The Storm: Navigating the New Economy

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Courville has the weight of authority on his side as he pronounces on
how to manage a business in today’s economy. He is the president and
chief of everything at the National Bank of Canada. While these sound
like great credentials for telling businesses how businesses should be
run, the further we wade into his text the more we recognize that he has
little private-sector experience to support his theories.

Courville gives a good overview of economic history coming to an
unsettling conclusion: all great civilizations decline. We are a great
civilization. We are about to decline. We are doomed, he suggests, to
return to a medieval period unless we avoid isolationist and
protectionist practices and embrace creativity, or chaos, as a
day-to-day management response to the new economy.

The work centres on one very strong metaphor: management as navigating
a boat in a storm. In the past, Courville says, the challenge for
business was to climb a mountain. The mountain was there, stable if
formidable, a known entity. Plan, organize, and then go forth and
conquer. The mountain will be there when you’re ready; it’s not
going to disappear while you create your strategic plan.

In contrast, the challenge today is to steer through an ever-changing
storm. The elements lashing at the boat from all directions are
unpredictable, and they’re affecting the boat now. The luxury of
up-front planning is gone with the wind. Today’s manager must act and
plan simultaneously. It’s creative. It’s managing chaos.

The book’s style is its first weakness (though of course with a
translation, there’s always the question of whose style the reader
receives, the author’s or the translator’s). While it is fairly
smooth and just occasionally convoluted, it lacks the forceful, dynamic
style that captures the imagination. How can a book live when there’s
not a quotable phrase to be found? Its second sin is its ending—a weak
mixture of Courville blowing his own horn while throwing put-downs at
other authors. It leaves an unfinished, unsettling tone, as if we had
suddenly discovered a hidden agenda.

The powerful central image and the author’s position guarantee the
book its moment in the boardroom limelight. Its weaknesses guarantee
that this moment will be short-lived.