Rome, Inc

Just finished a great book: Rome, Inc: The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation by Stanley Bing.

Fortune columnist Bing condenses the 1,200-year history of Rome into a slim, wildly entertaining satire written for modern executives. The book renders the history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in corporate-speak. Starting out in 753 BC as a “Mom and Pop operation” through the era of the Bureaucratic Republic; the company peaks from 18 BC to 180 AD as a Caesar-centric organization.

For anyone who works, like Bing, in a large corporation, there’s an eerie familiarity in deeds of ancient Roman tribunes (middle managers) patrician senators (the executive committee or board members) and megalomaniac consuls (CEO’s).

Rome is the corporate center (always being lavishly remodeled in marble); outposts in Africa or Gaul are field offices; conquests are unfriendly acquisitions.

The core attribute of the truly great Romans — Caius Marius, Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony, Augustus — was an egomaniac sense of destiny, an utter belief in themselves.

Marius makes Jack Welch seem like a pussycat. He survives against incredible odds and returns to rule Rome as a “tenacious, brilliant mogul”.

Caesar is the genius Emperor who fell victim to the ultimate corporate coup; brought down by a grandiosity that often turns “the exceptional into honking jerks parading around like pheasants exulting in their plumage.”

Anthony reminds me of a senior sales director. The troops love him, but is he CEO material? Nah.

Augustus is the quiet one, the true corporate man; perhaps too fond of “hiring boring speakers to torture his dinner guests with long, speculative conversation”; he nevertheless possesses the hallmark ability of a CEO, a willingness “to rip out a fellow employee’s eyeball”

Bing makes it absolutely apparent that there are corporate titans around today not all that different from those who ruled two thousand years ago. Denis Kozlowski’s famous birthday party with an ice statue spraying vodka from its penis; the tragedy of Kenneth Lay; Al Dunlap; Dick Grasso’s grasping excess — all the outsized compensation packages and overweening pride before a fall that was there in 20 BC is still around in 2000 AD:

In a sane society, such people are dealt with rationally, as sick individuals whose egos need amelioration, either upward or downward in size. In a crazy culture, these pathological titans are promoted, invested with power and respect. Eventually, they destroy themselves, both individually and as a group, giving way to new forms of executives.

Bing’s analysis of the forces that drove the ancient Romans is distant mirror in which to see our own careers. Working for large companies might demand we tolerate bread and circuses, but it’s better than life as a Visigoth or Hun.

If you’d like a quick read this summer, check out Rome, Inc.

Rome, Inc

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