What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School

What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School Plot Summary

Introduction

Ever watched someone win a negotiation before they even sat down at the table? Or wondered why some executives seem to accomplish more in a day than others do in a week? In boardrooms and business deals across the world, there exists a subtle yet powerful force that formal education rarely addresses - street smarts. While MBA programs teach frameworks and theories, they can't bottle the intuitive business sense that separates the truly exceptional from the merely competent. The most successful business leaders possess an uncanny ability to read situations, influence perceptions, and seize opportunities others don't even see. They understand that business is fundamentally about people - their desires, fears, and motivations. Through decades of working with industry titans and sports legends, I've observed that this people-centered intelligence isn't taught in classrooms but learned through experience and careful observation. This book provides a rare glimpse into those unwritten rules of business success - how to truly understand what makes people tick, how to create lasting impressions that serve your goals, and how to recognize the perfect moment to make your move. These lessons will transform how you navigate every business interaction, whether you're negotiating a contract, building a company, or simply trying to get ahead in your career.

Chapter 1: The Power of Reading People: How Non-Verbal Cues Shape Business

In 1963, I found myself in Paris for the World Cup golf tournament where I had two chance encounters with Richard Nixon. The first occurred at the golf club when he stopped by my table to speak with Gary Player. The second happened just days later at the Tour d'Argent restaurant when Nixon approached to chat with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, with whom I was having dinner. What struck me wasn't what Nixon said, but how he said it. On both occasions, he used identical words - the exact same five or six sentences. It was as though he were talking to stick figures rather than real people, as if he had a standard paragraph memorized for every type of person he might encounter. Five sentences for sports personalities, another set for business leaders, yet another for religious figures. It felt rehearsed and impersonal. This experience contrasts sharply with another involving golfer Doug Sanders. When we first began representing Doug, many warned me against it. He had a reputation for running with a fast crowd, getting into scrapes, and being fond of gambling - a bit too "Vegas" for some people's comfort. They questioned why I trusted him. Shortly after Doug played a golf exhibition in Canada - an arrangement he had made independently - we received an envelope from him containing our commission in cash. He hadn't mentioned the exhibition to us, was paid directly, and could easily have kept the entire amount. Yet without prompting, he calculated our percentage and sent it immediately. What these incidents demonstrate is something fundamental about reading people in business: what individuals say and do in even the most casual situations can reveal volumes about their true character. Nixon's interactions suggested an insincerity that I remembered years later when he was forced to resign the presidency. Meanwhile, Doug Sanders' integrity was evident in his actions when no one was watching. In business, people often adopt different personas depending on who they're dealing with. They act one way with subordinates, another with their boss, and differently still with outsiders. But a person's true nature inevitably reveals itself. Understanding this reality gives you tremendous advantage - it allows you to hear what people are really saying versus what they're telling you, to grasp their genuine motivations, and to predict their future behavior with remarkable accuracy. The best business leaders possess this ability to see beneath surfaces. They know that every business situation ultimately comes down to people, and the more - and sooner - you understand the person you're dealing with, the more effective you'll be in every interaction. This isn't about manipulation; it's about clarity. When you truly see people for who they are, you can engage with them authentically and productively.

