The New MBA Playbook

Tkaczyk offers a comprehensive guide to navigating the evolving intricacies of the modern business landscape.

Drawing on his long experience as a corporate educator, the author presents a wide array of granularly detailed information about all aspects of the business world, from communication to strategizing to design innovation to product management and beyond. Each of the book’s chapters comes with extensive source-citations, and they are broken into many subsections: These include “sneak peeks” that provide bullet-pointed previews of the chapters’ contents; “pause ‘n’ reflect” moments to vary the pacing; numbered units to further break down information (“Practical ‘choice architecture,’ which refers to designing user-friendly environments, can effectively nudge individuals toward the best decision without limiting their freedom to choose”); general discussion points; identifications of key elements; “journal entry” spaces for answering prompt questions; and so on. Tkaczyk peppers his various discussions with questions for his readers—these can range from asking what readers would do in a specific circumstance to far broader inquiries into philosophical matters (“What do we genuinely care about?” the author asks. “Do we assume that all human systems are inclined toward the highest aspirations of humankind?”) The text is deeply grounded in executive theories of all kinds (the “deep dive” reference listings are invaluable), with regular reminders to readers about the dynamic nature of the modern, internationally connected business world. These reminders frequently take the form of questions: “Chinese companies are reinventing management,” Tkaczyk writes. “What can Western companies learn from innovative Chinese companies when doing business with the new China?”

The most remarkable feature of the book is the enormous amount of highly detailed data Tkaczyk manages to cram into 300 pages. He’s helped in this by the book’s design: The chapters contain almost no long-form narrative content—instead, the author lays out a fragmented, bullet-pointed, typographically varied landscape full of margin-symbols, bold type, and numbered lines in place of paragraphs. Of course, all the format-fiddling in the world wouldn’t matter if the book weren’t also engagingly written; Tkaczyk employs a very clear and direct prose style that’s both highly readable and very specific. He has a knack for stating blunt truths without scorn or blame, as when he mentions the demands of critical strategizing: “Most people lack the proper educational foundation for it,” he points out, “and organizations don’t typically provide the necessary training either.” The author’s fondness for management guru Henry Mintzberg hits a sour note with his quote of Mintzberg’s grandiose and very questionable assertion that “No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager,” and some of Tkaczyk’s own proclamations may also raise eyebrows: “In today’s knowledge-creative economy,” the author writes, “enterprises of all sizes, in all industries, are under growing pressure to uphold social and ethical standards from the public, investors, and the government.” (Considering the “social and ethical standards” displayed by some of those institutions, readers may wonder what planet he occupies.) Still, Tkaczyk’s focus is refreshingly centered on people as well as profits—as he reiterates at many points, in his own field of consulting, an assignment is only successful if it leaves the client in a better place; not necessarily only financially, but also creatively…and, yes, even ethically.

A remarkably all-inclusive one-stop guide to corporate citizenship.