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AT 20 he became the king, and within about a dozen years, he conquered the world. Meet Alexander, whose strategies have been studied by many for insights.

After studying the story of the great empire builder for decades, Partha Bose presents Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy, from Penguin Viking (www.penguinbooksindia.com). A book in which he "interweaves a gripping biography with compelling analyses of the strategies, tactics and leadership approaches of successful institutions" such as Dell, GE, Honda, Harvard Law School and so on.

For Bose, ideas such as `reengineering', `core process redesign' and `core competencies' are valueless (as much as Ghanaian cedi in forex) and phoney (like the three-dollar bill). Learning about Alexander's ideas is "akin to drinking from the original fount of knowledge", because he was "the originator of today's strategic and tactical practices that nations use to win wars and businesses to defeat competitors."

Alexander learnt his lessons from Aristotle - "the facts guy, would throw a continuous stream of facts and situations at Alexander to see how he framed, adapted and solved a problem based on a disparate, often conflicting, set of facts." Thus the man who would be king was taught "to think about connections between facts, about soft points in the logic of an argument, and about what more information was needed." This taught him to recognise patterns and making judgements based on intuition.

In the chapter titled `seven distinct leadership styles', the author talks about how Alexander believed in the principle `When possible, always attack'. The function of strategy, according to Napoleon and Alexander, was "to make decisive contact with the enemy as soon as possible; everything would fall into place once that was done".

The story of one of the earliest encounters between India and the West - where Alexander asked Porus what he should do with him, only to be told `treat me like a king' - is something that would come as an embarrassment to today's leaders. Alexander was only used to pleas for mercy, clemency and surrender, but here was pride and self-esteem in defeat. "Trained by Aristotle he could comprehend the subtleties of human behaviour," notes the author.

"History is strewn with the remains of organisations, and fallen leaders, who made criticism unacceptable," Bose writes. "Even in organisations with large groups of leaders, the quickest way of losing directions is when challenging the status quo."

For Alexander, this happened when he killed Cleitus who was too outspoken, and this shook him because Aristotle had taught him that disagreements or criticism had nothing to do with lack of loyalty. "Rulers and leaders who confused those two, Alexander was aware, were certain to create around them an environment rife with cronyism or cliquery. As many business and political institutions have seen, nothing erodes an institution's moral fabric as quickly and easily as cronyism."

How true, you may wonder, when seeing the happenings-on these days. The problem with cronyism is not that the brave would face the consequences of disagreeing; it is the meek who can render much damage.

"The ones to fear, Napoleon said, `are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know'. They will pull the rug out from beneath you at the first opportunity."

If only today's top men learnt from history.

ManageMentor@hotmail.com

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