Trust us, mobster Louis Ferrante shot people, went to jail, became a Jew, and then an author. Now he has a more than a few lessons for execs, writes Businessweek’s, Joel Stein.
The beeping in Louis Ferrante's borrowed Lincoln SUV won't stop, so he finally snaps in his seat belt. "Don't tell anyone," he says. "No self-respecting gangster ever wears his seat belt." Ferrante, who served eight and a half years in prison for crimes he committed as part of New York's Gambino family, believes the Mafia offers even more useful lessons than not wearing seat belts. His new book, Mob Rules: What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman, offers these primers in 88 succinct chapters. They include: "Don't end up in the trunk of a car: Avoiding office politics" and "It's good to go to a funeral as long as it's not yours: The power of networking."
In a nod to the management genre, Ferrante, 42, employs the case study method to go over decisions made by, among others, "Fat George" DiBello, "Fat Pete" Chiodo, and "Fat Tony" Salerno. Mob Rules, which draws heavily on history, begins with "In ancient Sparta" and goes on to recast complex events with insights such as "There was a wacko Roman emperor named Caligula, who whacked everyone." Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote the books that inspired the mob classics Casino and Goodfellas (and co-wrote the screenplays with Martin Scorsese), sees the utility of wiseguy wisdom. "I'm surprised at how some equity fund guys don't read the room," he says. "They could learn from Louis Ferrante. It doesn't hurt them. They wouldn't shoot anybody...."
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