Chapter 2: Creating Lasting Impressions: Small Acts with Big Impact

In 1964, I was walking down a street in Seattle with Bob Hope and Arnold Palmer when a woman approached Hope and said, "Do you remember me? We met two years ago in Cincinnati." Hope was polite but clearly had no idea who she was. After she left, he turned to us and said, "Can you believe that? You meet ten thousand people a year and someone comes up to you two years later and expects you to remember her name." This small moment revealed something crucial about business impressions: they're built on countless minor interactions, not grand gestures. The way you greet people, your phone manner, how you phrase a letter - these seemingly insignificant details form the foundation of how others perceive you. And controlling these perceptions gives you remarkable influence over business outcomes. I once witnessed Ray Cave, the managing editor of Time magazine, create an instant positive impression with a simple phrase. When we reached a restaurant, Ray greeted the maître d' with "Good to see you again." The maître d' immediately perked up and led us to our table. After he disappeared, I mentioned to Ray that he had told me he'd never eaten there before. "I haven't," he replied. This small social courtesy had instantly changed how the maître d' perceived and treated us. Similarly, Patricia Ryan, managing editor of People magazine, once shared that when anticipating a challenging business lunch where she might not be taken seriously enough, she would order a Scotch and water. Though she rarely drank alcohol, simply ordering a Scotch instead of a Perrier created a subtle but effective "I-mean-business" impression. The most effective executives understand that impression management isn't about showmanship but subtlety. It's about controlling what others know about you while learning everything you can about them. When I know I'll be negotiating with someone, I first learn about their interests and priorities. If they're a golf enthusiast, I might arrange a round with a famous pro. If they're passionate about their children, I'll find ways to include their family in our interactions. These aren't calculated manipulations but thoughtful ways to build genuine connections. When David Foster was Chairman of Colgate and loved golf, I knew he would appreciate updates on tournament results before our meetings. When dealing with Japanese business partners, I recognized that what might seem like unnecessarily prolonged relationship-building was actually essential to establishing trust. Remember that the impression you create is what allows you to be less than perfect. If you consistently project competence, maturity, and fair-minded toughness, people will overlook occasional missteps. The true art of impression management is ensuring that your overall lasting impression is so favorable that momentary lapses are seen as out-of-character exceptions rather than revealing glimpses of your true self.

Chapter 3: The Edge of Timing: Seizing the Perfect Moment

Many years ago, I was negotiating with André Heiniger, the worldwide chairman of Rolex, trying to convince him to sponsor a new electronic scoreboard and timing system at Wimbledon. He felt it was a waste of money and equated sponsoring time clocks at sporting events with mass-market watchmakers like Seiko and Timex - not the luxury brand image Rolex cultivated. I knew my only chance of changing his mind was to get him there, which I finally managed during the Wimbledon fortnight of 1979. As we sat in the Royal Box, sipping tea and watching the match in progress, I could see him taking everything in: the antiquated elegance of Centre Court, the excitement of the match, the beauty and charm of this special place. When the match ended, Heiniger turned to me, made a slow sweeping gesture with his hand, and said, "This is Rolex." The timing had been perfect - experiencing Wimbledon's prestige firsthand made him see the alignment with Rolex's brand in a way no presentation ever could. Timing in business is rarely about luck but about recognizing the ripeness of a moment. Several years ago, our team was in Chicago meeting with McDonald's about renewing their commitment to the World Triathlon Championship, which we produced and televised for them. As the meeting progressed, we sensed reluctance we hadn't anticipated. They were less than pleased with the international coverage, and the timing was terrible - McDonald's had just committed to constructing the swimming pool for the 1984 LA Olympics, which preoccupied all their promotional thinking. Yet we could sense a mood to buy - to commit to something - and who knew how long that momentum would continue? Probably not a second longer than the meeting itself. Out of the blue, our head of television sales suggested that maybe the Triathlon idea had run its course, and what we really should be talking about was an all-new yet conceptually similar event: an international diving championship that would take place annually at McDonald's new Olympic pool. Because this executive understood the ripeness of the moment, instead of walking out with a failure, we walked away with a commitment. He recognized that while they weren't interested in renewing the triathlon, they were psychologically primed to say "yes" to something right then. That awareness of timing transformed potential disappointment into unexpected opportunity. The best business leaders possess extraordinary patience. They understand that sometimes the simple passing of time can totally alter a situation, solve problems, render other problems meaningless, and add whole new perspectives. "What goes around comes around" should be tattooed on the chest of every hyperactive executive who can't wait for the perfect moment. I believe that in any business situation there is an edge out there for the taking. Don't be greedy, don't be pushy, don't be impatient, but keep looking for the edge. Eventually it will show itself, and when it does, be ready to do whatever you have to do to take it.

