Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up - Hardcover

Bing, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060188618 ISBN 13: 9780060188610

Publisher: Collins, 2002

Synopsis

Sit down. Breathe deep. This is the last business book you will ever need. For in these pages, Stanley Bing solves the ultimate problem of your working life: How to manage the boss. The technique is simple . . . as simple as throwing an elephant. All it takes is the proper state of mind, a step-by-step plan, and a great leap of faith. This humble guide provides all these and more. It is Zen that enables one to take an object of enormous weight and size and mold it in one's grasp like a ball of Silly Putty. For senior management, in truth, is the silliest putty of them all.This comprehensive course walks budding business bodhisattvas through basic skills needed to provide the simple elephant handling that makes everyday life possible, including but not limited to the primary task of following along after the elephant with a little broom and dustpan.Serious students will then move to intermediate steps, from Polishing the Elephant's Tusks to Hiding from the Elephant When It Has Been Drinking and Feels Quite Nasty. Beyond this level lies the land of the practiced Zen masters, culminating in the ability to leverage and then throw the now-weightless elephant--and even play catch with it at corporate retreats.If What Would Machiavelli Would Do? was the meanest business book since the Renaissance, Throwing the Elephant provides the yang to that yin. Because sometimes you've got to be selfless, compassionate, and completely empty to get the job done.

About this title

About the Author

Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the author of What Would Machiavelli Do? and Lloyd: What Happened, a novel. By day, he works for a gigantic multinational conglomerate whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.

Reviews

In a spoof of just about every career advice and management-by-metaphor book ever created, Bing (What Would Machiavelli Do?) delivers a Zen-like guide to managing your boss. The premise? Here's what Buddha would tell you if he were your personal career coach. A book juxtaposing faux-Zen advice with embarrassing corporate situations (e.g., how to handle a drunken boss) is almost guaranteed to be funny. Bing, "an ultra-senior officer at an elephantine corporation," has plenty of firsthand anecdotes to tell, and he supplements them with stories about some of the notoriously toughest bosses on the planet, like Martha Stewart and Citigroup's Sandy Weill. There are chapters on critiquing your boss ("any bitter pill of criticism one offers an elephant must be buried within a vast tub of cream cheese") and "facing the angry elephant" (when you're to blame for your boss's anger, "breathe deeply. Breath is life"). Despite the amusing anecdotes, though, Bing's narrative can become a bit wearying if one reads more than a couple of chapters in one sitting. However, if an employee only breaks out Bing's book when the elephant is having a particularly bad couple of weeks, enlightenment is certain.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Bing (What Would Machiavelli Do?) has written a clever book on how to manage elephants, a.k.a. bosses. According to the author, "only the power of Zen contemplation will result in a happy business life for the subordinate who yearns for understanding, control, and enlightenment. It is the practice of Business Zen that will enable you, in the end, after much trial and failure, to throw the elephant who is your boss." Through case studies and guidelines, Bing discusses steps to achieving control over the elephant, with such practical chapters as "Greeting the Elephant," "Rejoicing with the Elephant," and "Getting a Leash on the Elephant." Here, for instance, Bing's advice on greetings: "A quick handshake and formal greeting in an elevator is appropriate. A gushing invocation of lifelong admiration for the elephant is not." Witty and thought-provoking, this imaginative and unique work is recommended for public libraries and practitioners and students of business. Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

What Would Machiavelli Do? (2000) was Bing's successful, amoral satire on how to ruthlessly get to the top without guilt. Now he has taken the side of workers everywhere and applies the art of Zen Buddhism to the daily grind, all in a witty, lighthearted fashion. Comparing corporations to elephants, those giant, lumbering, smelly beasts that always get their way, he guides the worker --you--on how to become an elephant handler, mostly by staying out of its way and allowing your job to become a meditation, where ultimately whatever happens doesn't really matter. Through Bing's hilarious version of the Eightfold path (his has nine), you can transcend all want and desire at the workplace (where, as in life, desire is illusion and the source of all suffering) and ultimately create such lightness that you can throw the elephant. This is essential reading for anyone who hates his or her boss and the corporate structure in general. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Collins
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060188618
• ISBN 13: 9780060188610
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 201