The first business book I ever read was On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors by John DeLorean. I was very young—my father handed it to me. I’m glad he did, though not for the usual reasons. It wasn’t a blueprint for business success; it was a front-row seat to ego, dysfunction, and corporate decay. It opened my eyes early.
DeLorean, the famed car innovator behind the iconic DMC-12 (yes, the Back to the Future car), wrote a scathing exposé after walking away from GM. The book laid bare the mediocrity and mismanagement at one of America’s biggest corporations. Later, of course, DeLorean’s own venture would collapse in spectacular fashion—burdened by poor decisions, financial troubles, and a notorious brush with cocaine trafficking charges. A cautionary tale, all around.
In other words, even my first business book was about a broken system.
So: how do you diagnose a sick business?
If you want a dry, clinical answer, speak to your accountant or lawyer. They’ll talk numbers, contracts, obligations. And fair enough—those are important. But let’s try something a bit different. Let’s borrow from another system we all understand: the human body.
The Business as a Body
Think about it. When your body is sick, you know. Maybe not at first, but eventually the signs show up—fatigue, pain, dysfunction. You start spending time, money, and energy trying to fix it. You go to doctors. You look for causes. You search for cures.
A business is no different.
At a basic level, a human body needs food and water. A business needs cash flow and capable people. Without those, it withers.
Cash, like hydration, is essential and constantly needed. And just as we search high and low for the right doctors or health specialists, a business owner is always hunting for reliable people—employees, suppliers, advisors. But those are scarce. And sometimes the people involved in a business don’t help; they hurt.
Internal Saboteurs
Some of the most damaging forces inside a business come from within. Conceit. Arrogance. Greed. I’ve seen it: people sabotaging companies to satisfy their egos, embezzling funds, or steering the whole thing into the ground just to prove a point or settle a score.
A sick business, like a sick body, is often betrayed by those who should be protecting it.
The Circle of Support
No human thrives in isolation. We rely on people around us—friends, family, community. A business is the same. It needs its customers most of all. Without customers, there is no business.
As business theorist Theodore Levitt put it: the purpose of a business is to create and serve a customer. Simple. Profound. Often forgotten.
A Two-Way Dependence
We tend to think about what businesses need to survive. But the reverse is true too. People need businesses—to earn a living, to realise ideas, to build futures. When a business gets sick or dies, the impact ripples far beyond the owner’s balance sheet.
So the metaphor holds: the human body and the business entity are deeply alike. Both need attention, care, and honest diagnosis when things start going wrong.
And both can bounce back—if you catch the illness early enough.
