Nothing unusual about it!

First the disclaimer: Don’t try to draw broad business lessons from this book. The problem with books like Richard Branson’s Screw Business As Usual is that they are as much about the author and his personality as about the lofty ideas they evangelise. Indeed, what stands out at the end of Screw Business As Usual is the author’s unwavering admiration for himself.

Don’t get me wrong, this is about business and Branson is a thorough businessman. With around 200 companies in more than 30 countries and an annual turnover in excess of $20 billion globally, he knows a thing or two about how to make the most of an opportunity.

Only in this case he is headed in the wrong direction, not blazing a new trail.

Having said that, you must give it to the guy for being candid. By his own admission, the book has been seven years in the making. He writes: “It’s the story of my seven-year journey towards realizing that, while business has been a great vehicle for growth in the world, neither Virgin nor many other businesses have been doing anywhere near enough to stop the downward spiral we all find ourselves in; and that in many cases, as demonstrated by the recent financial crisis in the world, we have actually been causing that spiral to turn even faster.”

Well, that is the reason he set about writing this book — “to find out why we need to change the way we do business, and how that might best be done,” he announces, with the kind of flamboyance you would associate only with Branson. But although he argues vociferously for the importance of doing good — “I will attempt to describe how I think business can help fix things and create a more prosperous world for everyone,” he says in the foreword — I didn’t find much in the book that would actually help a reader achieve those objectives. As for me, the test of a good book is not how well it markets an idea but how well it helps readers get there.

Also, the whole doing-good-is-good-for-business proposition has been the subject of just too many business books in recent years and no longer has the power to make readers sit up and pay attention. It doesn’t help that the book is poorly laid out: No visual breaks and long paragraphs — just a technical glitch perhaps, but they make the 357 pages, including the postscript and the acknowledgements, appear like forebidding walls of text.

Of course, the book has some strong points beyond the usual platitudes. First, it’s an easy read, one that you’ll finish in a sitting or two. Most business books tend to offer the same old advice: Research the market, write a business plan, do not underestimate competition, yadda yadda. Branson’s style is conversational; if you really look for them, Screw Business As Usual is full of situations that have right-now application.

Then there are some interesting anecdotes. It seems every time Branson came home from an overseas trip he put his loose foreign exchange in his top right hand drawer. At some point, his wife Joan noticed the drawer was beginning to sag. She said that must be happening to many business people who travelled a lot. “Why not get them to empty their pockets when they get off the plane,” she suggested. “You could raise millions for charity and the money wouldn’t go waste.” That was how “Change for Good” was born which has apparently raised millions of dollars for Unicef.

The book does give us these occasional shiny moments. Then there are stories about companies you would have never heard before and people you wouldn’t meet in your regular nine-to-five day, but who are doing some great stuff. If there is one weakness about Branson’s people, perhaps, it’s the binary nature of these characters.

The other redeeming feature of Screw… are the occasional questions aimed at the reader. “How will we survive when we run out of everything?” “What is Company X doing for the environment?” “Why not build a refinery for clean rather than dirty fuel?” Questions like these have the potential to get the conscientious readers thinking. That such questions are few and far between only serves to highlight how unhelpful the rest of the book is.

In the end, Screw… is principally a defence of the “Virgin” way of doing business. As he says in the book, “I’ve always looked on my businesses not just as money-making machines, but as adventures that can, I hope, make people better off.” So forget Branson’s what-the-hell attitude. Forget his kind words about the new benevolent capitalism — Capitalism 24902, as he calls it. We know platitudes when we see them.

SCREW BUSINESS AS USUAL
Richard Branson
Virgin Books
372 pages; Rs 599