'How-not-to? business book well worth reading

Recently, while wandering the aisles at Barnes & Noble, I came across a book in the business section that stood out among the genteel, gold-lettered tomes of the gurus of commerce.

It was titled "Every Mistake in the Book: A Business How-Not-To" by F. J. Lennon (ReganBooks, 2001, $23 hardcover).

I picked it up, found a chair and proceeded to read the whole thing right there in the store. In this slim, 195-page volume, the author recounts the highlights of his misadventures in business as an entrepreneur, employee and freelancer in the computer game industry.

Lennon's conversational style, mixing sound business advice with references to everything from classical literature to "Star Trek," gets the message across with humor and without pretense.

As a first-time manager, this book provided me with some excellent advice based on Lennon's own mistakes, which he regularly chronicled over the course of several years in his business diaries.

His cautionary tales of mistakes he made and monsters he worked with, and his advice on how to handle everything from starting a business to firing an employee, spoke to me far more clearly than any of the quasi-spiritual, "go team" motivational books that regularly appear on the shelves.

And Lennon's book did something that none of the other business-advice-du-jour books did. It made me laugh.

The book is broken into five chapters, "Biz Basics," "Money Matters," "How to Manage Managing," "In the Trenches" and "Let's Get Personal." Lennon leads off by saying, "If Alexander Pope were alive today to evaluate my business career, he'd choose me as the poster boy for his phrase, To err is human ...'"

His purpose in writing the book, he states, is so others can learn from his mistakes.

Under "Business Basics," written especially for the person contemplating a startup but useful for anyone who owns a business, Lennon's first caveat is "Above all else, don't make crap." In other words, "Produce a great product," a thing that sounds simple but isn't. Caveat No. 2 is "Really double-check that it's not crap," and caveat No. 3 is "Your customers aren't morons." You get the idea.

In "Money Matters" Lennon recommends "Be properly capitalized or don't start a business. I feel so strongly about this point I that I wish I could carve it into a stone tablet and carry it down a mountain somewhere."

His financing tips encompass venture capital, piecemeal financing ("a never-ending migraine"), and he warns "Make sure you're not breaking the law," recounting his experience of running afoul of the SEC and underlining the point by reproducing the Bureau of Prisons checklist of what you can bring with you during your incarceration.

"Always know where every damn nickel is," Lennon advises, and "Be tight" with money, but don't stint on paying staff.

He notes, "Once employees have proven themselves, treat them fairly by paying them what they're worth," add-ing, "If you can't afford to pay competitive salaries, you shouldn't be hiring."

In "How to Manage Managing," Lennon details questions to ask during an interview, how to establish a plan for firing employees, a test to determine what kind of manager you are, and emphasizes honesty and decisiveness.

In the section titled "This Ain't No Nightclub," he warns against drinking too much with your employees, and in "This Ain't No Clubhouse, Neither," he warns against hiring friends.

"I was stupid enough to believe that just because people were my friends, that made them talented," he writes.

Lennon also devotes sections to the wisdom of observing rather than speaking in the sections "Shut Up and Listen," "Shut Up and Look" and "Just Shut Up."

The chapter "In the Trenches" outlines how to handle office politics, from identifying and eliminating "snakes" to taking criticism.

The section "Check Your Tongue At the Door" notes that "A big mouth can end a brilliant career. Be careful what you say and especially who you say it to. Your words can and will come back to haunt you if you're not careful."

Finally, "Let's Get Personal" goes into communicating effectively, the pitfalls of e-mail, the importance of appearances, taking initiative and controlling ego. A section I particularly liked was "Spelling Still Counts," which detailed the dangers of trusting a spell-check program.

An executive spell-checked, but didn't double-check, a 30-page technical document in which he abbreviated the word "engineer" as "engr." The spell-check, upon encountering the abbreviation, of-fered the option "Negro" for "engr." and the executive carelessly hit "replace all."

"A hundred stunned readers received the memo the next morning. Max's proposed Negro exchange program caused quite a ruckus."

There's a lot of good advice and information in this book, and I recommend it.