Who are the most alluring business gurus? Heretics, sages and pirates? Or modern executives and academics whose humdrum experiences are closer to those of the truth-seeker?
For me, it was no contest when I packed for my annual furlough on the Med. Management Secrets from History easily won suitcase space, leaving weightier and worthier tomes abandoned on the bedroom floor.
Only the absence of embossed silver lettering on the front cover made me hesitate. I love trashy business self-help books. So do millions of others, who sweep them off the shelves of airport bookstalls in armfuls. Potboilers deploying famous dead people, such as Human Resources the Genghis Khan Way, are a well-established sub-genre. Learned volumes on management science sell only modestly.
My choice gave me the opportunity to play the soft-target gambit beloved of literary critics: pick a bad book to demolish amusingly. But I was brought up short by a chapter extracted from Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince. This was as relevant to ambitious bosses today as its original target demographic, the scheming Renaissance rulers whose wicked bones moulder in tombs across Italy.
Machiavelli inspired an adjective now better known than he is. "Machiavellian" denotes amoral manoeuvring for power that may involve lying, betrayal and murder. Apologists point to the "don't try this at home" moralising that punctuates the book. A whiff of brimstone lingers around it, nevertheless.
It would be wrong to overstate the similarities between a Renaissance princedom and a big company based on the prevalence of back-stabbing, credit-stealing and palace coups. One would not want to give Renaissance princedoms a bad name. But if you work within a large corporation you will still recognise strategies described by Machiavelli. No matter that disposing of an enemy with a stiletto through the heart is passé these days. You can as easily exile him to the Reading branch office, which has the same effect, career-wise.
Machiavelli's theme was the getting and keeping of power. He believed that "people are only impressed by appearances and results". Just like customers and investors. They have nothing else to go on, bless them.
As for underlings, a prince, for which read "chief executive", should command their love and fear. If eliciting both responses is tough, it is best to be feared. Any boss that fires a tenth of his managers yearly, as GE's Jack Welch advocated, has opted for fear, whatever the mission statement says.
Robert Maxwell, the media mogul, and Leona Helmsley, the property tycoon, used intimidation to considerable effect in their careers. But both would have failed as 15th-century princelings, according to Machiavelli's prescriptions, because they were widely hated, a factor that contributed to their downfall.
Machiavelli, a fan of the ruthless cleric and soldier Cesare Borgia, believed leaders should mete out punishment to a few malefactors pour encourager les autres. A prince should insulate himself from unpopularity by using stooges to handle unpopular measures. The modern analogy is the chief executive who hires consultants to recommend a cost-cutting programme that he gets the finance director to implement.
If you aspire to be a manager in Cesare's mould, you should nurture support by "rewarding anyone who endeavours to increase the prosperity of the state, at suitable times of the year entertain the people with festivals". An employee of the month scheme and a staff party may suffice if bags of florins and a bareback horse race are beyond your means. But the surest way to win respect is to govern well.
A prince must sometimes fib to protect himself, so "know how to cover your actions and be a talented and cunning liar". Managers these days prefer expedient evasiveness, a more dilute form of dishonesty.
Niccolò's wisdom challenged my prejudice that romantic historical figures have nothing useful to say about business. This had previously been deepened by Sun Tzu, the Chinese military philosopher whose incisively vague aperçus adorn many popular business books.
"You can use Sun Tzu to back up practically any proposition you want," scoffs Stephen Bungay, of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre.
New Sun Tzu sayings can be invented to suit any occasion. At your next strategy meeting, intone: "As Sun Tzu said, the jade fortress may be taken by guile if it cannot be taken by siege." No one will bat an eyelid.
Other non-authorities on business deployed by Daniel Diehl and Mark P Donnelly, the authors of Management Secrets from History (Sutton), include Confucius, Elizabeth I and the buccaneer Bartholomew Roberts.
But none of their nostrums has commercial oomph compared with those of the legendary entrepreneurs H.J. Heinz and Lillian Vernon. As Prof Patrick Barwise of London Business School says: "It is best to understand business by studying businesses," adding: "The relevance of lessons from other fields can be wildly exaggerated."
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