In an earlier post on Extreme Konsulting, I had explored the characteristics and challenges of delivering management consulting services to reluctant and criminally corrupt government offices, but Sameer Kamat in his book Business Doctors, goes far, far deeper. In this new novel set in US West Coast, Sameer explores what it would, or could, mean to offer professional management consulting services to actual, law-breaking, criminals !
As one who has been in the consulting profession for a long time, Sameer knows too well that the business is not about rocket-science, earth-shattering ideas, but the ability to locate an action-template that has worked in the past and apply it, with some creative tweaks, to address the situation at hand.
This simple point-of-view has been expanded on and converted into a novel that explores the mutually awkward relationship that develops between an Ivy League educated, laptop-carrying management consultant and a mafia mob leader and his henchmen who have never seen anything like a Powerpoint Presentation !
But behind the initial sequence of hilarious situations, there is a deeper and then darker truth that Sameer's novel has pointed to. First, a criminal organisation is really no different from any run-of-the-mill corporate in terms of underlying business processes, like recruitment, money management, public relations and so on. It is only that the rules they break are from a different section of the statutes and some of them have more undesirable outcomes !
Which brings us to the second and deeper issue. Where is the dividing line between the consultant and the criminal ? Where does consulting to criminals end and the consultant becomes a criminal himself ? There are many instances, primarily in the US, where famous management consultants are now sitting in jail. Is it that the trajectory described in Business Doctors the one that has taken them there ? Read the novel and you may find an answer.
Those who are in the management consulting profession will love the way Sameer has mapped the well known tools of their trade to the world criminals. There are a few small plotholes but given the challenge of trying to fit a square peg into the round hole, we should be more than happy to give the author the licence to stretch facts to make ends meet. Net-net, quite a page turner that will keep you amused and intrigued till the very end.
As one who has been in the consulting profession for a long time, Sameer knows too well that the business is not about rocket-science, earth-shattering ideas, but the ability to locate an action-template that has worked in the past and apply it, with some creative tweaks, to address the situation at hand.This simple point-of-view has been expanded on and converted into a novel that explores the mutually awkward relationship that develops between an Ivy League educated, laptop-carrying management consultant and a mafia mob leader and his henchmen who have never seen anything like a Powerpoint Presentation !
But behind the initial sequence of hilarious situations, there is a deeper and then darker truth that Sameer's novel has pointed to. First, a criminal organisation is really no different from any run-of-the-mill corporate in terms of underlying business processes, like recruitment, money management, public relations and so on. It is only that the rules they break are from a different section of the statutes and some of them have more undesirable outcomes !
Which brings us to the second and deeper issue. Where is the dividing line between the consultant and the criminal ? Where does consulting to criminals end and the consultant becomes a criminal himself ? There are many instances, primarily in the US, where famous management consultants are now sitting in jail. Is it that the trajectory described in Business Doctors the one that has taken them there ? Read the novel and you may find an answer.
Those who are in the management consulting profession will love the way Sameer has mapped the well known tools of their trade to the world criminals. There are a few small plotholes but given the challenge of trying to fit a square peg into the round hole, we should be more than happy to give the author the licence to stretch facts to make ends meet. Net-net, quite a page turner that will keep you amused and intrigued till the very end.
1 comment:
I have read this novel. i liked it very much. The book is written in simple and interesting way. Writing task may frightens everyone. I you need any tips or help in writing visit coursework writing service.
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