Readers Get the Business: Books Look for Wisdom in Scandals, Circuses, and History

In the era of celebrity CEOs, business books publishers looked to corporate chiefs to find their next big book. But in the past few years corporations and executives have become known as much for the scandals exposed in courtrooms as for the deals made in boardrooms. Now, instead of exalting corporations and their leaders, business books are explaining why good companies go bad and what to do about it.
Marilyn Seymann and Michael Rosenbaum collaborated on The Governance Game: Restoring Boardroom Excellence & Credibility in Corporate America, a book from Aspatore, Inc. (1-58762-332-3) that explores how corporations are run by discussing “the human issues and unanswered questions that frame governance practice.” The authors posit that, in business, “it’s not enough to simply lay out the rules. Good governance, like goodness itself, is both far more simple and more complex than any set of regulations.”
Steven A. Barth puts a slight twist on this malady in another Aspatore offering, Corporate Ethics: The Business Code of Conduct for Ethical Employees (1-58762-305-6). Proper behavior trickles down, he writes, and everyone—from employees to suppliers to customers—must be accorded the respect that emanates from ethical behavior.
In the same way, Carol Kinsey Goman’s newly revised “This Isn’t The Company I Joined”: How to Lead In a Business Turned Upside Down, poses the question of what’s a poor manager to do when the organization seems to change direction (KCS Publishing, 0-9625435-2-7). In The Accountable Organization: Reclaiming Integrity, Restoring Trust (Davies-Black Publishing, 0-89106-185-1), another volume that examines business ethics, John Marchica offers “real-life examples of how to build a corporate culture in which every individual has the responsibility to reclaim integrity, embrace accountability, and earn trust.”
An extension of corporate ethics books is that branch of business literature that purports to provide models for “enlightened management.” Sensitizing business-school students from the get-go, these authors claim, will help eliminate, or at least reduce, many ethical conflicts in the future.
Managers, Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development, by McGill University’s Henry Mintzberg, is one example of a book that addresses concerns about the training provided at business schools (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1-57675-275-5). He condemns most MBA programs for emphasizing the bottom line rather than presenting a positive philosophy of service to customers and clients, and spends most of his pages advocating curricular changes.
Donna Dunning’s TLC at Work: Training, Leadership, Coaching All Types for Star Performance is another such title from Davies-Black (0-89106-192-4). She breaks down her theory of increasing productivity and accountability into “five basic workplace competencies,” which she depicts as “describing specific, measurable behaviors necessary for high performance.”

Business and the Art of Lion Taming
Following the time-honored tactic of explaining a business concept through metaphor, Steven L. Katz likens intra-company strategies communications to a circus act in his book Lion Taming: The Art of Working with Leaders, Bosses, and Other Tough Customers (Sourcebooks, Inc., 1-4022-0217-2). “Lions, including those at the office,” he writes, “make a simple and instinctive calculation the minute any living thing comes into view. You are either prey, the enemy, or ignored.”
Another genre that has become popular in recent years updates lessons gleaned from the experiences of historical personalities, including warriors, politicians, sports figures, and entertainers. These books tend to share a common formula. The author or editor selects an event or maxim from the legendary figure, elaborates on it, and shows how such a philosophy can apply to a modern situation
Jack Uldrich, for example, in Into the Unknown: Leadership Lessons From Lewis and Clark’s Daring Westward Expedition, from Amacom Books (American Management Association, 0-8144-8016-8) relates the challenges that the explorers faced and translates them into contemporary relevance. The duo encountered wary Native Americans, a harsh climate, and other problems unheard-of in the relative safety and civilization of their homes in the East. They had to get creative to come up with solutions for hazardous, even life-threatening, situations. Such creativity, the author maintains, is essential for building a successful business community today.
Similarly, from the same publisher, Lance B. Kurke discusses how a Greek ruler overcame his own challenges in The Wisdom of Alexander the Great: Enduring Leadership Lessons from the Man Who Created an Empire (0-8144-0820-6). The author then uses “Inferences and Allegations” and “Leading Lessons” to extrapolate how theses dilemmas relate to modern business.
A slightly different version is The Art of the Advantage: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge, by Kaihan Krippendorff (Thomson Texere, 1-58799-168-3). Here the author, using various brands and ancient Asian aphorisms to illustrate his points, counsels readers on “how to influence, gain, and maintain an advantage over our competitors.” The book is an adaptation of The 36 Stratagems, written during China’s “Warring States” period (475–221 BC), which, Krippendorff reports, “are as effective in contemporary business as they have proven to be in ancient Chinese warfare.”

Building A Better Business Brand
Books on brand names are also prevalent this year. Titles that take a broader, how-to approach on the subject of branding include Protecting the Brand: A Concise Guide to Promoting, Maintaining, and Protecting a Company’s Most Valuable Asset, by Talcott J. Franklin (Barricade Books, 1-56980-257-2); Brand Harmony: Achieving Dynamic Results by Orchestrating Your Customers’ Total Experience, by Steve Yastrow (Select Books, 1-59079-053-7); Briefs for Building Better Brands: Tips, Parables and Insights for Market Leaders, a collection of essays by Allan Gorman (Biblio Distribution, 0-9749169-0-0); and Brand Babble: Sense and Nonsense About Branding, by Don E. Schultz and Heidi F. Schultz (South-Western Educational Publishers, 0-538-72714-4).
One of the most interesting books in this category is narrower in scope. BRANDchild: Remarkable Insights into the Minds of Today’s Global Kids and Their Relationships with Brands, by branding expert Martin Lindstrom with Patricia Seybold. This collection of essays from Kogan Page (0-7494-3867-3) analyzes the influence of “tweens” (kids between the ages of eight and fourteen). This demographic wields incredible decision-making power. It is no secret that companies have been trying to attract potential customers at younger and younger ages, joining forces with the entertainment industry to market movies via fast food outlets. In a particularly odious move, Major League Baseball was offered several million dollars to promote the Spiderman sequel by placing small “web” logos on the bases in an effort to attract the pre-teen boy market. Only a backlash by fans forced parties to think better of this ill-fated idea and cancel the plan.
It is also no secret that kids are very label-conscious at an early age, showing a preference for specific brands—primarily because they are “cool” or endorsed by their favorite actor or athlete—over generic merchandise of the same or even superior quality. The editors believe that there is no ethical problem in targeting such young consumers. Thanks to current levels of technology, the use of computers to communicate instantaneously among peers, and the increased availability of information, “tweens” make savvy decisions and wield a great deal of influence over purchases.
Author Lindstrom, a native of England, offers a unique global perspective, comparing the preferences of kids in different nations, with some interesting results. BRANDchild is also unique in that purchasers of the book can get updated information from a companion website. No doubt the site will keep track of visitors for its own research purposes.
Whether the focus is on building up a company’s name recognition, keeping corporations out of ethical trouble, or learning from heroes of the past, these books all promise to help readers as they go about the business of business.