Inspired by Francis Wheen’s How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Mumbo-jumbo-Conquered-World-Delusions/dp/0007140975
and his advice to wannabe gurus, it dawned on me that I had a magic number with which to launch myself on the path to gurudom.
The number was 7 (Five plus or minus two as Barbara Minto reminds us in The Pyramid Principle http://www.barbaraminto.com/). I was in this whimsical mood when I realized that as I looked back on the companies and projects I have been involved with, especially the ones that despite initial promise ended in abject failure, almost invariably two or more of the 7 Pillars were disastrously weak- in fact could not support the structure which relied on them for support.
I then started reflecting on cases I had read about and realized that where I had thought I had stumbled on a cool acronym, I had come up with a model: The 7 Pillars of Success.
