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A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books

The Age of Heretics: A History of the Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management, by Art Kleiner; Jossey-Bass; August 2008.

The book: The Age of Heretics: A History of the Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management, by Art Kleiner; Jossey-Bass; August 2008. This rich social and intellectual history describes the post--World War II assault on rigid, numbers-obsessed corporations by idealists, humanists, and freethinkers, many of whom go down in flames.

The big idea: "A heretic is someone who sees a truth that contradicts the conventional wisdom of the institution to which he or she belongs and remains loyal to both entities--the institution and the new truth," writes Kleiner.

No pain, no gain: Heretics is at once a paean to idealism and a grim primer on corporate politics. Radical thinkers are ignored, then lauded, then subverted and shunted aside. How do you spot a true change agent? Look for the guy covered in blood.

The backstory: Kleiner runs the Booz & Co. publication Strategy + Business. Heretics was first published in 1996; this second edition is part of a series of management classics selected by leadership icon Warren Bennis, who is also mentioned prominently in the book.

If you read nothing else: The stories in Heretics should be experienced as a meal, not à la carte. But two chapters that recount battles with insularity are particularly engrossing. "Protesters" (Chapter Four), about the birth of shareholder activism, reminds us that social responsibility--at least the appearance of social responsibility--wasn't always a no-brainer for business. And "Mystics" (Chapter Five), about the origins of scenario planning, describes how a student of Sufi mysticism pried the eyes of Royal Dutch Shell away from its corporate navel and forced it to see the world.

You can skip: Kleiner's energy flags a bit in his treatment of the Toyota Production System, General Electric's Work-Out process for efficient problem solving, and W. Edwards Deming and the quality movement. Fortunately, for many readers this is familiar terrain.

Feeling groovy: Forget management by walking around--how about management by tripping out? In the late '50s and early '60s, Kleiner writes, executives and engineers from a number of companies experimented with LSD on corporate retreats. The drug reportedly improved engineers' ability to solve technical problems and managers' conflict-resolution skills. Heretics is full of surprising stories of corporate flirtation with the counterculture.

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books." @LeighEBuchanan