Geoff Burch on...
Marketing
"people who offer marketing, often have names like Jervaise or Tarquin, and they gambol and caper around their west London offices with sheer excitement at the prospect of 'marketing' your (product)...I used to have mobs of pitchfork and blazing brand-wielding marketing people beating a path to my castle gates by suggesting that the whole marketing thing basically sucks, but that may not be true. After all, you can even get a degree in it, by jiminee."
Consultants
"Hiring consultants is just like hiring mercenaries...amuse yourself by drawing the analogy between the two...When you choose your mercenary/consultant, you don't want the hair trigger 24 year old MBA. You want the Yul Brynner, man in black, with a few scars, a piece of ear missing, well used guns, a black hat, and eyes like steel bearings. Be warned, you only control him while you pay him."
Human Resources
"If you recall the early black and white Frankenstein movies, Professor Frankenstein was always portrayed as tall, aquiline, darkly handsome, and of course barking mad, but he was always accompanied by this poor, twisted hobbling mad thing...Now every chief executive has one of these, and he's called the Human Resources Director. It is his job, amongst other things, to judge people's (sorry, 'the resources') performance against goals, targets, and objectives...He then has to report to El Supremo on this performance. The trick is that this performance must be expressed as a number and not one that relates to anything from the real world."

This is the business book we have been waiting for. Whilst we watch in horror as the consultants, the gurus and the management experts interfere with our jobs and lives with no apparent benefit, along comes this latest book from Geoff Burch that confirms that all our fears were true.This waspish, funny and often downright vicious expose of everything from marketing to HRM and even change management leaves no stone unturned and no taboo untrampled.But this is no mere hatchet job. Writing on the Wall exposes the stupidity of fashionable management fads, but by stripping the subject to the bone, the true secrets are uncovered. By facing the stark truth of poor products, difficult customers and mutinous staff, Burch is able to show, with bizarre examples such as the child with the squashed head, and hard hitting advice such as "smile or sling your hook," just how we can make success inevitable.