Recommended Reading

Here are some of my thoughts on books I’ve been reading lately.  If you’d like a copy of any of the books I consider, please let me know.  Since I own a bookstore, it is extremely easy to get them to you!

I had not heard of UK business leader Gerald Ratner until his recent book, Gerald Ratner: The Rise and Fall…and Rise Again (John Wiley, 2007) arrived at my bookstore, however I’m glad that it did.  Ratner was CEO and a major shareholder of a family jewellery business comprising some 2,200 stores in the UK and USA.  Indeed, at the time of its collapse it was the world’s biggest jewellery chain.  As well as the Ratner’s brand, it operated under a variety of names, including H. Samuel, Ernest Jones, Watches of Switzerland, Kays and, of course, Ratners.  In 1991, Ratner made an enormous gaffe.  Speaking to thousands of business leaders at the Institute of Directors, he stated that

In Ratners we sell gifts as well as jewellery…We (also) do cut glass sherry decanters complete with 6 glasses on a silver-plated tray – that your butler can serve your drinks on – all for £4.95.  People say how can you sell this for such a low price – I say because it’s crap. 

You and I know that a five quid decanter-set is not going to be of the highest quality, but if your company retails them, you would also know that it’s up to the consumers to work out that price and quality are generally linked!  The last thing you should do is tell them that they are buying crap!  The subsequent crisis was worsened by a global recession that ensured the collapse of the Ratners empire, personally costing Gerald Ratner around £500 million and 15 years in the business wilderness.  The book reveals that there can be positives to such catastrophic financial and personal losses.  Ratner’s arrogance and extravagance were lessened and he got to be a real father, second time around, to his kids.  On the downside, the story is a brutal lesson in the “one mistake and you’re history” environment in which many business leaders now operate.  With even the broadsheet newspapers and their websites taking something of a tabloid-like approach to reporting, one slip-up can cost careers and precipitate organisational collapse.  The rise of the spin-doctor and corporate advisor is thus unfortunate yet something of a logical response to this high-risk context for corporate communications.  The lesson is clear, though.  As the good book says, the tongue can become serpent-like for those not in control of its inestimable power! 

While probably more relevant to the field of entrepreneurship than leadership, Rachel Elnaugh’s book Business Nightmares (Crimson, 2008) details some of the most significant business mistakes of her former colleagues on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, as well as those of Jeffrey Archer and Donald Trump.  The most significant business stuff-up considered, however, is her own.  Elnaugh was founder and CEO of Red Letter Days, a UK-based company providing “experiences” for corporate clients.  At its peak, revenues were over 25 million pounds per annum, however a combination of over-expansion, hubris, distraction, and poor strategic direction destroyed the company.  Such trajectories are not, unfortunately, uncommon as start-up entrepreneurs evolve into CEOs, since effective corporate leadership demands skills and competencies significantly differing from those of entrepreneurial creation and development.  This book is an easy read (two longish train commutes did it for me!) and good fun, albeit in a macabre kind of way.  As Business Review Weekly noted earlier this year in their review of fast-growing businesses, we have little real knowledge about entrepreneurial failures and the catastrophes, despite the fact that they are part and parcel of the entrepreneurial journey.  We know too little about how entrepreneurial leaders deal with their mistakes and subsequently move forward once more.  Rachel Elnaugh’s honesty and openness about her own corporate downfall are thus particularly refreshing.  Arguably, the lessons she provides are also worth reflecting upon by all corporate leaders.  On the downside, the book lacks detail and appears to have been written in a hurry.  Thus, its reflections on the kinds of situations that demand deep reflection is rather limited. 

The Accidental Pornographer (Wiley, 2008) by Gavin Griffiths is simply the funniest business book I have ever read.  Gavin leads a small business producing “literary erotica” for 10,000 old blokes who prefer this kind of thing.  Apparently our old chaps are also into spanking, deriving perhaps from their boyhoods at various private schools throughout the United Kingdom.  Over a year, Griffiths experiences just about every problem known to small business people around the globe, particularly that very important category of problems known as “cashflow tightness”.  He even begins a website featuring posh ladies in an effort to diversify!  Unfortunately, it all goes pear-shaped, however the writing is tight, and the style is very “British” and great fun.  Rachel Elnaugh, former star of the BBC’s “Dragons’ Den” before her own business crashed, writes a wonderful foreword which begins like this: We’re all used to reading the carefully glossed up rags-to-riches stories of modern-day entrepreneurs which, although intended to be inspirational, usually leave the reader a little green with envy and generally rather sick about their own lot in life.  So it’s wonderfully refreshing to hear the honest story of someone who took the plunge, left their salaried job to go into business, and then supremely f***ed up.  In summary, while also focused on entrepreneurship, The Accidental Pornographer is also very much a leadership story written for our times!

An extremely different leadership title is The Wizard and the Warrior (Jossey-Bass, 2006) by Lee G Bolman and Terence E Deal, best known for their classic leadership title, Reframing Organizations.  Their original book suggests that great leaders are able to understand how their leadership style tends to rely on one or two of the four frames, notably the machine-like (efficiency-focused), HRM-based (focusing on people and their needs), symbolic (relying on stories, myths, and other aspects of organisational culture), and the political (focusing on the various sources of power and their subsequent application).  Of the four frames, Bolman and Deal suggest that most leaders are weakest in the symbolic (“the wizard”) and the political (“the warrior”).  Shrewdly used, these frames can add real power to our leadership styles as we seek to gain support for change initiatives and build support and passion around our strategies.  In my view, this book is arguably of most potential benefit to leaders whose careers are constrained by an inability to switch to wizard or warrior behaviours.  Contemporary leadership research suggests that this may be true of many of us!