Enough is enough

Stop reading now if you don't like stupid schoolboy jokes.

Still with me? OK, here goes. Why do the French never eat two eggs? Because one egg is un oeuf.

I was reminded of this joke when thinking about the perfect title for a business book. Or, to be more precise, I was thinking about how many words are un oeuf — I mean enough — for a successful title.

The answer, it would seem at the moment, is: one word.

For example, there is Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling book, Blink, which is all about trusting your instincts (subtitle: "The Power of Thinking without Thinking"). Gladwell's latest book, which tries to explain why some people are very successful, again has a one-word title: Outliers.

Then there is the management book Fish!, which has the subtitle "A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results". Maybe it is. But I'm sorry, the title is too stupid for me to want to read the book.

Better, in my humble opinion, is Nudge, this year's popular book about behavioural economics by two professors at the University of Chicago: Richard H. Thaler (an economist) and Cass R. Sunstein (a lawyer).

To nudge somebody is to push him or her gently. The idea of the book is that governments should nudge their citizens with the aim of "improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness".

So, if the government wants people to save more for their old age, it can automatically enroll them in a pension scheme, but give them the chance to opt out. This is more likely to produce the desired result (higher savings) than giving people the complete freedom to opt in. Yet, at the same time, it gives people more freedom than forcing them to be in the scheme.

Blink. Fish. Nudge. It really does seem as though one word is enough for sucessful books. Which, I suppose, makes it no surprise that one has just been published with the single-word title Enough.

The book is written by John C. Bogle, the founder and ex-CEO of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group. With the subtitle, "True Measures of Money, Business and Life", it is an easy and entertaining read and discusses the role of values and leadership in business.

Interestingly, the book also supports an idea mentioned here last week: that managers who fail should pay back their salaries. Bogle puts it more eloquently on pages 136-137:

• "If CEOs are going to expose their corporations to agressive strategies and high risks in order to win maximum compensation, ... then when the strategies backfire, shareholder value collapses, and the risks come home to roost (as tragically exemplified in the current financial crisis), executives should be required to pony up from their own earlier rich rewards."