The NEW MBA is an online education platform run by Tom Critchlow. The mission is to help mid-career and senior leaders become more confident and capable; to work with more impact, influence and agency.
Backstory
I was lucky. Early in my career I worked for good bosses, and I worked in SEO - an industry that was young and wild. These two things meant that there weren’t many sacred cows - there wasn’t an established “way of doing things” that I had to follow.
So from the beginning of my career I was free to ask the question “What is the most useful way for me to be effective?”
Unfortunately, many of us haven’t been given the freedom to ask that question.
The NEW MBA was founded as a way to explore new ideas in business, to help people get more agency in their careers. To help people ask the question “how can I be effective?”. Sure, there are incredible leaps and bounds in technology that are radically changing how works gets done - but the truth is that it’s all about people.
As you navigate the journey that is a modern “career” you find over and over again that the ways to be effective depend as much on the environment around you (context, people, politics) as it does on the problem (technical skills, resourcing and so on).
If you’re lucky, you have a good boss who can help guide you through this messy human-landscape. To play the game. If you’re unlucky, you don’t get that chance - and you burn out or burn up - frustrated and rejected by a system you don’t fully understand and were never invited to participate in.
My aspiration with the NEW MBA is champion the work around the work - to help people understand the game of business and develop ways to become more confident and capable.
Communication, influence, positioning. These matter. There’s no abstract “strategy” that you can learn that doesn’t relate to the human dynamics beneath.
About Tom Critchlow
Starting my career in SEO allowed me to get a deep, grounded understanding of "how the web works". Working at places like Google and consulting with companies of all shapes and sizes gave me a good understanding of "how business works".
Throughout my career I've been obsessed with the question of how to be effective. Recognizing that to be effective requires understanding the humans, the systems and the incentives at work.
I'm based in Brooklyn and love new opportunities.
Interested? Book time to chat here.