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Paddyfield.com
More reviews by Jaya Banerji
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
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Lessons from an Empire Builder: Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy by Partha Bose
We are the product of our collective past. And what a past it's been, full of courageous and valiant men occupied with conquests, crusades, and swashbuckling adventure. Without knowing it, they were changing our destinies at ever turn, exposing people to new ways of thinking, being, and living.
This world of ours is a truly magnificent melange of the actions of our ancestors. Where would we be, for instance, if Marco Polo had decided not to go to China or Columbus had set off east instead of west or Alexander had had no ambition to rule the known world?
The lives of these heroic pioneers were undoubtedly governed by circumstance, but the fact remains that destiny led them down paths fraught with countless hazards and uncertainty. Pain, discomfort, and death were irrelevant in the pursuit of glory -- and there was much glory to be had. It takes a great leap of the imagination to visualize how entirely different life must have been, unless we spend our days in libraries among dusty tomes or watch starry-eyed Hollywood reconstructions.
Alexander shines bright in my pantheon of heroes and LESSONS FROM AN EMPIRE BUILDER: ALEXANDER THE GREAT'S ART OF STRATEGY helps make that leap. Admittedly, I might be biased: I come from a land where stories of Alexander rub shoulders with those of Ashoka and Akbar. As PARTHA BOSE rightly says, every Indian schoolchild can tell you the story of Alexander and Porus, the brave Indian king who stood up to the greatest army the world had known. Both kings are considered heroes in Indian folklore, which is strange in itself, as one was conqueror and the other the vanquished. Also, at my son's insistence, I have recently read Valerio Massimo Manfredi's trilogy on Alexander, and his life is fresh in my memory. Even Manfredi's mildly purple prose could not conceal Alexander's genius, leadership, generosity, humaneness, and ultimate humanity. Recounting significant events in Alexander's life Bose has shown us, again and again, how the great empire builder emerged victorious in all his conquests and through all his tribulations.
If, as Alfred Hitchcock said, "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out", then Alexander's time on earth was more drama than life, with nary a dull moment. He lived his 32 short years through a series of wars and conquest in places with the evocative names as Chaeronea, Granicus, Gaugamela, Hydaspes, Issus, Multan and many more places. As if with Athena's divine guidance, every move he made seemed to spell success.
What is interesting now is how he always did the right thing at the right time, except at the end when, addled by power, he lost touch with reality. A common enough occurrence but, as Bose warns, one to be avoided if you want to survive as a leader!
The book is not just about the great Greek. Interleaved with the fascinating stories of Alexander's life are tales of more recent successes analysed for their strategic content -- most importantly Philip of Macedon (his impressive, far-sighted father), the Companions (his personal bodyguard) and his teacher Aristotle. Napoleon, Rudy Giuliani, Darius of Persia and Lou Gerstner jostle for place with F.D.R., Demosthenes, Jack Welch, Field Marshal Montgomery, Emperor Jehangir and Abraham Lincoln. Each anecdote has a moral, a recipe for success attached to it.
The book is crammed with successful strategies practiced by the wise and the wily, from the adoption of Aristotle's teaching methods at Harvard Business School in 1924, through the invasion of Normandy by Allied forces on 6 June 1944 to Honda's penetration of the US market, Harley-Davidson's comeback, and Elizabeth I's rise to power and Katharine Graham's intelligent succession as president of the Washington Post.
Each chapter develops and deliberates on a particularly clever stratagem of Alexander's and ends with a summary of key lessons learnt. For example, The Men Who Could Be King's summary includes: Minimize ambiguity and uncertainty, Appoint visible leaders as managers of the transition process, Seek clarity in roles, Make the succession process transparent, and immediately set the tone of your reign. Sage advice for all.
PARTHA BOSE has joined the tribe of writers who urge the business world to learn from the lives of charismatic leaders such as Lao Tzu, Buddha, Krishna, Chanakya, Machiavelli, Napoleon, and Churchill. And thank goodness they do, given the sorry state of the world today. We seem to have lost direction, with no contemporary political or business leaders to lead the way. We've switched to modeling our lives and thoughts on film or pop stars. With a few exceptions, it's downhill all the way with the likes of Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Saddam Hussein, and Musharraf (to name a few). The list is endless. Will anyone but Mandela, Martin Luther King, or Gandhi be remembered with such reverence and awe in 50, let alone 2000, years? Will 4003 see the publication of Clinton's Art of Strategy?
This book might well be categorized as History/Business, but believe me, it's almost a screenplay in its vivid imagery. I thoroughly enjoyed Bose's labour of love, steeped as it is in the history of the world. And though it holds numerous lessons for those who've chosen business (or war) as their vocation, it could also offer sound advice to those trying to run a family or live a life!
As the writer James Baldwin once said, "It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive." This book is surely going to teach different things to different people. As for me, I have my own plans. I've sneaked it on to my son's bookshelf. In my view it should be compulsory reading not only for aspiring leaders but also for aspiring adults.
Jaya Banerji
25/06/2003
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Jaya Banerji is a writer, loves to read, and currently works with an international humanitarian organization in Switzerland. |
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