Once upon a lack of timeThe business fable genre is gaining popularity with busy executives as it offers fast-to-read bite-sized lessons, writes PARVATHI NAYAR
'MOST CEOs were fixated on results before reaching their ultimate jobs. Once they 'arrive', though, many of them focus primarily on preserving their status', writes author Patrick Lencioni. Status versus results is the first 'temptation' that Andy O'Brien, CEO of Trinity Systems, has to tackle - not in real life, or even in a novel, but in the business book The Five Temptations of a CEO by Lencioni, described as a leadership fable.
Currently, business fables are a popular trend among business books. Dealing with topics such as soft skills, personal obstacles or specific business problems, the business lessons to be learnt are presented within the format of stories or fables with a moral. They are simply written, often short and punchy, and very accessible. After all, everyone loves a good story.
'Recent research proves that people remember things much better when said in a narrative format,' says author Katherine Penaloza, ex-McKinsey consultant and contributor to The Bard & Co (a book on the relevance of Shakespeare in modern business). 'Business books generally tend to hide behind a lot of jargon, while business fables introduce storytelling formats to the business genre.'
Penaloza feels the business book market in the last 10 years 'is oversaturated with books about faddish ideas or those written by pseudo-guru academics'. She adds: 'The time was right for business books with better narrative techniques.'
The trend may be gaining momentum now, but industry players concur it probably started with the breakout books Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, Fish! by Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen and The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson.
John Davis, who teaches marketing at the Singapore Management University and is the author of three books on marketing, feels it was the 1980s' The One Minute Manager, in particular, that was the first mega-hit in this category, selling several million copies. Lundin, author of the Fish! series, adds: 'When Ken's book first came out, I remember commenting to my MBA students at the time that I really questioned its value. Since then, I have met hundreds of managers for whom the book was of great importance. I have apologised to Ken for my comments and doubts. He was the first, and he knew what he was doing.'
Struck a chordLeslie Lim, product manager (non-fiction) at Pansing, says: 'Unsurprisingly, storytelling and the art of the narrative are said to be the new management buzzwords.' In his experience, following the phenomenal success of Who Moved My Cheese?, the business fable category seems to have struck a chord locally, because 'the humorous, bite-sized approach to teaching business lessons fits the busy, 'walk-the-fastest' lifestyle of Singaporeans and foreigners here alike'.
Richard Loh, founder and CEO of The Ploh Group, is someone who regularly reads current business books and magazines, as 'a good way to keep up-to-date with the latest management thinking'. He says: 'I believe business/life insights can be gleaned from many different sources and manners - books, movies, formal education, discussions, mentorship, direct experience etc. Business fables - such as Who Moved My Cheese? or Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki - make it easy to remember potentially valuable business lessons because they package these insights and principles in such an easily digestible form.'
Perhaps some business writers now consciously choose the business fable form, given its current popularity, but Lundin says 'the story came into my head while I was considering a more typical book'. He likes the simplicity of the form and its accessibility. 'I believe that anyone can spew content; it is much more challenging to connect and engage a reader. The story form fits this goal perfectly.'
Other readers of business fables tend to agree about their accessibility. As Jacky Tai, principal consultant of StrategiCom, says, The One Minute Manager may be a bit of a one-minute-to-read kind of book, but is useful in that 'it lays down the principles of how to manage people effectively in an easy-to-understand manner'.
But while the books may read simply, creating a successful business fable is not easy. 'For this type of book to work, the author needs to have a strong platform and back up the ideas with a dynamic website, coaching programmes and author tours to reinforce the message from the book. These books do not work well as standalone titles,' says Nick Wallwork, publisher, John Wiley & Sons Asia.
Lencioni, apparently, has been Wiley's biggest success to date. Mr Wallwork says: 'Lencioni is extraordinary in that other authors usually have a one-off success with their titles. Lencioni has now published four best-selling titles and is about to release his fifth: The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees).' Lencioni is also unusual in that he aims his book at senior management, while other fables seem to be pitched more towards middle management.
Greg Kinnaird, author of Make, Create, Innovate, says the target audiences that he has in mind are more generic, 'the busy working professionals who value innovation'. He adds: 'I specifically designed my book to be an 'airport book', tailored for the busy executive in transit, who wants a bit of light reading with strong business substance and credibility. It's meant to be read in less than four hours.' That's a smart move, since time is always an issue in today's find-the-25th-hour lifestyle. Some recent thinking may dispute the real value - or even real existence - of our much-valued ability to multitask.
