5 Fabulous Business Fables

By A. Hamilton Augenblecq

"5 Fabulous Business Fables" is a collection of short, fast-paced fables featuring a menagerie of penguins, free-range chickens, and other all-too-human animals. It’s an entertaining and educational read for anyone who makes business presentations, deals with consultants, or plans to go to business school.

Unlike business advice books that claim to have identified some magic number of steps or rules (5? 7? 12?) that guarantee success in all business situations, the philosophy of these fables is that there are only more or less useful ways of looking at things – temporarily.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. Hamilton Augenblecq
• Release date: Jul 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466187221

A. Hamilton Augenblecq

A. Hamilton (Alex) Augenblecq is a graduate of a leading Eastern (U.S.) business school and has spent many years in business, government and consulting. He is also very fond of animals.

Book preview

5 FABULOUS BUSINESS FABLES

by

A. Hamilton Augenblecq

Illustrated by J. Lyon

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Copyright 2009-2011 by A. Hamilton Augenblecq

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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Table of Contents

Introduction(s)

Disclaimer

Fable #1 - The Tuxedo Factory (Organizational Change)

Fable #2 - Management Science (Scientific Management/Management Consulting)

Fable #3 - Ducks and Bunnies (Business Presentations)

Fable #4 - Bee School (Business School)

Fable #5 - Rocket Science (Financial Engineering)

If Football Were More Like Life . . .

INTRODUCTION (Short-Attention-Span Version)

These fables grew out of the observation that the world is more complex and contingent than can be captured in a single, simple moral at the end of a traditional fable. Or the howevermany (7? 8? 15?) factors asserted to be necessary and sufficient for success in typical business advice books.

It is dedicated to the proposition that there are only more or less useful ways of looking at the world – temporarily.

INTRODUCTION (Long-Winded Version)

NOTE: This version of the Introduction is 1,110 words long. So even though it’s kind of interesting and sheds some more light on the underlying philosophy of the fables, you might want to skip ahead (for now, at least) and go directly to Fable #1.

If ever there were two categories of literature that need updating, they are the fable and the business advice book.

The fable has remained pretty much the same since the time of Aesop in the 6th century B.C.: a short, didactic story, usually involving animals, with a simple moral.

The business advice book typically consists of one or two ideas padded out to at least 200 pages and including some number (5 or 7 or 12 or whatever) of arbitrary factors that the author asserts are all you need to succeed in business.

And people buy this stuff! In bestseller quantities!

Apparently there is something in human nature that wants to believe that there are simple instructions for success that will work every time – despite ample evidence to the contrary in our complex and ever-changing world.

To get a better perspective on this reductive impulse, it is instructive to go back to classical antiquity and the origins of the fable.

Aesop, so the story goes (the actual historical record is sketchy), lived from about 620 to 560 BC. He was a slave of Iadmon, who gave him his freedom for his clever storytelling ability. In Aesop’s day telling a story with recognizable human characters could get you killed. Particularly if you were a slave.

So Aesop used animals with human characteristics (portraying humans with animal characteristics) to entertain and convey practical wisdom.

Aesop became quite popular, and, at least according to legend, moved in the highest circles of ancient Greek society – philosophers and kings – and was employed as an ambassador