What Business Schools Don't Teach - critical summary review

Insight #1: Principle-Driven Management

In recent years, the search for purpose in business management has grown enormously. Professionals no longer expect just a workplace with good salaries and benefits — they also want to be somewhere that holds meaning in their lives.

The companies that have paid closest attention to this have dedicated themselves to making their purpose clear, thereby avoiding misguided hires.

In a world undergoing a transformation without parallel in recent history, with constant technological revolution, everything moves faster in the workplace as well. Issues need to be resolved quickly, a factor that has brought greater instability to positions across all sectors.

How many companies have you seen appear and disappear overnight? The old value of staying at the same company for decades, aiming for retirement, no longer holds the same weight. Something more is being sought.

And whoever fails to understand how fundamental a company's principles are to its survival will be left behind.

Insight #2: The Art of Asking Transformative Questions

Transformative questions have been valued for a long time. From the philosopher Socrates to Albert Einstein, many wise figures have demonstrated the importance of asking questions. There is no such thing as a silly question — only a gap in knowledge waiting to be filled through inquiry. And it is from that inquiry that the great revolutions in society emerge.

The entire doctrine of Socrates, for example, is based on constant questioning of the status quo in Ancient Greece. In every case, the greatest inventions in human history only came about because someone had the insight to ask why something had been functioning in a single way for so long.

Do not be ashamed to ask questions, because by refining your doubts, you will arrive at the questions that will transform your environment, the market, and even the lives of everyone who works with you.

Insight #3: Creating Wealth Through Complicity

You have heard countless times that we live in an era of intense change. As repetitive as it may sound, it is necessary to keep this fact in mind in order to understand that thinking about business in the twenty-first century does not follow the same logic as thinking about business in the twentieth.

The impacts of new technologies have not only reached ordinary people but also the way companies deal with their employees. For this reason, it is only possible to create wealth if there is complicity among everyone involved in the process.

If you still believe there should be a distance between leaders and team members, you are mistaken. A horizontal relationship is the best way to achieve positive results in this increasingly hyperconnected world.

Anyone who still thinks in terms of vertical leadership is already behind the times.

Insight #4: Managing the Ego and Other Agreements

It is natural for us to take more interest in success stories while dismissing or ignoring those who failed along the way.

This goes back to childhood, when popular fables only celebrate the winners and a happy ending is the default at the close of every story.

This culture of celebrating only success was carried into the world of work. In the corporate environment, extreme competitiveness causes the craving for success to strengthen ego-driven behaviors. This is the first step, and the most common one, toward losing the loyalty of an entire team.

If you have a team where ego is placed on a pedestal, you will have internal disputes being prioritized over collective results. Help your team understand that even in defeats there is much to learn, because failures leave powerful lessons for the next tasks and battles ahead.

Insight #5: The Rise of Strategic Alliances

Alliances are fundamental for a company to achieve more impressive results. You should never reject the contacts and projects of other companies out of hand, without studying them in proper depth and analyzing the potential advantages for your organization.

By definition, a business partnership is the union of parties that, together, can build something greater than when they are apart. There is nothing mystical about this.

It is pure pragmatism. Do not leave productive alliances behind in your field of operation.

Insight #6: Relationships as a Source of Power

You have certainly heard of networking as an important tool for achieving more notable results, right?

This corporate term is a tool widely used when seeking positions in the job market. What few people know is that its role extends far beyond that. It is responsible for permanent transformations in many companies.

The economy is increasingly interconnected. We can find out what happened on a stock exchange on the other side of the world, and those fluctuations have a direct impact on our available resources for consumption and sales.

With technology omnipresent and virtual relationships directly interfering with daily life, we are all very close to one another, even if only through a tap on a phone screen.

Hence the growing importance of cultivating good interpersonal relationships. Value your contacts and never underestimate them. Sooner or later, they may prove fundamental to your individual or organizational growth. The image you build over the years will be your only raw material.

Insight #7: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results

Not everyone has the talent of Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. It is a small group that reaches a level of excellence in their fields.

If you dream of a team composed only of exceptional professionals, you will make a major mistake.

The reality seen by companies of all sizes is that ordinary people achieve extraordinary results thanks to the right encouragement from their leaders at the right moment. They give their best and sometimes even surpass it.

It is impossible to have only the top performers in every area working with you. Seek to value employees whose abilities may not exceed the average and make them feel like members of the best team possible.

Insight #8: To Lead Is to Dream — with an Extra Screw

Trees do not grow up to the sky. They have a limit.

The same applies to the success cycle of companies and their employees. No one is capable of growing indefinitely. Defeats and limitations will come at some point along the journey.

For this reason, true leadership is indeed visionary, but with the understanding that a trajectory of success in any field will not be marked only by victories.

The most successful professionals you know have gone through setbacks, some for having reached the top and having nowhere else to go. Having that extra screw means never losing touch with the ground, even while you are flying.

Insight #9: Service-Oriented Management

Service-Oriented Management is used to put excellence in customer service into practice, in each and every area.

You have certainly encountered telemarketing services, after-sales departments, or even service cancellation lines, and noticed that the advertisements declaring a company to be respectful of its customers were nothing but empty talk.

Service-Oriented Management moves away from the half-truths taught in business schools and perpetuated by the corporate world. Respecting customers is fundamental for a company's image to be well-regarded and to avoid public complaints on digital platforms, ombudsman channels, and other forms of communication.

Service-Oriented Management does not allow problems to remain unsolved. If it is necessary to escalate to the highest level of the company so the customer is not left stranded, then so be it. The focus is on serving the customer respectfully — actually serving them, not merely targeting their wallet.

For those who adopt Service-Oriented Management, the sale is not the only thing that matters.

Insight #10: What Does Not Change When Everything Changes

We close by speaking, once again, about change. No one questions that changes have been happening for some time, nor is anyone willing to predict when everything will stop changing in the corporate world — if that is even possible.

Company leaders find themselves overwhelmed by the current pace of change and tend to overvalue new business possibilities. They try to always be ahead of the curve, launching new trends, products, and services, even when doing so is unnecessary.

But the essence of the business world does not change. It is the essence of life in society, the moment when we turn to companies to acquire products and services that improve our lives or provide us comfort.

Keeping up with the changes of our time is very different from pursuing something beyond the essence of life, which is an unchanging value. Who you are and who your company is at its core cannot be altered by any revolution.

Final Notes

Whoever has never had doubts while running their business should cast the first stone. José Salibi Neto and Sandro Magaldi address the doubts that leading schools do not bother to explain.

Through ten simple insights, the authors help entrepreneurs see themselves as important agents in the labor market and within their own companies.

Without relying on difficult explanations, the accessible language for all readers is the secret that makes What Business Schools Don't Teach: Insights from the Real World of Management Gladiators essential reading for anyone who is paying attention and does not want to fall behind in this highly competitive world.

12min Tip

Want a complement to your learning? Read the microbook Never Split the Difference and discover tips from a former FBI agent whose potential failures in negotiations would have brought consequences far greater than financial.