Stanton Champion

Andie was griping about her MBA reading, so I decided to share wisdom from my business school experience by putting together my…

Rules for MBA Reading

I would read:

* Anything that looked interesting

* Anything I would be tested on (The Goal, sadly)

* All magazine/newspaper articles (they’re like candy, and you can always say with a straight face that you did “some” of the reading for class)

* Anything recommended by a professor I liked or trusted

* All cases (the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew/Choose Your Own Adventure stories of business school)

* All survey material

* All material for the “core” curriculum (you need a good foundation)

* Anything that by reading the material, I would have a legitimate leg-up on everyone around me (pretty much all finance and strategy – plus it was interesting)

* Anything by Michael Porter (it’s like reading molasses, but you’re smarter when you’re done)

I didn’t read:

* Anything that required a PhD to understand. (If I couldn’t figure it out, most likely nobody else would either)

* Anything that would be explained verbatim the next day in class

* Anything that was blindingly obvious to an idiot

* Anything clearly written by idiots (all HR, managerial/leadership studies, and other pop psychology nonsense)

* Anything I could derive on my own for homework or at exam time (pretty much all of my cost accounting class)

* Almost anything “recommended” and not “required” (if the professor didn’t think it was important enough to require, then I usually didn’t think it was important enough to read)