA seemed to be the "Holy Grail" of the business world.  Get the much coveted MBA from a prestigious school and you've written your ticket to success.  However, I have had the long held belief that most MBA programs simply teach people to be good employees.  Real learning (the type that develops knowledge and realized value) occurs on your own time, on the job, through mentors, and through a continuous flow of reading and application.

So, today, I glanced at my feed from Seth's Blog and found a curious post on The New List.  What I found was a little jewel called the Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman.  I may be the last person to the party on Josh's manifesto (alternate view at ChangeThis), but I am sure glad I found it.  Inspired by Seth, Josh has passionately undertaken a mission to show people how they can develop business knowledge and work effectiveness by investing time and effort in a few of the leading business books today.  He has a great list of books -- many which I have read and are listed on my site, some which I need to get to continue my learning journey!

Comments

[Victor Howard]

Josh - I signed up for the PMBA members forum and look forward to the interaction....

Victor

[Josh Kaufman]

Victor,

Thanks for the kind words - I'm glad you find the PMBA useful. When you have a chance, stop by the PMBA Member forums (http://personalmba.com/members/) ... we have some great discussions planned in the coming weeks.

Josh

[Victor Howard]

Agreed. I believe there is much to learn from variety of books (i.e. history, biographical, biblical). I just picked up Einstein by Walter Isaacson and cannot wait for a few free moments to start reading it.

[Mark]

Not on the list, but in my opinion just as much a jewel to a business education is, The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin. There's more common business sense packed into that 30 page prelude to Poor Richard's Almanac then a whole library of strategic thinking manuals.

Having said that though, I just picked up Getting Things Done, which I highly recommend as one of those books which remind you once again of those common sense approaches to organization easily forgotten in a chaotic and unorganized world.