Chapter 4: The Art of Negotiation: Beyond Numbers and Terms

The meeting had gone exceedingly well. We were in London, and one of our executives had just made an excellent presentation to some British businessmen. I was sure these gentlemen were quite impressed. A kind of dramatic silence occurred as they looked at each other to see who was going to respond first. But just as one of them was about to speak, our executive began summarizing the positive aspects of the concepts he had just presented. This happened a few times. Finally, I actually laughed and said to him, "Ah, the joys of silence... Let someone else speak." This moment captures one of the most powerful yet underutilized negotiation tools: silence. There comes a point in almost any negotiation where the other person should be talking, and there comes a point where no one should be talking. It's pretty hard to get to either point if you don't know when to be silent. I once was brought in at the tail end of a bitter renegotiation dispute. It had gotten serious enough that lawyers were sitting in on both sides. Since I was the "new kid on the block," I asked the other party to start at the beginning and explain to me, in his own words, his understanding of the dispute. He began to talk, and he must have talked without pausing for twenty minutes. (I could see his lawyer wince several times.) By the time he finished, he had come around – or talked himself into – agreeing with much of our position. The power of silence extends beyond just letting the other party talk. When negotiations become excessively tense, are about to get out of hand, or are in danger of falling through, a moment of candor – "Look, I really want this to go through" or "This is very important to me" – not only brings back perspective, it will often totally disarm the other party. An impasse which moments earlier seemed insurmountable will start to disintegrate. I learned the power of psychological currencies in negotiation early in my career. During our negotiation with Slazenger/Australia over the length of Gary Player's equipment contract, Slazenger wanted a short-term contract: one year with renewable options. We were reluctant because if it didn't work out, Gary would be "damaged goods" for equipment affiliations in Australia. But Slazenger wouldn't budge an inch – or, in this case, a day – which is when we came up with what we later began to refer to internally as our "Australian termination clause": the contract was made terminable by either party from the moment it was signed – but on five years' notice. My theory was that Slazenger would be reluctant to terminate anyone whom they would still be affiliated with personally and committed to financially for another five years, and would work harder to see that this never happened. Gary's contract with Slazenger continued for over twenty years. Effective negotiation rarely comes down to machismo or who can outlast whom. The point is to reach an agreement that is mutually advantageous to both parties. Don't use phrases like "deal breaker," "take it or leave it," or "that's non-negotiable" – anything that makes you sound like you're daring the other person to knock a chip off your shoulder. Remember, you're negotiating with another human being with hopes, fears, and motivations just like yours. I find it helpful to try to figure out in advance where the other person would like to end up – at what point they will do the deal and still feel like they're coming away with something. This is different from "How far will they go?" You can often push someone to the wall and still reach an agreement, but their resentment will come back to haunt you in a million ways.

Chapter 5: Making Decisions: Trust Your Gut When Data Isn't Enough

Someone once told me that when the Ford Motor Company interviews a managerial-level applicant, they note whether the potential employee puts salt and pepper on their food before tasting it, the theory being that such a person is likely to make a decision before knowing all the facts. I hope this isn't true, because one of the biggest problems people have with decision making is actually a desire to know too many facts, their theory being that if you have enough data, the decision will make itself. The people I respect the most in business are all instant decision makers. They don't need to know every "knowable" fact first. They accept that they are going to make their share of wrong decisions and are confident enough to know that most of the time they are going to make the right one. I learned this principle vividly when we were creating the Wimbledon logo licensing program. When I first decided we were going to create and market a Wimbledon logo, I met all sorts of resistance from people in our company. First, Wimbledon had been around for almost a century, and if this was such a good idea, why hadn't someone else done it? Second, there was little evidence that people would identify with a tennis tournament the way they would with an athlete or fashion designer. Finally, over twenty-five companies worldwide were already using the name "Wimbledon" generically on their products. Our legal department doubted we could even clean up the market, let alone create one. But I believed that a Wimbledon logo should work, and that we were the ones to make it work. If I had been less convinced of this, or had simply been looking for signs to tell me I was wrong, I'm sure "Wimbledon" would have remained a generic name, available to anyone who cared to use it. Instead, it became one of our most successful licensing programs. This illustrates that decision making is more an intuitive process than an analytical one. No amount of market studies, focus groups and research reports can replace the "seat-of-the-pants factor." Facts are a decision maker's tools, but they won't take the place of intuition, they won't make the decision for you, and they are only as useful as your ability to interpret them. The most useful decision-making information often lies beyond the facts themselves. I've learned to look around the fringes - what do the facts indicate about trends, biases, conflicts, opportunities? One kind of decision maker will say, "We shouldn't do this because three other people tried it and failed," but a good decision maker will find out what all three did similarly and what all three failed to do similarly before reaching the same conclusion. I almost always go with first impressions, but I let them settle in for a period of time. Decisions are – and should be – partly emotional, but it is helpful to keep your options open until the cold light of day has had a chance to shine on them: are there any obvious considerations that haven't been considered? If none occurs to me in the first twenty-four hours, this means they will probably never occur to me – or that by the time they do it will be too late anyway. Remember, good decisions are self-fulfilling. If you immediately start to second-guess a decision you've made, it will most likely prove a bad one, not because it was the wrong decision, but because you undermined its chance for success. A lot of questionable decisions have worked because the people who made them were determined to make them work, and a lot of good decisions have failed because the people who made them never got over their doubts.

