Summer reading

The Christmas break is a great time to put down our official business reading and do some . . . reading about business (and other things). 

Here is a selection of books that are on my Christmas wish list. I hope they will help me hit the ground running in 2025, and that there is something here that may interest you, too.

 

The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (almost) everything we are told about business is wrong
By John Kay

The Financial Times describes this as “brilliantly erudite” and others have noted it is funny as well as insightful. That suggests it will be a good read from many perspectives. 

Sir John Kay is one of Britain’s leading economists. A Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he was the founding dean of the Oxford Business School and has held chairs at London Business School and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The Corporation in the 21st Century explores one of the trickiest issues facing directors today – how to balance short-term profitability with long-term sustainability – through a lens that sees traditional business models as outdated. 

For Kay, the emergence of the knowledge economy and the new business models of companies such as Apple and Google shows that: 

• Physical capital is not required if you outsource everything you can.
• With abundant finance available, the main competitive advantage of a successful business is the ability to solve problems. 

Kay suggests that collaborative ways of working and intangible assets such as ideas, trust and culture will underpin success in the 21st century, while exploring how the attempt to maximise shareholder value has led to the collapse of some significant corporations (Deutsche Bank and GE among them).

For boards, understanding how to drive value for their organisations may require grappling with Kay’s view that our old economic paradigms no longer apply and that people are truly our greatest asset, or as he puts it: “The workers are the means of production.”

We ran a webcast with Kay in December and I have a few copies of this book to give away. If you would like to go into the draw, email ceo@iod.org.nz 

 

The Chairman's Lounge: The inside story of how Qantas sold us out
By Joe Aston

Faced with the Covid-19, Qantas cut costs. It cut staff (which led to losing court actions), it stopped investing (in technology – which led to problems serving customers; and planes – which led to higher maintenance costs), and it decided to not reimburse customers for flights that were postponed, among other things. 

When Covid-19 retreated, the company had lost the trust of its staff, customers and other stakeholders. It was left with millions of dollars in fines and compensation from losing in court, and other costs related to scaling its business back up. 

Controlling costs is an important part of managing a business. So, what did Qantas get wrong and what might it have done better?

Joe Aston is an investigative reporter who, as an Australian Financial Review columnist, wrote some pointed, insightful and entertaining pieces about Qantas. (The airline stopped providing the AFR in its lounges, at one point.) I look forward to seeing what he has to say in this longer format.  

For directors, it is important to note the Qantas Governance Review Report found a lack of board effectiveness contributed to the company’s woes. I’m sure there will be useful lessons here for boards and executive teams alike. 

 

The New CEO: Lessons from CEOs on How to Start Well and Perform Quickly (Minus the Common Mistakes)
By Ty Wiggins 

This is a ‘how-to’ guide for those stepping up to the top job. It features insights from global CEOs into how they transitioned successfully (or less successfully) and what newbies can do in their first weeks, months and year in the role. 

Dr Ty Wiggins is the global lead of the CEO and Executive Transition Practice at Russell Reynolds Associates. His book is based on candid conversations with CEOs from many sectors and is underpinned by academic research (he is one of the few people to have earned a PhD in leadership transitions).

As a chief executive myself, I am interested to see how my experience matches up to others. Also, the book is not only pitched at people coming into their first CEO role. Wiggins believes every new CEO role – be it your first or third – should be approached as an entirely new experience. 

The elevator pitch for the book says this is because surprises are all but guaranteed in a new role. For example, and despite due diligence, it is difficult to get an accurate read on the operational and financial state of a business before you are inside it. And because the relationship with the board may require more time than CEOs often expect. Plus adapting to a new organisational culture can be challenging and, for first-time CEOs in particular, the emotional weight of the responsibility can catch you unawares. 

Again, a book that is likely to offer useful insights to directors AND senior executives – two roles I currently hold. 

Succession was one of our Top Five Issues for directors in 2024. 

 

Unsettled: Small stories of colonisation
By Richard Shaw

Richard Shaw is a Taranaki boy who grew up with an old rugby team photo on a shelf at home. As Shaw tells it, he was in his 50s before he really looked at that photo. In it, his great grandfather and teammates of the 1881 AC rugby team pose at Rāhotu Domain. 

It was just a photo of some blokes ready to play footy, Shaw says, until he put the date, the place (a few kilometres from Parihaka pa) and the name – AC stands for Armed Constabulary – together. A little research revealed that on 5 November, 1881, his great grandfather’s AC company marched into Parihaka and “tore the place down”. 

Unsettled is his story of learning bits of family history that were not part of the family lore. His intergenerational family wealth turns out to be built on land violently seized from Māori. What, Shaw muses, is he supposed to make of this?

Shaw interviews many other Pākehā who have similar family tales to tell. I’m curious about their stories. It appears that many are searching for ways to locate their family history within the broader swathe of New Zealand’s history. Others want the quiet part to stay unsaid.

The book is focused on how non-Māori New Zealanders are still coming to terms personally, and as a society, with our colonial history.

With the Treaty Principles Bill consultation on the way in the new year, it will be interesting to find out how these issues are talked about within families and how those conversations (or the absence of them) shape our public narratives about New Zealand’s past – and future.