Attila the Hun plundered a village

Besides who has the time to read history and who cares if some Attila the Hun plundered a village in the fourth century or some king was beheaded by his courtiers? And why bother with what has been over and forgotten, and what is the justification to study something that is unconnected with business issues? After all every modern guru preaches the need to look into the future and not look at the past.And their obvious answers will be the names of some new fangled management book like why the moon is still round while the earth is going flat or the fifteenth leadership habit of a maverick, or some new cutting edge book about managing people, or even some fancy novel.

You will never hear any businessman say they are reading an ordinary book like a medieval or ancient history textbook. Now you may argue where in the world does a boring textbook on history help a businessperson run his or her business.  Common convincing arguments, but you may be surprised to know that reading and understanding history actually has immense business benefits. Hidden inside history lies an immense wealth of advice and real case studies that can not only help every businessman, but practically everyone whether connected with a business or not. But a history book will not help any businessman if read in the traditional way of memorizing events, dates, names, etc., intended to just pass an exam. History is not really some useless stuff as most people think.

History prevents you from reinventing the wheel. Albert Einstein once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Throughout history people have committed the same mistakes of trying to subdue people, wage wars, commit treachery, and various forms of atrocities on each other leading to the same guaranteed disastrous results as experienced earlier. Modern man is no different and even today you see dictators and cruel people ruling many countries and organizations. And similar crimes and follies occur inside workplaces with equivalent disastrous results.

Hence it is highly necessary to read history as it teaches the current generation to understand things that don't work or never worked in the past. If you can understand history in the right perspective it can help the present business managements to avoid needless and futile experimentation with people management. By learning the patterns of events in history, you can recognize the repeat of the same patterns in what is going on around you today.