Drug Dealers: Experts in Recessionary Business

50 Cent is the first rapper to pen a book of management advice. It’s a shame, then, that The 50th Law, co-written by Robert Greene, boils down to the worst kind of “be authentic” self-help boilerplate, writes Lucy Lucy Kellaway for the Financial Times. As a former drug dealer, 50 has a lot to offer managers, especially in a recession.

Dealers are good models for doing business in a credit crunch because “they live permanently in a world of zero credit,” Kellaway writes. Cost-cutting CEOs must detach themselves from employees whose jobs are in peril, just as hustlers must disregard customers' welfare. One difference: "In an emergency a drug dealer must be able to pop his product in his mouth and swallow it at a moment’s notice—whereas the CEO seldom finds call for such extreme action."
(More drug dealer stories.)