Lessons from the court of Henry VIII for America’s CEOs
Wolf Hall, on precarious times in the Tudor court, offers a useful guide to survival in the age of Trump.
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(Front row, from left) Ms Priscilla Chan, her husband Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Ms Lauren Sanchez Bezos, her husband Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Google CEO Sundar Pichai; and Tesla CEO Elon Musk; among other people, at Mr Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan 20.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Adrian Wooldridge
Every era of business history brings an appropriate big book. In the 2000s, it was Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat (2005). In the 1980s, it was Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy (1980). Today it is not a business book but a novel – Hilary Mantel’s great trilogy about English statesman and lawyer Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall.
Since US President Donald Trump’s re-election, America’s chief executives have, to all intents and purposes, put a crown on Mr Trump’s head and turned themselves into courtiers. He’s Henry VIII in a golf buggy, and they are so many slavish bag carriers.
