The Saboteur at Work book launch...

My latest book, The Saboteur at Work was officially launched at a party at London’s East India Club. I read a section from the introduction and a section from chapter five, about what Nick Leeson and the fall of Barings Bank, and what this can teach us about how organisations can sabotage their own success.

Here is the extract from the introduction that I read on the night. In next weeks article, I’ll include the excerpt from chapter five that I read at the party. I hope you enjoy it!

Introduction: The Rabbi Who Had a Brain Explosion 

“Our story begins on a warm, sunny day in Sydney, 13 October 2020.  Elimelech Levy was driving around the suburb of Bondi Junction  looking for a parking space. Mr Levy was a 36-year-old man with one  child. He was also a rabbi of 14 years’ standing and a well-respected figure in his community. People who knew him described him as a  mild-mannered, peaceful man. 

However, on 13th October 2020, he was feeling anything but  mild-mannered. He had been driving around for ages trying to park  and was becoming increasingly agitated. He was late. As he turned a corner, he saw it – an empty parking space. His heart leapt with joy and with a smile he muttered ‘todah’, the Hebrew word for ‘thank you’. He slowed, indicated and stopped to reverse into the space.  As he did so, another vehicle swerved, nosed in and quickly claimed  the parking space. Mr Levy’s smile turned to rage as he got out  of his car to remonstrate with the driver – a man named Richard  Georgeson. 

‘That was my space – what the hell are you doing?! Get your car out 

of my space now!’ 

‘Tough’, Mr Georgeson said, ‘suck it up, buddy’, and he sauntered 

off with a smirk on his face. 

Mr Levy stood there for a moment staring at his car and the parking space. Then it happened. He went berserk. He snapped the windscreen wiper off Mr Georgeson’s car and began smashing it against the  bonnet. He then broke off a side mirror and kicked it hard down the street, before getting back into his car and driving off with a screech of tyres.

As Mr Levy drove, he began to calm down. ‘What have I done?’ he thought. ‘What was I thinking?’ He was eventually overcome with  remorse and returned to Georgeson’s car and left a note on the windscreen, confessing. 

When he later appeared in court, Mr Levy attributed his behaviour to ‘a brain explosion’, saying he had deeply regretted his actions ever  since. He was fined, but his lawyer and the magistrate acknowledged 

Mr Levy’s behaviour as completely out of character 

In some respects, this is a comical story. It’s the story of a mild-mannered man being pushed just a little too far and losing the plot. It brings to mind the scene in Fawlty Towers where Basil’s car breaks down and after a moment or two shouting at the car Basil disappears out of shot, only to return carrying a tree branch with which he starts to manically beat the car.

Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation to Elimelech  Levy? Feeling so frustrated and overwhelmed that you behaved in a manner that was out of character for you? Maybe you were driving your car and another driver overtook and cut in too quickly, causing you to brake shapely. Then, overcome with fury, you tailgated the  offending driver for a couple of miles until common sense returned and you backed off. You got home and thought about your reactions and the possible consequences. ‘What if he’d braked and I’d gone into the back of him? All the hassle of the insurance claim, the car off the road… all for what? What was I thinking? He was an idiot – why didn’t I just ignore him? I turned into a monster for those few minutes’. Indeed, you turned into a monster for those few minutes, or as Elimelech Levy would have said, you experienced a brain explosion. 

This isn’t just a story about individual road rage. It is about how this experience of not quite being in control of ourselves can impact our careers, our performance in teams and organisations and our place in society as a whole.

Enter the saboteur 

These stories raise an interesting psychological and philosophical question. What happened to Elimelech Levy during those few minutes of brain explosion? It didn’t seem like the peace-loving rabbi was in control, someone else, a monster, was. If you were the person tail-gating the bad driver, then who was actually driving the car for those few minutes – who was the monster who had taken charge of the car? 

This book sets out to explore this question, to understand Mr Levy’s brain explosion and the monster who was driving your car. This book is about an unconscious psychological force that routinely sabotages our lives: our own brain explosion, our own monster. I call this force ‘the saboteur’ and it exists in all of us: in individuals,  teams, organisations and sometimes even in whole nations. The saboteur is what connects your own personal dramas, meltdowns and cock-ups with events such as the tragic suicide of Sylvia Plath, corporate failures such as that suffered by the Boeing Corporation and even global historical events such as the Holocaust and the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. The saboteur is a human phenomenon that has always been with us and will always be present, infuencing our lives…”

If you’d like to read more, you can buy a copy of my book here.