Mark McCormack

The best lesson anyone can learn from business school is an awareness of what it can’t teach you – all the ins and outs of everyday business life.

Those ins and outs are largely a self-learning process, though the experience of someone like myself might make the learning shorter, easier, and a lot less painful.

‘street smarts’ – the ability to make active, positive use of your instincts, insights and perceptions.

results of street-smart thinking.

self-effacing comment

what they can’t teach you, which is how to read people and how to use that knowledge to get what you want.

Running a company is a constant process of breaking out of systems and challenging conditioned reflexes, of rubbing against the grain.

if Thomas Edison had gone to business school we would all be reading by larger candles.

Masters in business can sometimes block an ability to master experience.

real-life learning disability – a failure to read people properly or to size up situations and an uncanny knack for forming the wrong perceptions.