Chapter 6: Building a Business: From Handshake to Global Empire

Today, the International Management Group is a management, consulting and marketing firm operating out of fifteen offices around the world. The activities of its twelve companies range from creating and implementing sports events for over one hundred corporations to operating fashion modeling agencies out of New York and London. Our annual gross revenues exceed $200 million, which makes us a small to medium-sized company in the general scheme of things, but something of a force in the business of sports. I did not envision this when I first shook hands with Arnold Palmer back in 1960. At the time, I was a young lawyer simply looking for a way to combine one of my lifelong passions – golf – with my day-to-day business activities. As an amateur golfer, I was good enough to qualify for the 1958 US Open, but smart enough to know I would never make it big on the pro tour. For me, the next best thing was representing those who did. When I first started representing Arnold, he had won one major championship in 1958 followed by a lackluster year in 1959. Our second client, Gary Player, was barely known in the United States when we signed him. When we began representing our third client, Jack Nicklaus, he was still an amateur. I was simply trying to sign up the best golfers who also seemed to have the kind of character a company would want to be associated with. I didn't realize until later that I was making a "commitment to quality." As it turned out, Palmer, Player and Nicklaus weren't just quality golfers - they totally dominated the world of golf for two decades. By 1969 they had won twenty of golf's major championships. They became known as the "Big Three" of golf, and with 250 golfers out on the tour, we had gone three-for-three. It was like winning a lottery. Lady Luck had been kind to us, but we weren't going to sit around until another "Big Three" came along. Of the twenty-odd years we've been in business, the first six were limited to representing professional golfers. I felt we had too much to learn to do anything else. I wanted to get better before we got bigger. So many companies would rather grow quickly than profit quickly. If these companies would slow down, take time to analyze their success, and allow their depth of management to catch up, they would see they could have both – healthy growth and healthy profitability. By 1966 we had become a major presence in golf. We were organized, had the right people in place, and knew where we were going. I thought we should diversify. We branched out into other individual sports with international profiles, signing Jackie Stewart, the world's leading race driver, and when tennis abandoned its amateur status in 1968, we signed Rod Laver and Margaret Court, then the world's leading male and female players. One of our most important decisions was setting up a network of international offices. This was done in anticipation of world demand for world-class athletes, but subsequent developments, such as satellite television, made it look even smarter. Today, each of our fifteen offices around the world is run and almost fully staffed by the nationalities of the countries in which they are located. The lesson? Start with the best; learn from the best; expand slowly and solidify your position; then horizontally diversify your expertise. If you start with quality, grow at a sustainable pace, and continually look for ways to leverage what you already know into new opportunities, you can build something truly remarkable from even the most humble beginnings.

