Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Book Review: Broken Business: Seven Steps to Reform Good Companies Gone Bad by José R. Hernandez ISBN: 978-1-119-54750-1



Lou Holtz, Doctor Football, used to admonish his players to do what’s right and avoid what’s wrong.  This seems like we need to clarify what is right or what is wrong, but humans are endowed with an instinct that tells us what is right and what is wrong.  This works well, until it doesn’t.

It seems that greed will cause a person’s moral compass to fail.  I have seen it before. All the front line employees could see a crisis coming, but the powers that be simply would not listen to those who could actually see that the emperor had no clothes.

In the book Broken Business: Seven Steps to Reform Good Companies Gone Bad by José R. Hernandez, the author presents a case study of a fictitious company that is based on a composite of several companies he has worked with.

Hernandez tells his readers about how there are many myths regarding corporate scandal and how it is important to deal with them properly when they occur.

He points out that most companies don’t just all of a sudden have a crisis. Typically, it is a series of things that could have been nipped in the bud had the C-Suite been paying better attention to the details.

The author tells his readers about how a company responds initially to a crisis.  He points out how on top of it Johnson and Johnson was during the Tylenol scare.

It is also important that the company admits to wrongdoing as soon as they are made aware of it.

Nixon might have remained president until the end of his term if he had just admitted to his part in Watergate instead of lying to Congress and the American people.  Clinton’s scandal would have gone away much sooner had he just admitted it.

Reagan appeared before the nation and admitted that wrongdoing happened on his watch.  Most of us forgot all about the whole Iran Contra thing soon after that. No, we didn’t completely forget, but it was no longer a major deal.

In Broken Business, we learn about the necessary steps to get a business back on track after a major, self-inflicted crisis.

If your business is going through a crisis, Broken Business just may offer you some helpful tools.  If your business isn’t going through a crisis, it is best you go ahead and read it now. Sooner or later, one or several of your employees will, as our kids say, “Do the stupid”.  This book might help you be ready when they do.

Broken Business is well-written and very readable.  There aren’t any complicated charts, graphs, or theories, just good, common sense advice to help you keep your company moving forward.


We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

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