BACK OF THE BOOK

The editor of this magazine is unarguably one of the few gentlemen that one comes across in business these days. Which is why, when he requested me to review The Power Of Impossible Thinking: Transform The Business Of Your Life And The Life Of Your Business, I winced, but nonetheless agreed.

I loathe 'How To...' books. I have little time for formulae fiction. And even though the authors Yoram (Jerry) Wind and Colin Crook have been weaned on vintage Wharton, I approached the book with considerable suspicion. Much of which was confirmed while reading the book

At the kernel of the book is the concept of the 'mental model', which is nothing but the process we employ to make sense of situations be it in life or in business. "The lines and data points are the same, but the picture is remarkably different."

THE POWER OF IMPOSSIBLE THINKING By Yoram Wind & Colin Crook Wharton Business School Publishing PP: 352 Price: Rs 1,298.99

So if you hear footsteps behind you in an empty car park at night, you make one sense of that situation. Upon discovering that the footsteps are that of a colleague, you feel remarkably assured and make a different sense of a situation.

Messrs Wind and Crook call it the 'gestalt flip'. The trainee's handbook in J. Walter Thompson calls it 'The Kaleidoscopic Effect'. I read it in 1987.

But then a book, especially one printed by worthy Wharton, cannot be as simplistic.

Neurology creeps swiftly into the book. The authors find a parallel in the 'phantom limb' wherein people who have lost a real limb continue to feel it there. It's the mental model, after all.

There is also the formula deftly positioned on page XVII. It is called the 'roadmap'. So first you understand the power and limitations of your mental model. You then need to test its relevance against the altering environment. Post that, you generate newer models. You then overcome the rebels against change and then you transform your world. After a couple of years or losses, you go through the process all over again.

Some profound questions become chapter titles: Should You Change Horses? (No, I think anyone with reasonable intelligence would continue to sit on his management mule.) Another title very emphatically urges you To Dismantle The Old Order and not let your hubris turn into a heritage site.

The book is pregnant with how companies have changed their fortunes through the way they began altering their mental models. Read Southwest Airlines, FedEx. Even Charles Schwab.

Of course, a book of this nature must experience thought collisions at various stages. So, while it urges you to meticulously plan your mental model, it also lauds intuition in another breath. It hails Einstein's "fingerspitzengefuehl"-that feeling in his fingertips. It salutes how Howard Schultz was stirred like a good coffee when he saw the Italian cafés.

To me books such as these are tiresome. They are all about recycled thinking. About phrase-knitting. I would give very few marks to this one. It's a 1993 Bonnes Mares, Grand Cru, Maison Drouhin in a Ch Monbousquet 2000 St. Emillion bottle.

-Swapan Seth

REMAKING INDIA: ONE COUNTRY, ONE DESTINY By Arun Maira Response Books PP: 238 Price: Rs 295

There's no doubting Arun Maira's credentials and competence to write about India, its shortcomings and much-needed development strategy. After all, in his long chequered career, he has worked with the Tatas for 25 years, as a management consultant in the US for 10 years (with Arthur D. Little, no less), and is currently Chairman of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in India. To whet the appetite further, there's Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia's description of the book as a "distillation of the experiences of a man who spent his life dealing with people and solving the problem''.

Yet, a careful reading of the book-if you call it that, since it's a collection of articles written in The Economic Times over the years-leaves one with little more than a sense of déjà vu. The solutions presented have little novelty value, and have been tomtommed by eminent economists both here and abroad. That many of the country's problems can be resolved only through a more participative process with decisions distributed more widely across stakeholders (rather than through centralised planning, target setting and resource allocation) is hardly something that needs to be said 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Again, Maira's basic premise, that India needs to evolve its own model by "leveraging its three essential conditions''-its population, diversity, and democracy-by turning them into assets, too has been the subject of intense debate. If still interested, concentrate on his anecdotes. Or the R.K. Laxman cartoons.

-Ashish Gupta

9 BRAND SHAASTRAS By Jagdeep Kapoor Response Books PP: 117 Price: Rs 160

HEART MIND OVER MATTER By Virender Kapoor Macmillan India PP: 247 Price: Rs 195

Jagdeep Kapoor, chief of the Mumbai-based consultancy Samsika, is always very easy to read. This is good. It is obvious in the well-aimed felicity of his words that he practices marketing as much as he preaches it. Given to both the demystification and localisation of jargon, he has earned a reputation as India's own 'marketing mantra' man. In this book, he rhymes and reasons his way forth with nine 'Brand Shaastras' (principles, to the Sanskrit-uninitiated). From the Need Shaastra and Seed Shaastra, he goes all the way to the Breed Shaastra and Exceed Shaastra, using such piquantly simple case studies as No Marks anti-blemish cream and Coca-Cola's 'Thanda' ad campaign. The Tao of Marketing it may not quite be, but just a glance at the Heed Shaastra is enough to charm speakers of heartland Hindi. The process, he says, must go from 'anjaan' (unfamiliarity) to 'jaan' (familiarity), 'pehchaan' (recognition) and ultimately 'gyaan' (intimate knowledge).

Virender Kapoor lets rhyme rule reason completely. As director of Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management, he softsells emotional intelligence. Blaise Pascal is quoted as saying, "The heart has its reasons which reason does not understand", but he also features the case of a beer hall orator that makes one think.