Warning: May Contain Nuts –‐ Absolutely the First Definitive Review of the Incompetent, Inadvertent and Occasionally Illegal World of Business in the New Millennium

Citation

May, G. (2003), "Warning: May Contain Nuts –‐ Absolutely the First Definitive Review of the Incompetent, Inadvertent and Occasionally Illegal World of Business in the New Millennium", Foresight, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 54-54. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680310476285

If you are looking for a serious business book then this is not for you, but if you are looking for a book that has serious lessons for management and others, which is written in an amusing and readable style, then there is much of value here. It has the added attraction, for busy readers, that it consists of about 50 short pieces each around four pages long. Some of the content is polemic and some expresses opinions, which may upset those who see themselves as the subject of some of the comments, that is if being termed Grandes Fromages is not enough, but many significant questions are raised in a humorous knockabout way.

A flavour of the approach can be gained from the introduction, in which Gibbons suggests, “our world is about to end”, and that, “business will provide all that is needed for the planet to self‐destruct”. This is mainly because much of its structure, as the crashes of the dot.coms, Enron, etc., revealed, is, in his view, unreal and unsustainable. Not that there is no hope; that Gibbons finds in the younger generation who are rejecting traditional politics, career paths and corporate life sentences and taking to the streets to protest about unfettered capitalism and alienating governance. Hardly a traditional business perspective, but one it is hard to dismiss when the author was chairman and CEO of Burger King!

Among his targets are increasing inequality that is creating a gap similar to eighteeenth century France; failure to challenge established ideas that have outlived their usefulness; the detachment of ownership from involvement; the jury system and politics; the need to celebrate winners; the unthinking imposition of business ideas on the public sector; the uses of sponsorship; business flagships; the need to cut wastage, and particularly reduce energy demand; the need to accept the changes that text messaging will bring to language; the need to reinvent before the rot sets in; organisations that claim, “our people are our greatest asset”, and then announce huge lay‐offs; and forecasts that did not come true, such as increased leisure time and telecommuting.

In much of this the lessons seem negative, things not to do, but there are also positives. They include the need for personal integrity as opposed to making a quick buck by deceit, and learning from the East that a good deal is where both parties leave the table smiling because in business, as in history, “mindless oppression by victors does not create a sustainable solution”. The book is aimed at business but it could also have value in wider fields of politics and international relations in a world in which, “we need to get closer together not further apart”.

A serious work of scholarship it is not; but if raising the impertinent question is as valuable to our future as the pertinent answer, Warning: May Contain Nuts, has much to offer. It is also fun to read.