How bosses should write books

CHIEF EXECUTIVESCEO are not, it goes without saying, the world’s most natural writers. They do not rise to the top without laserlike ambition, a trait that rarely leads to literary reflection. To achieve success, they have to murder their straight-talking selves and master corporate twaddle instead. They need neither fame nor fortune—the main reasons writers go through the agonies that they do. And when they do write, as a business publisher admits, you often “weep for the trees”. Think only of Jack Welch’s paean to great (ie, his own) leadership called “Winning”. Its first pearl of wisdom is: “Winning in business is great, because when companies win, people thrive and grow.”So it is with trepidation that Schumpeter celebrates the flourishing of a genre at which most book-lovers would shudder: the memoir. True, it has its drawbacks. The authors are mostly white, male and middle-class. They are neither Hemingways nor Dostoevskys. There is no sex, drugs and only middle-of-the-road rock ’n’ roll. And they can afford the best ghostwriters so it is hard to tell how much is their work anyway.