Chapter 7: Time Management: Control Your Day Before It Controls You

I begin by viewing a week as 168 hours, and I schedule time for relaxation and rest as well as work. I force myself to have time to relax whether it be to play tennis, read the morning paper, take a nap in the office, or simply do nothing – to free my mind from any sort of work-oriented thoughts or decisions. To make sure I have this time, I program these non-work activities into my schedule. If I know my first time commitment is at 7 a.m., I would rather get up at 5 a.m. and spend an hour reading, relaxing and exercising than get up at 6 a.m. and have to rush. I hate leaving unfinished business or having anything hanging over my head, and I work with great intensity to obtain moments of empty space – a minute, an hour or a weekend – in which to enjoy having nothing to do. These moments are the carrots at the end of my stick, and by programming them into my schedule, I force myself to finish the business activities leading up to them within the time specifically allocated. This has led to a kind of heightened state of time consciousness. I always perceive any business activity or commitment as a function of the time I have allotted for it. If a meeting is starting in one hour and I have decided there are ten things I want to accomplish before that meeting begins, I will do whatever is necessary to fit all ten things into that hour. It may mean making a phone call a lot shorter than I would have liked, or dashing off a note rather than a letter, but by challenging myself this way, I have developed an almost minute-by-minute awareness of how I'm spending my time. I operate both my life and my time from a series of yellow legal pads, with one sheet devoted to each day and a vertical line drawn down the middle. Things to do go on the right side of the vertical line, people to call go on the left side. I keep this pad in about fifty-day segments, and at the end I have several pages for calls and activities which are not going to be done during this fifty-day time frame but at some point in the future. I also keep a separate pad with pages marked for different parts of the world. If someone says to me, "Get in touch with so-and-so when you're in Melbourne," or if something comes up that I must handle personally in Tokyo, I will make a note on the relevant page. In addition to my yellow pads, I always have 3 × 5 cards in my coat pocket. Some are marked with the names of employees or business associates with whom I am in regular contact. If I think of something related to these people, I jot it down on the appropriate card. I write down everything I intend to do, and once I have written it down, I forget about it. I know it will turn up at the appropriate time and place on the appropriate day. This allows me to free my mind for other things and gives me peace of mind at night, a feeling that I am on top of things, and real excitement about coming into work the next morning. When it comes to phone calls, I seldom accept any call. I would rather deal with it in my own time when I can focus my attention on it rather than on what it's interrupting. Initiating a call gives me more control and time to plan what I want to say. But I return every call, with just two exceptions: if I simply don't want to talk to the caller or if the call is better handled by someone else in our organization. For meetings, I believe the initial moments – from exchanging greetings to getting down to business – are more crucial to content and critical to outcome than anything likely to follow. I use this time to set the agenda, tone, atmosphere and to make certain desired impressions. I eliminate all extraneous activity from the beginning of a meeting. I won't have anyone shown into my office until I'm off the phone or have finished shuffling papers and can devote my total attention to them. I rarely allow any interruptions during these initial moments. Finally, I've learned to say no even when it hurts. The best instant time saver is to say no, but people have a hard time doing this even when it's the obvious response. They fear offending someone, are hedging their bets, or simply don't want to make a decision at that moment. It's very easy to say no without being impolite. A no expressed with reluctance or regret, or with a believable excuse can be just as final and definitive as "I'm not interested."

Summary

The secret to business success lies not in what Harvard can teach you, but in your ability to read people, create impressions, seize opportunities, and make decisions that others miss. The most successful executives are those who have mastered this "street smarts" approach - they understand the human dynamics beneath every business interaction and use this knowledge to their advantage. To apply these lessons in your own career, start by truly observing people rather than just hearing their words. Cultivate the discipline to remain silent when appropriate, allowing others to reveal themselves. Create memorable impressions through small, thoughtful acts rather than grand gestures. Recognize when a moment is ripe for action, and trust your instincts even when data seems incomplete. Most importantly, remember that business is fundamentally about people - and the most valuable business education comes not from textbooks but from carefully studying human nature in action. By developing these street smarts, you'll gain advantages that no business school can provide and position yourself for success in any endeavor you pursue.

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Mark H. McCormack

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