The Personal MBA discussion

I have skimmed most of this book and read a few sections of it, mostly the intro and the chapters on marketing and working with others. I've marked other chapters that I want to go back and read now. Still others will wait until later when they're more relevant to me.

I was expecting more detail than was presented, so I was a little disappointed (though I should have expected that from its length). I thnk it's a good overview for someone like me, but it leaves me wondering where to go next (other books on his list, presumably).

This is my review:

The book is a high-level overview of the topics covered by a typical MBA program. I'm coming to this book as someone with no business education and some on-the-job training in marketing. I was already familiar with the marketing information in this book, and I assume someone with a background in some of the other topics would find them similarly simplified.

Because it has such a high-level view, it's a great book to skim through and find intriguing concepts to learn more about. I wish there was a reading list for each chapter, rather than the list at the end, and that Kaufman had said what specifically each book on the list covered (granted, that's available on his website). That's my biggest beef with the book--I feel like it gives me a list of bold-faced keywords to google. It doesn't address any of them in enough depth to make me feel that I understand the concept.

That said, I'd recommend it to other business newbies like me--because it does provide a sense of how the concepts interrelate, and so is a good starting point for further self-education.

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What did the rest of you thnk of the book's depth? Were there any sections that you found particularly informative?

I think the point is not to be detailed but to introduce business ideas to you that you would then read in more depth about them in books from the reading list.

I do agree that this book has made me hunger for knowledge in a specific subject discussed and in many cases did not know where to find it. The reading list appears to have all of the knowledge, but he says himself that this is only 99 of the books he has read meaning there may still be 2,000 more books that actually influenced this book. I think this book is more of an introduction and in fact may not be worth reading.

As long as you understand the philosophy behind the book, is the book worth reading?

I absolutely think it's worth reading. It's a good starting point. I wish he'd been able to give every topic an extra page, though. Just a little bit more depth.

I think it also depends how many books from the list you've already read prior to reading this book. Often you can almost tell from which book he is gathering his ideas.

Having all that information summarized in one volume I find very useful. They are summarized and organized in a way that is easy to follow and understand. I rather view the PMBA book as a syntheses of the best business ideas.

That said, the PMBA book is not the only way to organize all the ideas. I'm sure if we read all the books in the reading list plus other books that we personally have found useful, we could come up with our own way of organizing those information. But how many of us are disciplined enough to summarize everything we've read and come up with a system to organize that information?

Also, being a business student myself, I can say that the focus of what is taught in this book and what is taught in school is very different, in my experience. Business school does not teach you how to start your own business. Instead they focus on how to be an executive in a large corporation - in other words, how to get a job.

The PMBA book lays the framework on how businesses work so that you can go about and create your own.

That's interesting. I'd have thought the chapter on working with others and those on systems (which I haven't read) would have applied more to people in organizations.