Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up
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.
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.Stanley Bing’s Throwing the Elephant, subtitled Zen and the Art of Managing Up, is a wise and hilarious–mostly hilarious–antidote to the extensive library of works by grim, clenched-fisted business gurus. Bing posits that power strategies cannot be “managed through rational means.” Real success–corporate-niche enlightenment–comes only by embracing religion, specifically Zen Buddhism. This enables one to take “an object of enormous weight and size” (i.e. the elephantine boss) and “mold it … like a ball of Silly Putty.” In truth, he continues, senior management is “the silliest putty of them all.” Bing doles out his thoughts in dozens of pithy chapters (“Playing Golf with the Elephant,” “Getting Drunk with the Elephant”). He also includes many visual aids (some of which nearly make sense) and adds a sprinkling of the wisdom of others–from Martha Stewart and Jimmy Hoffa to the rock band the Doors–to make his wickedly entertaining points. –H. O’Billovitch
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.
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.
