Notes on The Visual MBA
Recently, I read The Visual MBA by Jason Barron, and what stood out immediately was its unique visual approach to explaining an entire MBA curriculum. Complex business concepts are distilled into simple diagrams, frameworks, and mental models, making them far easier to understand and remember.
This note is a collection of the most useful frameworks, acronyms, and insights that I found worth revisiting. Think of it as a condensed reference guide—a set of practical mental models for decision-making, strategy, marketing, finance, and leadership.
The acronyms are nothing but mental models. In specific situation, these frameworks or mental models will help you react, respond or take decision. Its gives you a framework to think and take actions. And with those acronyms I will add some important points that I found interesting and worth noting down.
Then comes in chapter 4(Managerial accounting) where there is CVP: cost volume profit and ABC: Activity based costing. A brief on what these means is:
CVP is basically you calculate your products unit sales price - the unit cost.
You got the unit profit, now multiply with the volume of sales.
And ABC are overhead costs like electricity, other bills, etc.
Then comes in ch-6 Marketing, its STP that is Segment -> Target -> Positioning is a process of finding your potential prospects.
One of the concept here was Ladder Marketing which is connecting your product feature to product benefit to personal benefit and then finally to personal value of our customers.
Also all our customers can be segmented into love group, swing group and hate group. We need to see from the lenses of our love group to gain more customers from our swing group.
In ch-8 Strategic Human resource there is Motivating Potential Score, a measurement of how motivated your current employees are:
Another important point Listen 80% of the time and talk for only the other 20%.
For sustained competitive advantage in ch-10 strategy, we have VRIO framework: its Valuable, rare, costly to Imitate and then Organized.
The two strategy in regards to competition:
Red Ocean : bloody with competition
Blue Ocean: open uncontested water.
Higher competition = lower profit margins
SWOT is a pretty common acronym usually known to all, can be used to find entrepreneurial opportunities.
There was a discussion on the different types of business entities, but its specific to USA.
The 5C's of credit: character, capacity, capital, collateral and condition.
Whenever a decision needs to be taken we follow PrOACT:
Pr: Problem
O: objective
A: Alternatives
C: Consequences
T: Trade offs
As a consultant, you need ask the right question and understand the problem statement, for doing so you can follow the below framework to define the problem, which would in turn make it easy to get the solution.
SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound.
And then finally while globalizing your business, there will be difference. Something that worked in USA wont work in India due to the differences. So we will use the CAGE distance framework: Cultural differences, Administrative differences, Geographic Differences, Economic differences.
What makes these frameworks valuable is not their complexity but their practicality. Each acronym serves as a shortcut for organizing thoughts, asking better questions, and making better decisions. Together, they form a toolkit that can be applied across entrepreneurship, management, strategy, marketing, and personal growth, making The Visual MBA a worthwhile reference long after the final chapter.
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