What is "The Poor Man's MBA" All About?

This is officially the first blog post on thepoormansmba.com. At this point, you're probably wondering what this site is going to be about. I am too. Well, I've got a rough idea of what I want to write about but I guess I'll just see how it goes. Here are some subjects you can expect to see covered on this blog:

Advancing your career

Differences between good companies and great companies

Unique business insights

Management tips for time, priorities, and people

Work-Life balance

Looking at situations in unique ways

Current business trends

Applying to business school

Personal investing and financial decisions

And much more...

These days an undergraduate college degree is about the same as a high school degree was 30 years ago. And because of this, more and more people are flocking to the top business schools for an MBA and hoping that this will help them stand out from the crowd or give them the opportunity to pursue their dreams. I know because I'm one of them. But you can learn a lot on your own and immediately test what you've learned at your current job. This blog aims to share successful strategies for the workplace that anyone can use.

Some recurring themes you'll see in many blog posts will be the ideas outlined in the subtitle of the blog:

Consume information - read everything you can get your hands on; be a sponge for knowledge and learn from others

Look for connections - identifying connections between two seemingly unrelated things can be important for unlocking something brand new

Focus on fundamentals - success often comes from breaking things down into their most basic parts; good solutions don't need to be complicated

Think for yourself - don't bother copying what others are doing because you'll already be behind; have the strength to do your own thing

Going back to basics is always a good idea

I'm a big fan of solving tough problems by going back to the basics. It's a tried and true method of getting things done. Some people try to pass themselves off as insanely smart by the way they talk and the complexity of the solutions they come up with. But I remember a saying I learned in engineering school, "Good engineers solve big problems with complex solutions you could never understand. Great engineers apply such simple solutions that you can't believe you didn't figure them out yourself."

This is true and is part of the reason why the subtitle of this blog includes "Focus on Fundamentals." You can't go wrong if you go back to the most basic building blocks of a theory.

A recent article about Google's datacenters also points out the power of relying on fundamental concepts. This time trusting that basic heat transfer theory will break new ground in datacenter design -- which is essentially a big heat transfer problem.

What we did at Google is essentially throw out the book on how to build data centers, and went back to basic heat transfer theory, went back to basic electrical theory, and essentially threw away everything that wasn't strictly necessary in sort of a minimalist design. Essentially the integrated circuit industry concept is step and repeat.

So the next time you think you're in over your head, don't try to wow the boss with a complicated solution. Instead, wow him or her with a simple solution that leaves them wondering why they hadn't come up with it. You'll gain respect and have less chance of screwing up.