Want to learn the ideas in The Real-Life MBA better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of The Real-Life MBA by Jack Welch here.
Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.
Video Summaries of The Real-Life MBA
We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on The Real-Life MBA, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Jack Welch.
1-Page Summary of The Real-Life MBA
Introduction
Business is like a sport. You have to train hard, work with others, and prepare for the unpredictable. It’s also important to build an effective team, pay attention to your surroundings and employ tried-and-true strategies so that you can get better at what you do. To thrive in business, Jack Welch and Suzy Welch recommend: Charting your course Aligning your mission, behaviors and consequences Getting better through setbacks Hertz leaders used these strategies to solve tough problems and win big.
Aligning Your Mission, Behaviors, and Consequences
Athletes show up to practice every day and work hard. They do exercises that are exhausting and sometimes painful, but they know it’s worth the effort because they want to fulfill their mission of being the best at their sport.
Business and sports are similar in several ways. They both have their challenges, require teamwork, strategy, persistence and lots of surprises. If you can unite around a common vision like a sports team does then you can win together. However if your team loses sight of the mission it becomes a grind to work towards its fulfillment. You start to dread meetings that go on forever because they seem overwhelming and exhausting.
To be successful, you need to align your company’s mission, behaviors and consequences.
Missions are where you’re going and why you’re going there. A good mission is specific, but also inspiring. “Making the world a better place” isn’t specific enough to inspire people on an everyday basis, and “writing lines of code” isn’t inspirational at all. Finding a mission that inspires everyone in your organization can help motivate them to solve any problem they face.
Behaviors are how you and your team think, feel, communicate, and act to make the mission happen. Your behaviors should include connecting with others in a meaningful way, inspiring others with your actions and words, providing resources for employees to contribute to the mission, as well as clearly explaining what is expected from them.
Consequences are important, because they show that you’re serious about the company’s mission. They can also be used to reward people for doing good work and keep them motivated.
Alignment is easy in theory but difficult in practice. If you are a leader, you will need to do research on your organization’s key drivers and align missions, behaviors, and consequences to improve performance. Erik Fyrwald learned this when he became the CEO of Nalco (a water company) after it was purchased for $4 billion by his company.
Fyrwald spent his first 90 days as CEO traveling to different Nalco business units and customer sites to figure out how to best spark change in the company. He identified a water-usage quality-optimization system that was loved by customers, and he quickly realized that it was Nalco’s competitive advantage. He led an initiative to rewrite the company’s mission and align behaviors with consequences. The new mission statement focused on helping customers become more economically successful while protecting the environment—a far better goal than just working in the water industry. With a revamped mission, employees were excited about their jobs again, but Fyrwald also promoted behaviors such as measuring progress, identifying incremental growth targets, forging new relationships around the world (Kazakhstan, Angola), letting go of employees who didn’t align with those goals, and providing incentives for those who did. It’s never pleasant to dish out negative reinforcement, but without consequences that are tangible and relevant to every team member, it’s nearly impossible get everyone on board.
