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The Conference Board Review® Article
Worth Noting
The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea
By Bob Burg and John David Mann
Portfolio, $19.95
Have you always meant to pick up one of those business parables — you know, the kind of story in which a stalled executive learns valuable lessons and breaks through to the next level — but couldn't bring yourself to do it? Perhaps it's just me — after all, The Go-Giver has turned out to be a big bestseller, one that even those embarrassed to be seen with a copy of Who Moved My Cheese? can carry around without shame.
Not that anyone should need to carry The Go-Giver for long: At 133 brief pages, it shouldn't take more than an hour to read, and not much longer to process. Burg and Mann tell the story of Joe, a frustrated young go-getter for whom key accounts and sales goals remain just out of reach. With a deadline looming, Joe seeks out a fabled consultant dubbed the Chairman, who magnanimously introduces his new charge to a series of successful people — all generous types who have focused their energies on helping others. The reader will hardly be startled when the Chairman's "Five Laws of Stratospheric Success" bear fruit just in time to meet Joe's deadline.
The book is a brisk read, with competently written prose and dialogue, and unlike your typical mice-in-a-maze fable, it never makes the reader feel as though he's picked up his first-grader's favorite storybook by mistake. No reader could be so hardhearted as to gainsay the to-give-is-divine message, and in the long run that is surely a winning philosophy for the individual, the organization, and for society at large. But even the most credulous reader will have to suppress a snicker at how quickly the karmic wheel turns in Joe's favor, with what seems like remarkably little effort. Can it really be that easy? Generosity is well and good, but how many successful real-life businesspeople truly share the attitude of the (extremely fictional) Chairman?
Too bad that Burg and Mann didn't include a dark flip-side narrative, in which one of Joe's colleagues fails to heed the Five Laws, remains grasping and selfish, and discovers that karma can be a bitch. Maybe there'll be a sequel.
Megacommunities: How Leaders of Government, Business and Non-Profits Can Tackle Today's Global Challenges Together
By Mark Gerencser, Christopher Kelly, Fernando Napolitano, and Reginald Van Lee
Palgrave Macmillan, $27.95
Tomorrow's crises will be larger, more complex, and more severe than ever, and may seem hopelessly insoluble — especially in the throes of "a stultifying crisis in confidence" in leaders and institutions. But problems of any magnitude can be solved — it just takes a broader group of problem-solvers. Written by four Booz Allen Hamilton executives, Megacommunities urges leaders — from business and government and civil society — to come together to head off emergencies. In this "guide for leaders," the authors insist that "communities of organizations, as vehicles for large-scale change, are both feasible and needed as they never have been before." True, corporations and NGOs and government agencies have different objectives, but that's OK — it's those conflicting perspectives that can generate key ideas.
Readable and thought-provoking, Megacommunities offers examples of how the approach has worked in cases around the globe, usually in an ad-hoc fashion, and shows how leaders from all spheres can make common cause in the service of the global community. It makes a strong case for business leaders taking the first steps toward solving the most daunting predicaments — and toward solving that leadership crisis.
— Matthew Budman
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Return to the March/April 2008 The Conference Board Review® issue.
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