Kazira

Damn you Naseem Taleb. Ever since I read your books “Fooled by Randomness” and “The Black Swan” (previously reviewed on Kazira.com), they have completely ruined my intellectual life. I was happy in my gullible way of thinking that

•          - The whole world could be pretty much modeled by Gaussian curve

           - Economists are all honest folks

           - Media is honest and unbiased

           - Supreme court is honest and unbiased and

           - Bear Sterns is a rock solid company

You have ruined it all for me by opening up my eyes to the reality. I can no longer be fooled by the phony economists and phony writers anymore. I can smell bullshit coming from a mile away. Which brings me to this book – “How the Mighty Fall????” By Jim Collins.

You may recognize this author’s name – because he has written two of the most successful business books “Good to Great” and “Built to Last”. One of my wise friends had said that there are some companies really applying the principles laid out in “Good to Great” very religiously. I never read that book but thought very highly of the author due to other’s recommendations. This is the reason I bought this one!!! What a mistake this was? I shall never get back the time and the money I spent on buying and reading this book. I almost threw the book away after reading the first few pages. But then I read the rest for entertainment purposes only.

So, let me tell you what is happening here. Mr. Collins ego is hurt since some of the exemplary companies that he used to derive his conclusions for his previous books, have been destroyed during the current economic crisis. General thinking here is that – Since his books have sold millions of copies and so many people are applying the concepts laid out in those books – He must come up with this pile of “you know what” to justify the fact that his previous assertions are still valid despite the invalidation of key data used to generate the assertions (Not to mention that the data was selectively chosen and was sparse to begin with). Instead of just coming out and saying that “oopps, I messed up” and “don’t buy my books till I revise concepts” ; he has come out with another one to explain away the outliers in his already small sample of data. And he has filled the rest of the pages with generic, superficial blabber about the stages companies go through as they decline. The zest of the stages laid out by him were laid out by my mom 30 years ago – Don’t be arrogant, don’t be greedy, be honest and hardworking, etc.

Going back to Mr. Taleb now. We have learnt that black swans can and do happen. So to answer his question of “How the mighty fall??” Its because of Black Swans. Modeling scalable systems in Extremistan is impossible. Success is preliminary due to chances and luck. So on and so forth. So, laying out handful of principles that may apply to only a handful of available sample data is futile. When the luck runs out, or Black Swans emerge; the companies fail (no matter how well your plans and intentions are). There is no way you can get a model for luck, chance, and external forces. The distribution is NOT Gaussian for you to define these in a nice bowed-down package. And then, as if this is not enough, claiming that you can detect the initial precursor of tremors of decline is just outrageous.

This book reminds me of Tom Peter – who confessed a few years or so ago about falsifying data to support his classic work “In search of Excellence”. We’ll look back and definitely see that the principles laid out by my mom are more solid and enduring than the ones laid out by this author.

I should not write more lest my blood boils and I’ll end up damaging my leftover neurons ...

Save your money and stay away from this book.