McMafia – Crime without Frontiers, Misha Glenny

According to figures culled from the IMF, the World Bank and from research institutes in Europe and North America, the “shadow economy” accounts for between 15 and 20% of global turnover!!

Leaders at all Levels, Ram Charan

Leadership matters! It creates and harnesses the energy of people, gives them direction, and synchronises their efforts. Leadership is a lead indicator of a company’s prospects, unlike financial results which only tell you where the company has already been. “Crisis may be an overused word, but it is a fair description of the state of leadership in today’s corporations,” says Charan, and he should know being a consultant to many of the largest businesses around the world (literally!)

McMafia – Crime without Frontiers, Misha Glenny

According to figures culled from the IMF, the World Bank and from research institutes in Europe and North America, the “shadow economy” accounts for between 15 and 20% of global turnover!!

Given that the shadow economy has become such an important economic force in our world, it is surprising that we devote so little effort to a systematic understanding of how it works and how it links into the licit economy. This shadow world is by no means distinct from its partner in the light, which is itself often far less transparent than one might suspect or desire. In both banking and commodity trading, the criminal operates much closer to home than we think. Money-laundering, drugs, cigarette smuggling, human-trafficking, murder, prostitution, scams, protection, weapons trading, oil supplies, gold smuggling, counterfeit and on, and on...

International terrorism, which certainly feeds in these same grounds, is primitive and relatively insignificant in comparison. Crime and the pursuit of money or political power have proven incomparably more damaging over the last two decades. It is striking how all opinion polls in Iraq (!) since the invasion, have placed corruption and crime in equal first place with terrorism as the major concern for citizens.

The book is written by an award winning, distinguished journalist and historian who has worked for both the Guardian and the BBB as their Central European Correspondent. It is well researched and riveting. The scope runs from the Balkans to Dubai, from Canada to India, from Brazil to Nigeria and, you guessed it...

Is this a business book? Yes, big business, very big business... We need to know about this.

Leaders at all Levels, Ram Charan

Leadership matters! It creates and harnesses the energy of people, gives them direction, and synchronises their efforts. Leadership is a lead indicator of a company’s prospects, unlike financial results which only tell you where the company has already been. “Crisis may be an overused word, but it is a fair description of the state of leadership in today’s corporations,” says Charan, and he should know being a consultant to many of the largest businesses around the world (literally!)

In this book he presents a radical and controversial remedy – new but not untested because it is based on his keen insights into how business leaders actually develop. Leadership ability is developed through practice and self-correction and no, not everyone can become a business leader. These tenets are the foundation to an approach to leadership that focuses on spotting leaders early and putting them in situations that drive them to grow fast. It is a 180 degree flip-flop from the a discrete activity run by the HR department, in which people are put through a one size fits all training process to produce what we all must agree has been less than exciting. The traditional approach has led to us focusing on the wrong people for the wrong reasons. For the most part the methods we have employed for identifying and evaluating leaders are perfunctory and bureaucratic.

With caution, with circumspection, I tell you, I think he might have the solutions. The remedy is the Apprenticeship Model.

The book provides concrete advice and real-world examples of both how to create the context for leadership development as well as a guide for aspiring leaders to develop their own capabilities.

Can you think of any manager or business leader who does not need to be on top of this issue? Neither can I.

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I look forward to seeing you

Ian Mann

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