A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose!

Things are as they are, not as they should be!

Business Doctors

Title: Business Doctors21532628
Author: Sameer Kamat
Publisher: Booksoarus
ISBN: 978-93-5156-964-0
Number of Pages: 240
Price [INR] : 250
Genre: Fiction

Ivy League educated management consultant, Michael Schneider, gets hired by an unlikely client – a mafia boss who wants to make a last desperate bid to resuscitate his family business that spans across gambling, drugs and porn.

A reluctant Schneider takes on the challenge to analyse the problems and re-launch the underworld organization into the super-competitive, highly evolved world of crime.

I started reading this Business Doctors one afternoon and a few pages down the book and a thought strikes, “Hey! This is a story set in a foreign country (it’s the US of A), with foreign characters and written by an Indian author!” Now, isnt’t that a different one!!

Yes, Business Doctors is set in Los Angles where Stephen Woody runs his Woody’s Family Business or WFB as it is better known. WFB is involved in highly lucrative and risky areas of weapons, drugs, prostitution, gambling, pornography, extortion, contract killing etc. WFB was losing big money and the situation was close to hopeless. Woody’s wife, Angie suggests him to approach the experts or the management consultants or the Business Doctors to bail him out of this business mess.

The professional team of Michael Schneider and Martin from Schneider Associates, after some deep reflective discussion finally decide to work with an unconventional and unique business client like WFB. It is a challenge for both the parties to come on the same page of understanding and trust.

And thus starts the rollercoaster ride for Michael and Martin as they embark on Project Lean and Mean.

Michael and Martin apply their management consulting lingo and jargon like value stream mapping, issue tree combined with the MECE  (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) approach in order to prioritize and break down the problems, team building, back-to-the-drawing board, out-of-the-box-thinking to 4 step process of group dynamics development ie the Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing!!

The story in the Business Doctors progresses swiftly from one scene to the next with snappy dialogues that engages with you as a reader. The management lingo which is used liberally in the book is simplified for the understanding of the gangsters and it took me back in time to the good old MBA days! The insights of the various businesses viz consulting, gambling, drugs or the rounding off and truncating in online transactions made for a very interesting read! The humor in the story is found at numerous places and adds to the reader’s delight.

A major gripe that I had while reading Business Doctors is that the text on all the pages of the book does not have paragraph breaks!! And the direction of the apostrophe kept oscillating from (’) to (‘). It took me a while to get accustomed to this pattern but it dampened the reading pleasure, a bit!

While rest of the book reads like a breeze, I felt the team-building or the Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing stage of the new recruits took a long time and could have been pruned somewhat!

Overall, Business Doctors is as thrilling and entertaining as a good novel should be. A must read.

Rating : [usr 4 text=”false” size=20]

Author Bio: Sameer Kamat is the founder of MBA Crystal Ball and Booksoarus. His first book, Beyond The MBA Hype published by HarperCollins, is currently in the third reprint. Business Doctors – Management Consulting Gone Wild is his second book.

18 Responses

  1. the main issue seems to be the editing more than the authors fault itself, I guess. I mean, the direction of apostrophies is pretty much standard and should have been corrected during basic editing.. still as u said, nice to see an Indian not writing with India/Indians as primary focus.

    1. Yes, that’s an editing issue but mars the reading pleasure. This story reminded me of your story in the Ten Shades of Life 🙂

  2. Quite an interesting premise for this novel – applying best of management practices to mafia business! Well, I guess a business is a business after all 🙂 Not sure if I will pick it up anytime soon, but I would like to see this author think of something similar for the Indian context….the mumbai underworld scene for example 🙂 I am sure they can use some good management advice too, at least PR advice to begin with 🙂

    1. I know what you mean, Beloo… hope the authors are reading this and are inspired to write such a book 🙂

  3. Yesterday I was watching MTV and saw that a Filipino singer was singing an English song. I suddenly realized that I have seen a number of foreign nationals singing on American television but very few Indians.
    It is time we took our talent far and wide. So glad this Indian author set his book in USA with foreign characters.

    1. Agree with you, India has got huge talent but now-a-days, our talent is recognized world over, though that’s just a tip of the iceberg! I really liked this book… looks and sounds authentic and international.

  4. WOW! Shilpa, you have been reading so many novels. O-O. And here I am not able to read one book in two weeks. Getting inspired by your reading streak. 🙂

    1. Hope this reading spree continues, as I have a long pile to read and review 🙂 And looking forward to your reviews too 🙂

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