Allegories all the rage

REVIEWS BY STEPHANIE SWILLEY

Business parables have spiced up many leadership lessons, encouraging millions of readers to fish, move their cheese or master one-minute management. Best of all, the tiny tomes are easy on both the eyes and the pocketbook. These recent releases are all great start-to-finish reads for a puddle-jump plane ride.

Asleep at the table

Best-selling author Patrick Lencioni's latest book, Death by Meeting, does double duty as a fast-paced page-turner and an allegory addressing a problem everyone can relate to: boring meetings. In this fictional tale, a struggling CEO hires a family friend who is, no joke, off his meds. The young newcomer shakes things up, transforming the company's interminable weekly meetings by adding drama and conflict and giving them structure (daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly). After the story ends, Lencioni explains how to implement his ideas to improve real-world meetings.


Chief Executive Animals

While there's simply no comparison to the classic Animal Farm, Kenneth A. Tucker and Vandana Allman's Animals, Inc. is full of clever wordplay and funny, lovable characters. The team that created the bestsellers First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths tells the story of what happens on the farm after Farmer Goode moves on to Greener Pasture Retirement. After considering relocating to a petting zoo, the animals decide to take a stab at running the farm themselves and elect Mo the pig Chief Executive Animal.

Mo reads the latest and greatest business books (except, of course, Bringing Home the Bacon), but his well-meaning attempts at adopting competency exams, stock options and extensive employee training fail dismally. After rule #5 "Everyone should be well rounded" is painted on the side of the barn, the Scarecrow is promoted to laying eggs in the henhouse while the crow is put in charge of protecting the fields.

The moral is clear: Put people in jobs that make the most of their strengths, then give them support and recognition. It's a simple concept, and the animals make it easy to see and understand the importance of managing a diversity of skills and talents.


Taking a giant leap

Steve Farber's The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership is a business parable thinly disguised as a mystery novel. Written in first person, the book follows a consultant named Steve (obviously the author, also a leadership consultant) who is asked by a friend to track down her MIA CEO. During his half-hearted search, which involves looking up the CEO's name in the phone book, Steve encounters a beach bum named Edg who reveals the L.E.A.P. (love, energy, audacity, proof) concept and shares the value of the OS!M (oh shit! moment) in leadership development.

The story is contrived but the definition of an extreme leader as one who cultivates love, generates energy, inspires audacity and provides proof is interesting. And who knows? The challenge to love what you do might help readers renew the excitement in their daily lives.


Good Business

Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN by Scott Collins is the scandal-ridden, behind-the-scenes history of the cable news networks. You'll love the gossip about Lou Dobbs, Greta Van Susteren, Bill O'Reilly and others, but the best concerns Roger Ailes, former media advisor to Nixon and the elder Bush. Ailes got CNBC off the ground and turned it into a major success, then moved to Murdoch's camp after NBC and Microsoft joined forces to start MSNBC. Despite the book's title, there's not enough detail about the Fox network operations here; Collins dishes more on CNN's scandals and boring anchors and MSNBC's inability to become a contender. Bias in television news is still a hot topic, and Crazy Like a Fox gives smart insight into the personalities behind the cable wars.


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