THE BREAKOUT ZONEI HAD MIXED FEELINGS after going
through Crash, penned by a prolific
writer with vast industry exposure.
Books on leadership come a dime a
dozen and they usually fall in two cat-
egories. The pedantic ones, written by
academicians (like me), belabour plati-
tudinous points. Others, often written
by practising managers, narrate and
sermonise strategy success or shortfall
and turf wars. This book is neither.
The author’s insights are drawn from
his rich corporate experience, and he
backs them up with further research in
diverse fields such as economics, math-
ematical biophysics and psychology.
That the book focusses on CEO
exits also aroused my interest. Job
exits, from a typical perspective, are
often considered failures, and there is
a growing understanding that failures
can be a better teacher than success.
Crash lives up to that expectation.
Besides, a success saga mostly plays up
grand qualities of people and does not
dwell much on randomness, corporate
machinations or acts of betrayal. In
contrast, exit stories indicate that it is
not performance alone, but relation-
ships with key stakeholders such as
the board of governors and influen-
tial shareholders which determine all
hirings and firings. Gopalakrishnan’s
book explores this sinister side of cor-
porations where decisions are made
to look rational post facto, and powerstruggles determine outcomes.
However, the author’s insights
could have been aligned better with the
15 eventful case studies which narrate
how the CEOs were sacked. The first
part of the book talks about the changes
in CEO behaviour after they assumed
power, but the case studies do not delve
deep enough to substantiate those
points. The stories also lack uniformity.
For instance, the chapter on Infosys and
Vishal Sikka runs into 31 pages while
that on Ramesh Sarin at Voltas has less
than six pages. Neither narrative allows
us to apply the six-stage monomyth of
business leaders that the writer hypoth-
esises in the first part of the book.
The chapter on Sikka makes for112 IBUSINESS TODAYIAugust 25I 2019EX-LIBRISBy Sourav Mukherji
THE CORNER OFFICE HAS TOO MANY
PITFALLS, BUT BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
WITH KEY STAKEHOLDERS MAY HELP WHEN
THE GOING GETS TOUGH.
TREACHEROUS
TERRAIN
Crash: Lessons from the entry
and exit of CEOs
By R. Gopalakrishnan
Publisher: Penguin Portfolio
Pages: 288
Price: ` 499