4 min read ⌚ 

Few months ago I heard Jack Welch in an interview saying that winning is just a result of the mission. This shouldn’t be our goal. Mission come first and leads us to success.

I felt in love instantly by this idea. So, when I found out about this book, I looked foreword to know more about his approach. So, take a look on some interesting ideas I’ve discovered in this book.

LEADERSHIP / REAL LIFE MBA

Winning is just a result of the mission

“The Real-Life MBA“ is more than a guide to succeed. This book is a great leadership guide that provides you with all the ingredients needed to define your goals and to take you to the winner position.

The information is much more valuable while it is the results of authors’ experiences over the past 10 years working closely with businesses of all sizes and in a large variety of industries around the world.

So, what Jack and Suzy Welch bring new by this book is the fresh, realistically and applicable lessons in order to build successful and powerful organizations, with teams strongly engaged in the mission.

Economy’s rules are changing so fast. It’s not enough to play the game. You have to rule the game. If you can’t keep up, you lose, become one with the background and are forgotten instantly.

Learning still represents the main prerogative of overcoming failures. Maybe theories are beautiful and make you believe in the perfect world, perfect idea, and perfect solution. But what stands between these theories and reality?

All the lessons that Jack and Suzy Welch have put in this book are built around 5 key-concepts:

#1 MISSION

So, let’s see how Jack and Suzy Welch describe mission.

From their points of view, mission is the leitmotif of any organization by defying its destination: where you’re going and why.

To get to the best destination you have to get the best mission which is built on three levels: aspirational, inspirational, and practical.

In order to get where you want, you definitely have to catch the right “train”. And what better transportation than behaviors do you know?

But, lucky you! ‘Cause you’ll never be alone in this journey as long as you know how to invite your employees to be a part of it. “Well-wrought missions let each and every employee know what’s in it for them.” Soon enough the sun will raise at the end of the tunnel and you’ll see the real beauty of a good mission: “It gets everyone focused and fired up.”

At the end of this journey you’ll be glad not only because you’ve personally meet the success, but most of all because you understood the process by aligning mission with the values.

#2 LEADERSHIP – “Embracing the kind of leadership that inspires performance and innovation.”

“Leadership” no longer has to be approached as a solitary concept. Try to associate it with two more powerful words: truth and trust.

After this brief exercise try to define the whole new concept: “truth-and-trust leadership”. If you think is still difficult to understand it, read the authors approaches from this book, related to this subject. Building a genuine leader is about truth and trust. “Truth-and-trust leadership is one of those things in life that are greater than the sum of their parts. Truth-and-trust leadership is a mentality and a methodology.”

And to get the real leadership, what you have to do is:

• maniacally crunching the data to drive performance;
• using fast, agile strategy-making;
• installing modern social architecture;
• worrying productively;

#3 GROWTH

Growth means a Mecca for each business dreamer. The way may seem to you being longer, but useful and straight when you do it right.

So, what brings growth to your business? Great leadership. Great teams. Great strategy. Great data crunching Great, refreshed compensation plans. All these lead to growth.

“Growth is so vital to making work meaningful and fun, you can’t let yourself believe that statis is the status quo.”

#4 TEAM – “Business is the ultimate team sport!”

You’ll find out in this book a generous part dedicated to this concept. You’ll learn how to build a “wow” team by using classical approaches as a main part of a smart strategy. After reading it, you may rethink about how hiring, motivating, developing, and retaining your best players should be done.

#5 MONEY – “There’s never enough money to fund growth the way you know it ‘has’ to be funded.”

It is no use to deny that money is the engine of every business. It might seem hypocritical to say something like this.

On the other hand, the real problem with growth isn’t the amount of dollars you make available for your business. This is more about how you strategically allocate them.

You’ll find in Real life MBA a great approach on this topic. I let you discover it on your own. Until then, I give you one more clue:

“Unleash creativity instead of dollars”

This book is about re – innovating yourself by facing the mirror of business reality. Embracing the real world as it is, with all its turbulence and sudden changes. Understanding what modern management means, going beyond theories and idealistic patterns and identifying pragmatic solutions.

And that’s because….

“When it comes to business, you can never stop learning.”

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Emir Zecovic

Emir is the Head of Marketing at 12min. In his spare time, he loves to meditate and play soccer.