Author: David Shirreff
Oh no, not another book on management strategy! Yes, but this one is set in 450BC. No danger then of being bamboozled by the latest in consultant-speak. Or is there?
Chao Kli Ning’s combined laundry and duck restaurant located in deepest China seems to succumb to every modern management bugbear: centralization, technology (a giant abacus), bean-counting (literally, soya, mung and aduki beans), over-leverage, merger mania, PR hype and top-heavy management. “Get a big-picture grip on the details,” Kli Ning urges his faithful manager Lo Fan each time he pushes him in a new and potentially disastrous direction, to be saved at the last moment by the way of Z/Yen enlightenment.
On one occasion Klin Ning’s wife rescues the entire business – which is short sea bass for a pre-paid banquet when the price has rocketed – with her own-account position in sea bass futures.
Kli Ning meets a greedy monk who vastly expanded the brand name of his religious order by franchising. After that, by a mixture of judicious bribery and the portfolio approach to risk management, Kli Ning’s business thrives and he founds the Z/Yen school of business enlightenment.
The authors – surely the original Kli Nang and Lo Fan – manage to sustain this thought-provoking parable over 159 pages by virtue of a light style and unforced humour. Only occasionally does the work betray itself as a marketing tool for their own Z/Yen school. Clean Business Cuisine Now and Z/Yen, by Michael Mainelli and Ian Harris, is published by Milet and on sale for £14.99.
