Book Review - Sack the CEO

Title:Sack the CEO
Author:Jeetendra Jain
Number of pages:247
Price:Rs.245/-
Copyright:Vikas Publication House
Published in:2003
My Rating:****

'Sack the CEO' is a fairly humourous book on corruption and hunger for power in the corporate top-brass,offering innovative (but what I would also call a little far-fetched and slightly impractical) ways to oust such an epidemic from the organization. The book is organized into three parts.

Business at Twist In the Tale Limited(TITL),a company that manufactures computer mouses for the rat-race, is going haywire.Corruption is rampant.Topgun,CEO of TITL is quick to pass the buck.He enjoys fat kickbacks and plays smart in the affairs of TITL where fraud,bribery and sycophancy are the rule of the day.

Part 1 introduces the three main characters - Smallfry is a modest plodder with great moral standards but no great educational credits to push him up the ladder.Fastrack being an MBA grad knows how t rope up the ladder,has an amazing knack of numbers,social networking and strategy but cares a damn for ethics.Takeiteasy was a trustworthy, 9 to 5 guy who wouldn't get hyper-excited or crestfallen about anything.Pipping out a thoroughly sweated-out genuinely good deal in favour of a lower quality one brought in by one of the CEO's corrupt contacts,denying a deserving guy of a promotion at the last moment even when everyone else literally swore by God that he'd be the next one on the cards for a mouth-watering promotion and promoting a more favoured dolt instead,cancelling a deserving guy's trip abroad just when he turns up all set for the promised trip and sending a CEO's-hot-favourite instead,transferring a guy who refused to fudge accounts - these are some o the incidents that get our terrific trio to spring into action and do something to check the rampant corruption.The description of characters is pretty humourous and any employed guy/gal would be able to relate well to this.
This whole part about how top-level corruption takes its toll on honest employees who either do not know the nitty-gritty of the trade or know it all but do not adopt it,thanks to their always being charily perched in the shadows of their moral hats has been presented well and makes for good reading.

Part 2 talks about the varied multitude of ways in which corruption manifests itself amongst CEOs - supposedly the most powerful people spearheading a company.In part 1, the reader gets a taste out of how the character is going by the name of the character itself.Sticking to the same style of nomenclature in part 2 to describe different kinds of corrupt CEOs makes the whole description very guessable and devoid of any surprises.Halfway through the second part, the reader begins to feel a slight pinch of lack punch.The description gets unenjoyably long.It runs into pages despite the fact that the reader can get the summary of each character's description just by looking at the character name and reading a para or two.Eg:Crony Capone has a bunch of sycophant cronies boot-licking him,Talk-the-Talk doesn't quite do he talks about doing,Volte-Face does a U-turn on his decisions,Siphon De Cash loots the company for his own selfish interests,Next Job is more interested in leveraging the niceties of his current job in order to get him a better job next,Family Man builds a dynasty rule by getting his family members juicy jobs in the company and so on.I personally found this part extremely boring especially when I was through with the descriptions of the first two or three CEO types.

Part 3 provides some enlightenment on how the ouster plans can be implemented to get rid of Topgun.If the CEO has a sweetheart,work your way through her.Track his phone calls and emails,give this info to the press.Give crucial info about him to the competitor company,distribute this info to the head hunters and watch them vie for him.Last but not the least,choose a vice-captain and help him groove into the new CEO spot.Using these,our three heros oust Topgun,administer a new guy in his place and then start a consultancy of their own called Yestecee,which ofcourse has NO CEO.

Some of the ideas presented are so risk-prone and far-fetched that it wouldn't even be on anyone's remote dream list to try stuff like that!All in all, I would say 'Sack the CEO' is worth a read.I could relate so well to the happenings at TITL,except that I had to imagine my TL in place of Topgun.Isn't really hilarious but it definitely is enjoyably comical,except for a boring part 2.

Excerpts:

(1)So what constitutes the board of directors?(besides some octogenarians with one foot in the grave and the other in your company)

(2)You might be tempted to apply for the CEO's job at Yestecee.Don't.Summarily,you will be rejected.They don't need one.

Other stuff worth a mention:Check out the bookmark that is provided with this book.It's a pretty creative and cool one.There's a tie that's shaped like a noose.

Author Profile:Jeetendra Jain is an electronics engineer and an MBA (Marketing) from IIMB.He has worked with big brands like GE Capital,Thomas Cook and Ogilvy & Mather.He has a rich experience of over 13 years.He has been a cartoonist for Indian Express and has been writing marketing literatire for Business World,Business Standard and Brand Equity.Can be reached at jeetendrajain@hotmail.com