Book Review: Business Upgrade: 21 Days To Reignite The Entrepreneurial Spirit In You And Your Team, by Richard Parkes Cordock (£9.99, J. WILEY)

'Every employee has the ability to inspire change and innovation in their organisation'

Anybody who has read Richard Parkes Cordock's first book, Millionaire Upgrade, will be familiar with his "I Believe" concept. Working from the premise that "business is all about belief", this holds that every employee in an organisation "can adopt the mindset of the enterprise leader" and so has the ability to inspire change and innovation in their organisation.

The new book introduces two further principles: "We Believe" and "They Believe". The first applies to the team and the second to the customer, the author's contention being that it is "the alignment of belief with the customer, the employees and the leadership of the company at all levels" that produces the success and growth that is so elusive for so many companies.

The author argues that their problems largely stem from their having lost the entrepreneurial spark that made them successful. Entrepreneurs have passion, commitment and desire in spades, so the answer, he suggests, is to find some way of recapturing that spirit. It is a beguiling idea, but rather hard to achieve, as all those that have tried to introduce entrepreneurship have discovered.

He uses an employee of a fictitious company to illustrate the challenges and ways in which she seeks to overcome them. The star, though, is not Lucy the employee, but Tom, her mentor and distiller of the Parkes Cordock business philosophy.

This was nurtured in his own time in a large business. Originally ambitious to grow, the company had struggled and stalled because, says Parkes Cordock, "the entrepreneurial drive that had taken the company from a standing start to a large international organisation was lost as wave after wave of new employees focused more on the share price value than on the customer." That said, Parkes Cordock insists that Amroze Technology, the company for which his heroine, Lucy, works, is "purely fictional".

A figment of the author's imagination or not, the company throws up hurdles and obstacles for Lucy as she embarks on the special project that is the centre of the book that will seem real enough to any readers familiar with large organisations. Less familiar, though, are the notes of advice from Lucy's mentor that conclude each chapter. All are centred on the belief principles espoused by Parkes Cordock in his work as head of the Enterprise Leaders Worldwide organisation.

They are calculated to make employees in established businesses sit up and think, but they should also give pause for thought for those running or working in organisations that still see themselves as entrepreneurial. They are a reminder that it is very easy to lose that entrepreneurial spirit as an organisation grows.

The note that concludes chapter seven is particularly worthy. "Great marketing can only take a company so far," it says. "Sooner or later the products and services must stand up to scrutiny... Competition can come out of the blue from new start-ups... Constant and never-ending innovation and product development is essential for long-term growth and to avoid complacency and decline."