Walking with Tigers: Success Secrets Form the World's Top Business Leaders

Citation

Murphy, A. (2009), "Walking with Tigers: Success Secrets Form the World's Top Business Leaders", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 488-489. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730910968732

The title of this book might suggest interviews with top business leaders or at least analysis of the success stories of top business leaders. The introductory chapter seems to promise that the book will expose what it takes to become a business “tiger” based on contact with people all round the world credited under the acknowledgements. However, the chapters themselves do not quite live up to this expectation.

Overall the book has a very causal and “matey” feel to it with casual language and frequent mixing of font sizes and styles. The potential reader should not expect accuracy of expression or clarity of terminology. Nor should one expect the research approach for the book's data to be conventional since it is described as a process of asking sales consultants to write down ten points that underpinned their success towards the author's “ever‐expanding international database”. The inclusion of occasional pages of “quotations” from a puzzling range of authorities such as John Wayne, Walt Disney, Jonathan Swift and “unknown” or “anon” is distracting if amusing.

The message of the book suffers from the timing of its publication in 2007 when the world of business was just starting a downward economic slide globally and when the world has been let down by business “tigers”. The strategies for individual success advocated in the book, such as rubbing shoulders with successful people, joining charitable organisations for pragmatic purposes, getting close to the loci of power and influence, might leave the reader a little uninspired in late 2008. There may be some unfortunate and certainly uncritical pieces of advice for the world be tiger such as modelling Stalin's five‐year plans with no apparent ethical or moral understanding of such strategies, despite the initial claim that honesty, integrity and ethics represent 21 per cent of the conditions necessary to “make a tiger”. However, it is probably no fault of the author that his message is suddenly unsustainable and that the enthusiasm and optimism represented in the book may not quite fit just now. There are certainly times when the message of the individual battling against great odds, overcoming great challenges and reaching success is the right message. No doubt self‐belief, the will to succeed and preparedness for hard work are qualities that are always essential and which are likely to be promoted again in the immediate future as economies struggle to find equilibrium in crisis. The many vignettes in the book support the argument that most tigers were not essentially predatory and exclusively self‐serving or power‐hungry, but that they sought a balance in life and were emotionally engaged with friends and family.

So what is to like and not to like about this book?

It is easy to like its lightweight approach to what had the potential to become a “preachy” guide to models of business success, or to give too‐many practical tips such as how best to leave a voice‐mail message! It is easy to like its strategies for work‐life balance and the need for attention to well being. It is easy to be amused by the advice of experts in the pages of quotations such as the one attributed to Thomas Jefferson: “Always take things by the smooth handle” or attributed to Andrew Grove, Founder of INTEL: “Technology happens: it's not good, it's not bad. Is steel good or bad?”

Some readers may like the variety of stories and anecdotes in the book: others may find them irritating and trivial. Some may find the content a little male‐oriented and White‐Western with a certain lack of criticality or awareness of the macro‐political contexts of the success examples given. Some may find that the values portrayed in the book reflect a very definite worldview where outward show is paramount and where the desire of the individual is unquestioned as a key motivation for agency: a worldview considerably discredited in the year since the book was published! No doubt, if the author were to publish in 2009, many of the examples and messages would be re‐visited. Unfortunate timing all‐round!