The Boring Business of Business Books!

I had to laugh when I read the recent piece in the Los Angeles Times about the one hundredth anniversary of Peter Drucker’s birth. Hey, don’t get me wrong here; I don’t have anything personal against the gnarly old geezer, even though he’s older than me… Oh, wait a minute, he’s dead.

Quickly moving on… What never ceases to amaze me is how these titans of the business universe are constantly being quoted as the authority on all things concerning corporate management, marketing, douchenozzelry, and whatever happens to be the current management flavor of the month… Then you read their bios and discover, they never actually worked anywhere. They usually spent all their time teaching at various universities, while doing lots of consultancy gigs on the side for big bucks.

Probably the best known, and still living example, would be Tom Peters. The uber-management guru who manages to get upwards of $100,000 for a one day seminar. What’s particularly funny is that many of the companies he’s profiled over the years as great examples of well run companies, either no longer exist, or are mere shells of their once great glory. The prime examples being Enron, Digital and Wang. In fact, after writing his first blockbuster, In Search of Excellence, which sold over six million copies, he later admitted he’d falsified the data on which the book was based. In a strange turn of events, he later insisted that this was untrue, and that he had been the victim of an “aggressive headline.” Whatever the fuck that means!

Anyway, the point of all this is that, ninety nine percent of the business books busting the shelves at your local Borders, or Barnes and Noble, are bullshit. Mine excluded, particularly The Ubiquitous Persuaders. I mean why would anyone in their right mind want to buy a ghost written book with Donald Trump’s name on the cover? The guy has bankrupted more companies than you’ve had hot dinners. And as for gnarly old Jack Welsh, ex-Chairman of GE, this is the guy, who in conjunction with his latest trophy wife writes glaringly obvious tomes about how to increase shareholder value by following his methodology. During his tenure at GE, he achieved this by laying off nearly 40% of the workforce over a five year period. Hence his well earned nickname, “Neutron Jack” for his ability to eliminate hundreds of thousands of employees while leaving buildings intact. When he finally left GE, he walked with an $8 million a year package, including the $25 K a month flower bill for his company provided Manhattan penthouse.

Then there’s Seth Godin, the guy who’s written the same book twenty times, only they get shorter with every new title. Now don’t get me wrong, I agree with many of the things he says, and I think his basic concept “permission marketing” is dead on, it’s just that you can only beat the same drum so many times before you start to repeat yourself. A Purple Cow is a Red Fez, it’s just a different color.

Speaking of which, Jay Levinson has created a publishing empire based on his coining of the term “guerrilla marketing” twenty five years ago. I’m jealous as hell.

George Parker is a guest columnist for psfk.com. He is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com, which is without doubt, one of the most foul and annoying, piss & vinegar ad blogs on the planet. He is the author of MadScam and his new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, which is currently setting the ether ablaze (and which you can order now on Amazon). He will continue to relentlessly promote the crap out of it until you are forced to stab yourself in the eyes with knitting needles.