“The God­fa­ther is the I-Ching. The God­fa­ther is the sum of all wis­dom.” — Joe Fox (Tom Hanks’ char­ac­ter in You’ve Got Mail).

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the phrase “noth­ing per­sonal — just busi­ness” has entered the busi­ness lex­i­con over the years since 1972 when the movie adap­ta­tion of Mario Puzo’s 1962 novel The God­fa­ther. Funny thing is, the movie gives you the wrong impres­sion. I’ve read the novel, and Mario Puzo explains that the phrase is not a sen­ti­ment with which Don Cor­leone would agree. In fact in the novel, only Don Vito Cor­leone (and later, Don Michael Cor­leone) seem to prop­erly under­stand the inter­sec­tion between what is busi­ness and what is per­sonal. The movie places the quote on Michael’s lips, but only if you’d read the book would you under­stand Micheal’s words to be merely intended to pla­cate his brother Sonny and Tom Hagen, who are sep­a­rat­ing the two in the dis­cus­sion about their response to the attempted mur­der of their father. If you only saw the movie, you’d think this was the phi­los­o­phy espoused by the Don. It isn’t.