I can't say I am naturally drawn to autobiographies, especially those self-promoting retrospectives by film personalities or artistes and those written by sports icons who have just overcome some debilitating disease or social trauma and position their stories as testaments of hope. Apart from being non-motivational, most of them annoy me because they are full of philosophical platitudes and spiels on leadership that I have never found very useful.
I would say the same of autobiographies that double up as business books and market themselves as "step-by-step guides" to all kinds of things - developing a new business philosophy or managing change or turning adversity into advantage and so forth.
So you can imagine my chagrin when Stefano Pelle's When Not in Rome, Don't Do as the Romans Do landed on my desk for review.
What sort of title is that?
But then, I had followed Mr Pelle's stint at Perfetti in India, met him a couple of times, and knew that the former managing director of the Italian confectionery company could tell a good story. As it turns out, When Not in Rome… is part memoir, part window into the history and culture of a country on the rise, part romance novel, and is extremely entertaining.
Mr Pelle is a natural writer - he has another book to his credit, Understanding Emerging Markets: Building Business Bric by Brick - and tells his story in a friendly, conversational tone that will quickly have you feeling you and he are old friends.
The voice of an author matters, whether it is the reconstruction of a true story or out-and-out fiction. If the voice is absent in the book - which means you can't say in the end that "I felt like I was having a conversation with the author"- then the book is no good. You've got to get the feel of who the author is by the way the narrative is taken forward.
On that count the book is competently written. It doesn't pretend to solve complex business problems. The author makes his intention clear at the outset. He has tried to, he says, "alternate business topics, concerning the several markets where I have been working, to the narration of everyday life facts and anecdotes lived in first person or gathered during the last 14 years as an expatriate". He adds: "… even the chapters dealing with business matters are not written for business people only."
If there's one thing that comes through from this account, it is that you have to retain your sense of humour when you negotiate India's multiple complexities. Two anecdotes in this book amply illustrate the title - the perils of behaving like a Roman when not in Rome.
The first one is about a friend who had arrived in India to attend a wedding, straight from the airport. On her way to the venue, she needed a place to stop by and change. Mr Pelle generously offered his office cabin. It was only much later that he figured that that particular incident ended up branding him a sort of Italian playboy.
Then there was this incident during his own wedding: being a stickler for punctuality, he had set each step leading up to the event to a certain hour of the day, which would have left him enough time for a full-fledged dress rehearsal. The whole thing went out of hand because no one else bothered to keep to the schedule. He finally had to jump off the elephant he rode to the venue because it steadfastly declined to sit amid all the din and bustle. The big "aha" in this incident for me was his realisation that in India the concept of time was largely indicative in nature.
The section that deals with his personal experiences is really the good part of the book. The section in which he narrates the business side of the story suffers because it reads like a lifeless retelling of facts rather than a compelling documentation of what works and what doesn't in this country. He speaks about the early failures of Perfetti in India, but fails to underpin the idiosyncrasies of the Indian consumer and other things a future manager should worry about. All the hurdles seem minor and everyone wins in the end. Any new company entering India faces significant issues, but the answers appear too simple and obvious - which makes the stress on research or on investing in new ideas rather weak.
The challenges before corporate leaders and decision makers are far more complex than the book presents. Moreover, When Not in Rome… does not offer a good discussion on driving implementation. The last chapter on "Brics over the last decade" is a compilation of a lot of stuff you would have already read and is, therefore, largely dispensable.
A piece of advice for potential autobiography/memoir writers: avoid the "cradle-to-present" format.
WHEN NOT IN ROME, DON'T DO AS THE ROMANS DO
Stefano Pelle
SAGE Publications
203 pages; Rs 450
