Matt McNeill, chief executive, Sign-Up.to
What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School
Mark McCormack
1986
Mark McCormack’s What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School is one of the first business books I ever read – and is still one of the most influential.
The book provides a fascinating insight into the way McCormack ran his incredibly successful business and provides much valuable inspiration (“If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t trying hard enough,” the author insists) and thought-provoking material.
The opening pages, contrasting the character of Richard Nixon and Doug Sanders, set the tone for a book filled with quality advice based on personal experience and principles. The author goes into great detail, which you can’t help but respect.
I certainly don’t agree with everything that he says – for example, McCormack argues that it’s good to keep employees ‘off balance’ and that you should keep your work and social life completely separate – but that’s part of the book’s appeal to me; it’s a genuine work based on real experience and justified opinion, one that is thought-provoking and inspiring, even if that inspiration is sometimes driven by the desire to prove that you can do things differently!