Confucius in the Boardroom

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lessons for Business

By: Stefan Rudnicki

Narrated by: Blair Underwood, Stephanie Zimbalist

Today's modern, competitive business environment demands that executives conduct business operations more effectively and compassionately. Turning to the ancient wisdom of China provides insight for professionals who want to stay on the cutting edge. This program guides executives with fundamental teachings on the topics of leadership, strategy, selling, personnel, and ethics from the writings of Confucius, Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, and others to present a practical vision for those who strive to maintain formidable status in the ever-changing business world.

©1997 Stefan Rudnicki (P)2023 Phoenix Books

Useful text collection. But is it for Boardroom.

Where does Confucius in the Boardroom rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

About the middle.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Confucius in the Boardroom?

Quotes from Chuang Tzu.

Which character – as performed by Blair Underwood and Stephanie Zimbalist – was your favorite?

not apply.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Many individual quotes.

Any additional comments?

This consists of numerous passages from classical Chinese philosophers. They are excellent quotes, and, given the lack of recordings of some of these classics it is valuable to have them on CD.
However, the title is misleading. I don't see that these quotes were chosen particularly for the boardroom, or for executives. There is at least as much focus on general cosmology (about which I am more interested than politics mystelf). There are numerous quotes in Confucius that would direcly applicable to ruling a country or a town, but the sample of quotes no more focuses on these than on any other aspect of Confucius. Similarly, Lao Tzu has a whole political aspects that was commented on by the legalist Han Fei, but these quotes relating to politics are no more frequent in the selections than any other cosmological, mystical or psychological quotes or Lao Tzu.
The quotes are fine and profound, but they seem selected more or less at random, and not with a focus on managment or the role of the executive. Perhaps the title was added after the fact to sell the CD.

Enjoyable; relevancy to boardrooms is loose

If you like this sort of thing, and I do, this is a nice wide-ranging sampler of Analects by Confucius, Tao te Ching, Inner Chapters by Chuang Tzu, Art of War by Sun Tzu, and a few similar sources I hadn't previously read. I find it very soothing and I get into a creative thinking "zone" when taking my long walks and listening to these loose and poetic parables and aphorisms, and imagining how they might fit with my world and time and thinking and experiences. It is a nice decompression and "unwind" mentally from the business and history tomes I am otherwise gobbling up. It is wide-ranging: there is a lot of basic and classical ethical thinking; there was an interesting bit of proto-imperialist thinking, a very stirring explanation of capitalist-style incentives (long before Adam Smith's day), and some very Machiavellian war planning thinking (pointers for using and expending spies, anyone?). Imaginatively, it is easy and fun for me to link bits of it to my own experience. But there is very little real effort at connecting dots to something actionable in a modern boardroom. I guess that is left to the mind of the beholder.