The book has been through a tortuous journey for over two years. Today, after four weeks of launch, the book is already on the bestseller lists of indiatimes.com, rediff.com and also the top 10 bestselling management books list of Strategist- Crosswords for the month.

But I must say that I had a very enjoyable time writing this book without having much confidence in writing one.

The part I struggled with most is obviously data gathering. I have spent time gossiping and ferreting information from almost over 150 managers across 50 organisations the last two years about their top management and their misdeeds. These discussions were very insightful. I would get back home and furiously recall the points of discussion.(you could never do that in front of the individual) and pen them down in my diary.

Each discussion was a new excitement and a new finding for me. After having worked in the corporate world for over 13 years, you often get this complacency that you know what kind of “corrupt” managers exist and then your realize that surprisingly you don’t!

Each revelation was extremely creative and new ( and exciting for my book).

The other part I struggled with tremendously with was the format of the book. I can say easily that this was the toughest part or probably is the toughest part about writing a book like this. Should you write in first person ( with the danger of sounding very autobiographical) ? Should it be in a story format – but then how do you then fit in descriptive text and analysis ? Should there be management maxims put on a platter for the reader or should it be subtle and let the reader “discover” rather than get it in canned form ? After writing a book for 5-6 months you are terrified with the format – like I was, and you have to be very creative trying to decide which way to go. It is extremely excruciating to do this.

The title of the book “Sack The CEO’ I always believed was the most important decision that we would take for the book – i e I and the publisher. There was this tendency to broad base the appeal ( like most marketers would attempt to do) and call the title “Sack Your Boss” or “Sack The CEO & Your Boss”. Somehow we took a riskier decision with the title remaining as “Sack The CEO” which we felt was radical, strong and conveyed the central idea of the book which was about Corruption at Top End of the Management and how the employees down the line perceived it. Going by the initial results in the marketplace maybe we took a right decision.

We spent incredible amount of time on two more things - reviews and the cover design. For the cover design we wanted an international and a thriller look ( maybe a Grisham or Arthur Hailey kind of stuff) We defined some aspects of “Sack The CEO’ as a brand………..funny, witty, corporate, satirical but with some real meat, fresh and innovative. Somehow the cover design we developed was a culmination of all these insights we had into the book as a brand ( or that is how we feel). The same feel runs through the inside typesetting and the chapter heads and subheads. One thing I was tempted to include, and almost did, were cartoons. I somehow stayed away from it since I felt it would take away the humour which was already cast in the book. This was another tempting option we almost went in for. The website www.sacktheceo.com has the same brand feel but has cartoons since we felt it was a different medium.

The most interesting thing to work on was the marketing of the book. Most catalogue products like music, software, videos, software games, books and games have short shelf lives and are fighting for shelf space.

Therefore, marketing decisions are very diffcult. We however told ourselves that the advertising, the website, my presentation to audiences will all have, let us say 70 % of the flavour of the book and 30 % added flavour to provide that section of the audience a different value. Thus creating a larger than life brand for the book .

With a decade long ambition of writing a book ( and marketing it ), for me there could not have been a more fun way in my sabbatical days to write a mad book like “Sack the CEO”

“Enjoy the journey” is what some Zen philosopher must have remarked.

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Jeetendra Jain is the author of the new bestseller “SACK THE CEO” and was earlier in marketing in Thomas Cook , GE Capital and O&M. He is an IIM Bangalore alumnus and an engineer.

Issue BG28 July03

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