Not a B-School: Progress Report

Grades are in and I’d say Not a B-School gets a flag. That’s okay… As Thomas Edison said, “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” We’ve only used-up two.

The lesson this time around is simple–if you place a link in an obvious place, people will click on it. However, if you don’t capture their attention and pull them in they’ll hit the back button almost as quickly.

We definitely got clicks on the Not a B-School syllabus. I cannot say with certainty that anyone used any of our material.

The problems are obvious

1. It’s more shit to read. It’s interesting shit (we’ve read it all) but it’s still more shit. We all have plenty to read.
2. It’s unidirectional (us to you) and non-collaborative (side to side and top to bottom).
3. It lacks big-picture context.

Am I getting warm, here…?

The solutions are not obvious

People get paid to find solutions, not to point out problems, because finding solutions is hard. We’re only at version 0.00003 and the deadline is nowhere in sight, so I’m not inclined to panic. Instead, I’m going to pick one problem and make some incremental improvement.

Why learn this stuff? Stated another way, who’s most likely to find this stuff useful? Better yet, who’s the ideal customer?

All good questions. This is elementary marketing, right?

Our ideal customer is someone who is stuck. And I don’t mean “stuck” as in, “I can’t figure out how to balance the company checkbook.” I mean “stuck” as in, “Oh shit, I’ve been running this company for 5 years and I can’t figure out how to grow bigger than three developers and me.” Or “stuck” as in, “We’ve got one product and we’re making $1.7M in annual revenue, but I can’t figure out what to do next.” Or “stuck” as in, “Here comes my so-called ‘manager’… What do I need to learn to unseat his dumb ass?”

I’m talking big, hairy, where-do-I-go-from-here stuck.

The audience, defined

If you’re cruising along and you’re happy with the state of your business (because you’re all in business, whether you realize it or not), then there’s nothing for you in Syllabus #1 right now except more shit to read. And that’s cool, because there are plenty of other problems to work on.

On the other hand, if you’re stuck or think you might get stuck or simply don’t see a well-defined path from where you are now to where you want to be in five years, then Syllabus #1 is a great place to turn. Nothing in Syllabus #1 will answer these questions for you, but they help you with the skills you need to find the answers yourself.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue working on version 0.00004.

- Bandit