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The
profound thing about tom Peters, the uber-search guru of Excellence,
is this thing... er-no, what was it? Phew: memories are sure getting
short round here (even annual calendars are bizarre nowadays, forget
the longer-span ones).
Ah-at 60, Peters is still kidding. Swearing
at stovepipes. Hollering "All bets are off". Prodding
everybody to "Try stuff". Daring the youth like there's
no tomorrow. Throwing phrases like 'virtual state' at hall audiences.
Alarming folk about a "profound shift" of millennial import.
Getting Dorling Kindersley-!-to package the message fashionably.
Making one confession after another. Raving about mouthwash and
razor blade design. Awarding Mohandas Gandhi an Oscar. And generally
going "bonkers"-as Fortune groaned the other day. Any
more, and it'll be a Pepsi ad.
"I'm Mad as Hell," growls the foreword.
Gladiatorially, at that; ready to rattle the walls. But offering,
instead, a sense of what the last few years have done to poor America.
Done, that we all suddenly need to 're-imagine' all our enterprises
and institutions all over again. "Business is personal... not
an abstraction. That's the whole point of this book," he goes,
sounding suspiciously like yet another do-your-own-thing pep talk
for the Choice Generation.
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Re-imagine!
By Tom Peters
Dorling Kindersley
Price: Rs 1,037
PP: 352
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But hang
on, the book's design is too spaced out to resist. Rather like web-surfing,
actually. Multi-directional and quasi-randomised, with artistic
mouse-here cues and exclamation points dangling forth. Also, sidebar
after bar, and rant after rant.
Rant after rant? For innovation to get anywhere,
Peters wants you "pissed off", in his own subtle words.
He succeeds best with an old quote on rainbow colours from the man
who once compared India to the equator, Winston Churchill-"Pity
the poor brown." This grrrrr-induction works. The 'clueless'
defence that maddens Peters about people's irresponsibility nowadays
should begin to madden you. By the time he deems America-with its
long history of a quarter-millennium-the planet's most competitive
market for thoughts, you may well want to jump into the fray yourself.
While this book manages to update the classic
eight principles of 'Excellence' to current times, it has rather
few wow insights to offer. Wild nuggets on animal symbiosis, cool.
But otherwise, the experience economy has been around since the
first traded orgasm. Design and beauty aren't exactly left unranted
for. That every brand needs a "plot, a reason for being, a
passion" has been hyperlinked to success for quite awhile now.
"What... at heart... are you made of?
That-and that alone-is what Branding is all about," propounds
Peters. Does this "Drastically. Alter. Perspective."?
Naah.
But hey, the book is still one spacey experience.
It's dramatic. And it's different, whether or not its algebra is
taken to be linear or exponential (to use some-gasp- 'pseudo' words).
Hmmm... "Try stuff."
Now that's some bankable business advice from
a McKinsey strategist-turned-guru thought to be losing his mind
in the corridors of conservatism. So try it. Being M-A-D-for a Mutually
Assured Destiny.
-Aresh Shirali
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Journeys Through Babudom And Netaland
By T.S.R. Subramanian
Rupa & Co
Price: Rs 395
PP: 359
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There must be
something magical about bureaucratic retirement. How else does one
explain the 180-degree transformation most of them go through on
superannuation? How, from being cogs in the wheel that turns the
governmental machinery, they almost overnight become its worst critics;
indeed, they even seem to become ashamed of having been a part of
it in the first place.
If you are willing to overlook that minor irritant,
you'll find the memoirs of T.S.R. Subramanian ('TSR.', to most who
know him or of him) entertaining, engaging, even humorous. As a
career bureaucrat who, over nearly 40 long years, worked his way
up to the very top of a system that's at best scandalous and self-serving,
TSR offers a lot of interesting insights into the workings of government,
and the pettiness and greed of the people who populate it. But one
would read this book more for the anecdotes that generously pepper
it. My favourites: Prime Minister Deve Gowda picking his nose as
the President of World Bank sat across him, and President K.R. Narayanan
kicking up an undignified fuss when Air-India balks at sparing him
an aircraft.
Despite the book's surprising felicity, it's
hard to miss TSR's bitterness (in fact, in the preface, he calls
his memoirs "a tale of betrayal of the people of India").
And as you put the book down, you can't but feel that what TSR has
chosen to tell his readers at this juncture is just a fraction of
what he has cautiously withheld.
Perhaps there will be a sequel.
-R Sridharan
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The IITians
By Sandipan Deb
Penguin/ Viking
Price: Rs 425
PP: 374
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If
you're an IITian, feel free to heave a long sigh of relief. The
image of Asok The Cubicle Slave IITian, popularised across the world
by Scott Adams' Dilbert series, is on its way to being overthrown.
This charming book by IITian Sandipan Deb on what gives the Indian
Institutes of Technology (IITs) their enviable brainbox stature,
virtually erases the caricature of the Nerd who thinks the rational
timeline began with 17th century Europe, sees little else as relevant
to modern existence, and could do with some serious counsel from
Peter Bernstein on risk.
Nope. The IITians-and the techie profiles are
quite interesting-are among the brainiest beings on the planet,
but are not bespectacled labcoats. In Deb's telling, they're into
a variety of eclectic stuff. Karl Popper, Kafka, The Wall and much
else, each to his own 'taste'-defined by Deb as "but a subjective
illusion, a marketing conspiracy, a social construct". This
Matrix-like construct alone makes this book a rewarding read. Don't
miss the touching last chapter, 'Midnight's Brahmins', either.
So, are the IITs busy turning out potential
leaders? Won't be for long, anyhow, by the sound of current campus
goings-on. The disciplinarian worms, it seems, are hellbent on wriggling
in-and if something's not done, that sigh of relief might have to
wait.
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