Indisputably, though, we do have slivers of 'dead time', especially in transit, while we transport ourselves between meetings, activities or even countries. Bite-sized business reading is a good way to use up this time productively. There also seems to be an emerging trend of crossovers. Literature plus business is a marriage whose bookish offspring extend beyond business fables. For starters, there are biographies such as Ignorance, Confidence and Filthy Rich Friends that looks at the business adventures of a literary figure like Mark Twain; and publisher John Wiley's adapted manga biography of Warren Buffett with lessons for investors. The latter was one of only two books recommended by Mr Buffett himself at this year's Berkshire Hathaway shareholder's meeting.
Also fun are business satires, such as The Time Seller by Fernando Trias de Bes and The Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway's Who Moved my Blackberry, a hilarious account of the fictional Martin Lukes' life in an office.
Chasing Daylight: How my Forthcoming Death Transformed my Life by Gene O'Kelly is an example of someone in the business world whose book is more in the life transformational genre. It is the real-life account of how a super achiever re-ordered his life to fit in time for relationships, family and 'perfect moments', when told by a neurosurgeon at age 53 he had late-stage brain cancer.
There is a crossover trend in terms of business fables' authors as well, in that they are beginning to emerge from more diverse backgrounds. The famous Hong Kong-based author Nury Vittachi, known for his witty columns and comedy crime novel series The Feng Shui Detective, has turned his narrative skills to business books this year with The Kama Sutra of Business.
Vittachi's inspiration is less the catchy sex manual referred to in the title than tales of governance and instruction written in ancient times. He explains: 'In India, 23 centuries ago - even earlier than the days of Jesus - a man named Chanakya wrote a series of books that mingled business management advice with aphorisms and instructional images. A young man named Chandragupta used the advice in Chanakya's books to become emperor of one of the world's biggest empires - and proved that business-fable books really work!'
Real-world casesReal-life examples are the inspiration too for author/ educator John Davis, who is working on an as-yet unpublished business fable: 'I use many real-world cases when I teach companies, based on personal experiences from my 17 years in business plus my recent academic work in studying companies from around the world. My business book is from one of these case studies: a great story of extraordinary success achieved by an ordinary person, conveyed in a story-telling format.' People of all ages respond to a well-told story, and particularly, stories about other people. Business fables based on real-life examples work 'like a private window into the life of a wise person', says Davis. The underlying subtext, of course, is that if someone was able to achieve the whole rag-to-riches transformation, or overcome personal setbacks to achieve dream goals, so can we.
It's almost logical, then, that Pansing's Mr Lim observes that the fable approach is spreading into the self-help category of books, citing examples like Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter. He sees the format gaining popularity there as well, and concludes: 'It looks to me like the trend is here to stay.'
One concern is the way that our society is in constant danger of becoming a fast food generation in more ways than burgers and milkshakes. With Internet searches replacing actual research, and glib whitewashes rather than in-depth analysis being the order of the day far too often, the danger is that bite-size business books could be seen as substitutes rather than complementary reading.
In other words, a book like The Bard & Co is great in reminding us that Shakespeare really holds a mirror up to society, and that his insights are applicable to our business lives as well. But the book is not intended as a substitute for actually reading Shakespeare, savouring the richness of his ideas and finding your own personal inspiration.
And one can get too carried away by the ability of business fables to help us out. Derivatives business development manager Gareth Rowlands says he has been passed the odd business fable book by friends, and comments: 'Often, these books are written in the form of a slightly corny self-help publication for the businessperson. They seem to regurgitate common sense concepts as if they were revelatory, and at times, almost spiritual. Still, I guess they are mildly entertaining and harmless.'
So business fables don't work as a Mr Fix-it for complex business problems, neither do they actually relieve the loneliness of CEOs at the top or the insecurities of middle managers caught in the middle. Wiley's Mr Wallwork also offers the reality check that such fables 'are certainly not going to help you put together a business plan or a comprehensive strategy to conquer the global market'. But while it's easy to dismiss the whole genre of book as frothy, their immense success shows that there is a real need for them.
Published June 8, 2007
