(2009-06-06) Godin Un Mba Program

Seth Godin gives progress notes on the un-MBA program he's been running. Every morning, each person came in prepared to push someone in the group to overcome the next hurdle. This is what growth looks like, and it was energizing to be part of. We didn't do this at all at when I was at Stanford. We spent a lot of time reading irrelevant case studies and even more time building complex financial models. The thing is, you can now hire someone to build a complex financial model for you for $60 an hour. And a week's worth of that is just about all the typical entrepreneur is going to need. The rest of the time, it's about shipping, motivating, leading, connecting, envisioning and engaging. So that's what we worked on. It amazes me that MBA students around the world aren't up in arms. How can schools justify taking $100,000 in cash and teaching exactly the wrong stuff?... Here's what I told the group, "Maybe the most important thing you'll learn in this program is that you don't need this program. There's not much I'm going to tell you that's not in my blog posts or books. What this program will do is give you the structure and support to encourage you to do what you already know. But you can do that by yourselves." I think that's true for the people who weren't able to be part of it as well.