When thinking about "the future", people use different mental pictures. For example, a modern CEO may fancy him-or herself standing face forward at the prow of a ship, peering boldly at the horizon. But that’s daft. None of us can see even a minute into the future — otherwise we’d all win at roulette.
Some historians believe ancient cultures of the Middle East (like the Sumerians, who gave us hours and minutes) saw time differently. Their view may best be illustrated using the analogy of a horse. I imagine myself sitting in the saddle, facing backwards. As the horse strides forward, I see the past receding, while the present unfolds with each step.
That’s a more realistic view. We learn not by seeing the future (which is impossible), but by scrutinising the very recent past and projecting from that what the future might hold. If the past few yards prove to be uphill, I speculate that a mountain is coming; if it is getting lower and softer underfoot, maybe a stream?
And that is why I’ve been reading the FM these past 40 years. By studying other people’s recent successes and failures, one tries to anticipate the future.
It is for the same reason that business schools the world over teach Harvard case studies: "There went poor old Henry, and there, but for the grace of God, go I."
Of course, horsey could step into a pothole — during 2001 nothing in the recent past suggested that 9/11 was approaching. But more often than not, keeping your eyes open yields clues as to what’s coming.
You may well ask, dear reader, if decades of paging through the FM over a cuppa have produced any truths of general application. Here are my timorous thoughts:
• Business reputations are fleeting. One moment Jack Welch of General Electric was the most fêted global executive, considered to be walking on water; the next he was an abomination. This reality could lie in wait for any of us.
• Does a person’s fame outlive him or her? Except in the case of inventors, its half-life is singularly brief. Ask a CEO of a JSE-listed company to name authors of novels in about 1870s Europe. He might recall Charles Dickens and George Eliot, Victor Hugo and Gustave Flaubert, or Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. As for politicians? He may mention someone like Otto von Bismarck ... Then ask him to name one single business peer of the past and he’ll be stumped.
• Mass psychology ebbs and flows; markets have bipolar disorder. Money can be made if you hold your nerve and go counter-cyclical. (Except, of course, when you’re wrong.)
• No industry perpetually does well or badly. Banking, for example, may be profitable in one decade and lousy the next. Evidently some sectors (such as airlines and restaurants) have structural defects that make for faster or more severe swings.
As industries age, they grow more competitive and margins deteriorate. You don’t want to be there: you’ll want to be ahead of that curve, but not by too much.
• Strategy as a management tool is vastly overrated. Usually it’s self-evident what needs to be done. As that post-modern philosopher Mike Tyson put it: "Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth." The devil is in getting things executed.
• There are many roads to ruin, but the quickest is: believe your own PR.
• I’ve never met anyone who has made a fortune without working immensely hard. Over longer distances, 60 hours a week always beats 40 hours (except when both fail).
• Business can either be hell or a great deal of fun. It depends.
After writing this, it has struck me that, in spite of reading the FM diligently, I failed to predict the two most momentous changes to occur in the SA economy during my life: the timing of the transition to democracy and the birth of the internet. Both came with inadequate forewarning. Sitting backwards on a striding horse and analysing the previous few yards did not help.
Scanning the above you may well say, dear reader, that business life could be exciting, but that it’s also a precarious existence. And you would be right.
• Bekker is an entrepreneur and the chair of Naspers. He writes in his personal capacity
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