Viewpoints : Capturing the Corporate Illiterate : Most Readers of Business Books Merely Snack on the Material; Few Spend Time to Devour it

According to experts I’ve consulted (my agent, my publisher, my neurologist), the “business book boom” of the 1980s has passed its peak. Since I joined the ranks of business book writers only in the last year, I ought to view this development with alarm. But, frankly, I don’t think I’m cut out for this kind of work.

I sensed my handicap while reading reviews of the book I just ghostwrote (“Breakthroughs!” by P. Ranganath Nayak and John Ketteringham) that said things such as: “This book doesn’t read like a typical business book.” Most writers would regard that sort of remark as a compliment, especially when it’s contained, as it usually was, in a favorable notice. I did.

But I was wrong. As I’ve come to realize since the thrill of publication waned and the best-seller list vigil dragged on, business readers tend to be rather put off by a business book that isn’t like other business books.

Business readers are people who don’t cotton to surprises. And they don’t want to be amused. Their idea of a “good read” is a one-page “executive summary,” preferably pre-read by someone else and resummarized in oral form. If they absolutely must do the reading themselves, business readers would just as soon that the author forgo the window-dressing--like complete sentences, active construction, agreement between pronouns and antecedents--and get straight to the bottom line.

Informally, I surveyed dozens of “readers” of my book and, after the first few of these conversations, grew accustomed to the fact that none had read the whole book. They hadn’t even started their reading attempt at the beginning and moved steadily upward through page numbers (which is still the only way I know to read a book). Their reading consisted of hurried perusals of several chapters, and most of them read the last chapter first. Almost all of my respondents said they were puzzled by the structure of that last chapter. “It doesn’t tell me!” they cried. “What am I supposed to do?”

Because of this informative survey of readers, my experience as a business book writer has not been wasted. I have uncovered a trend bigger than the decline of the business book boom. You see, my book was not the only business book that these readers didn’t read.

They didn’t read the others either--even the blockbuster best-sellers. Today’s business books, as a genre, are the most widely dispersed and universally unread books since Edward Gibbon foisted his two sententious volumes of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” on an unwilling British Commonwealth.

But then, how to explain those millions of subscriptions to such august publications as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune and Business Week? Well, first of all, try to get into the executive privy in today’s corporation without carrying one of those periodicals in with you. You don’t actually have to read it when you get in there. Nobody’s looking.

And I really don’t know anyone who reads the Wall Street Journal. The trademark of the modern office is a stack of perfectly folded copies of the Journal. Who besides an unemployed person has time to read 240 pages of nine-point type every day?

The exception, of course, to the corporate disregard for reading is the business book that the boss likes.

Once the corporate illiterate has been pointed to a favored volume by the man upstairs, he buys a copy at lunch hour and begins poring through, hunting for all the ritual stimuli: italics, graphs, circles, arrows and pie charts. But, above all, what he looks for are familiar names and lists.

The names he’s looking for are those of companies or executives served or sought by his own company as customers. The lists are easier to spot because they consist slavishly of 10 (never 9, never 11) “actions” the manager can take to put his firm straight, outfox his rank and file and jack his margins to the stratosphere.

Seasoned business book writers play to these tendencies in the corporate illiterate. They clutter their text with name-dropping, often in a dizzying barrage of non sequiturs. They place their lists of 10 “do’s and don’ts” conveniently at the ends of chapters. And the climactic Decalogue comes at the very end of the last chapter.

Today’s furrow-browed business reader regards the written word with the same attitude that the Puritan fathers did. Anything to read that isn’t purposeful or uplifting has the odor of brimstone. Anything that’s not painful to read is very likely sinful, and invariably frivolous.

As a result, the reading of today’s “bizlit” has a biblical air. Nobody reads from cover to cover, seeking the flow of language and persuasion. They hop hither and thence, seeking passages that support their prejudices, anecdotes that might enliven their sycophancy, lists of precepts to guide their actions. Then, like all Bible readers, these business readers ignore the precepts that they find inconvenient, create their own versions of the text and end up flying, living and managing by the seat of their pants.

With reading habits that are so hasty, sketchy and superficial, business readers are constantly forgetting things they read just a week ago. What they do remember has the quality of a proverb whispered around the room in a parlor game; the journey turns it into nonsense.

This is a phenomenon that plays into the business writer’s hands. Because of the generic shortness of memory of the business reader, the average life span of a “new concept” in business is--by my estimate--roughly three years. After that decent interval, a concept can be renamed, repackaged and sprung upon the business world as a fresh insight, ready to shower wealth and adulation on its progenitor. Like new life rising from a compost heap, the business of business books thrives on undigestible leftovers and things that can’t be swallowed.

I’ve learned by lesson. Watch for my next book, which will be on the stands in a year or so under the title, “Innovate or Get Off the Pot: 10 Management Giants’ 10 Commandments for Mega-Excellence!” If you’d like to sign up, I still have openings for nine more apostles . . . er, co-authors.