Befriend the free market, not this pointless corporate candyfloss

Simplicity By Bill Jensen (HarperCollins, #19.99) The Twelve Organisational Capabilities: Valuing People at Work By Bob Garratt (HarperCollins #19.99) Reviewed by Peter Clarke Should I admit it ? A conscientious reviewer ought to read the books he is to criticise. I did try. It was just too painful. I am so sensitive a soul the dreadful language of corporate self-improvement books was too much for me. Men in suits cannot write in pleasing sentences. Every paragraph tastes of cardboard. If you can get flatulence of the mind these two gurus of capitalist virtues have got chronic cases.

Neither of the authors are fools. In amongst the prose dross there are benign and useful insights. The publishers, Harper Collins, know from experience executive baloney sells well. I wonder where? Are they bought as dirty tricks to confuse your junior staff? Do corporate spouses buy them for their husbands in the naive hope they will enhance their careers? Are they on the syllabuses of the sillier sort of business schools? They are not put in Chritmas stockings. These are new year releases. My hunch is they sell best in airport lounges. Corporate man spends many hours in airports and in the air. The more thrustful and successful the more you hurtle.

Why do businessmen enjoy talking and writing baloney? Something is going on here. I do not undertand what. The proposition of Bill Jensen author of Simplicity is that things are very complex and ought to be simpler. He spins it out to 200 pages of the dense waffle. Bob Garratt, author of the best seller The Fish Rots from the Head, now offers Valuing People at Work which argues, you've guessed it, we ought to value our workers and colleagues more. It is soft headed and amiable stuff and undeniably well intentioned.

I notice all business rhubarb books cost #19.99. This must be on the discovery the ordinary executive regards this as a saving on #20. I suppose they are human, and duped like the rest of us.

Taste the blarney:"This is the age of information overload. In a world where people's time and attention are scarce, the only way to stay sane and get any work done is to simplify - to focus on what matters most and not waste your time on the rest" Who could disagree? Does it mean anything? Mr Jensen could write fortune cookies or articles for Reader's Digest or perhaps even be a front-rank astrologer with such uplifting platitudes. Horoscopes for executives would sell well.

Garratt tells us: "If people were truly valued as assets they would appear on the balance sheet. They do not. Indeed people often feel undervalued because they are not recognised both as key resources that sustain their organisation, and as individuals with unique experience and commitment." Yes, he sustains it for the requisite 200 pages. It is exhausting and enervating.

Experience suggests the attention span of executive man is no more than 200 pages just as his budget cannot exceed #19.99.

The essence of both books is the exhortation we should all be nicer to each other. It makes life sweeter and usually enhances profits. The Ten Commandments turn out to be quite a good operating manual for entrepreneurship. The Babylonian motto for commercial success was "Do As You Would Be Done By". The courteous, honest, plain dealing man in the market will always endure over the cheat and rogue or fraudster. We do not need inventories of "case studies" from corporate America to confirm what we all know to be true. The raw material of daily commercial life is the usual warped timber of humanity.

Companies and capitalism are evolving in ways that are intriguing but you barely catch a glimpse of it from Messrs Jensen and Garratt. There is not a proposition or an insight I can bother to disagree with in these acres of amiable flannel. Yes, we need to show more sympathy and intelligence to employees and customers. Even the poor old shareholders deserve a dividend occasionally.

I would love to know how texts such as these go down in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. They still seem to carry the cultural assumption exchange impoverishes one of the parties to any transaction. The daftie rioters in Seattle at December's WTO meeting still carry these primitive atavistic prejudices.

Markets pacify and placate. The Greek for market is also the term to befriend. The death of socialism was the momentous event of the last century. Now we must conduct a mopping up operation to reform and dissolve the State's remaining roles - education, medicine and welfare and planning. It may take a decade or two before the remnants of socialism are evaporated or bequethed to Historic Scotland as interesting and instructive exhibits of past follies.

You will never pick up any of the important ideas from these suppliers of corporate candyfloss. It is sweet and pink and fluffy but if you want the real meat of capitalist ideas you have to turn to Hayek or Kirzner.

So much babble and burble is spoken about the internet and cyber- space that I almost recoil from it but the web conforms entirely to the free market idea of an end-independent spontaneous order. It belongs to nobody but it is made up of a kaleidoscope of defined property rights. It does not need the State at all other than as a last recourse enforcer of contracts.

The language of capitalism is not the empty headed corporate prescriptions of these authors but the ancient and lucid mystery: prices.

Capitalism is triumphant because it is human nature reflected to itself. The free market is applied Original Sin.

If you are having difficulty sleeping at night I recommend both these books, urgently. I agree we must all be nicer to each other but that includes an excemption from having to read such tosh. These are the equivalents to the endless collections of sermons the Victorians churned out. Nothing is more tedious than remorseless virtue.

Peter Clarke was formerly pa to Lord Hanson

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