Penelope Rance

I am very interested in how UX can help businesses to be their very best. But to do this I need to know a bit more about how businesses work. I cannot remember where I came across The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman, recommended by a speaker at an event I attended I think, but it got added to my list and this month I read it.

To be honest I was expecting it to be hard going, so I was pleasantly surprised at what a good read it was. It is broken up into small bite sized chunks of information, never more than 2 pages long on each subject, about everything business. These chunks are grouped into sections like - Value Creation; Value Delivery; Understanding Systems and Working with Yourself, amongst others.

Each subject includes an explanation of what the term means and an example. But while it is written in such a way to make it easy to understand it is in no way simplistic.

I found it informative and friendly. Josh really wants you to understand what he is writing about and to find it as interesting as he does. And I think he does a pretty good job.

And so many of the sections resonated with me, either because they explained something I had experienced but had not understood, or because it helped me understand a little better what UX can do for the business.

If you are interested in how businesses work but don’t want to be bogged down with too much technical talk this is the book for you. If there are any parts you want to know more about he makes suggestions through out of other authors and books which expand on the subject, but as a place to start this is a good one.