Weak at the Top: The Uncensored Diary of The Last Cavemanager - Softcover

Browning, Guy

3.91

32 ratings by Goodreads

9780273656821: Weak at the Top: The Uncensored Diary of The Last Cavemanager

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0273656821 ISBN 13: 9780273656821

Publisher: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall, 2001

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Monday

Recruitment week! This is where I play God and toy with other people’s lives. Rigorously pre-sorted CVs. Photos first - don’t want any swamp donkeys scowling round the office. Then checked interests. I will not work with anybody who thinks rambling is interesting. Found one with skydiving under interests. Crossed him off – can’t have employees who are more interesting that you are. Hayley my PA asked if she could go on self-assertion course. I said no for the hundredth time.

Tuesday

Working from gym today. Told Hayley I need to spend more time looking at the figures. Have diverted all calls to our Customer Careline where they will be patronised to death by a recording which says they’re held in a queue and we value their call very much. We don’t tell them we value their call because we’re charging them �3 a minute for it and the queue they’re held in is a circular one.

Wednesday

Got in so late I hardly had time to bin post, delete e-mails and cancel meetings before lunch. In the afternoon called in top totty Emily Reimbold and gave her a quick 360� appraisal (if her skirt was any shorter it would be a collar). Asked her if she’d like to have dinner to discuss a more hands-on management style. She declined but I assured her my door was always open (the one marked ‘Bedroom’).

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Review:

Management gurus don't come much less inspiring than fictional diarist John Weak, marketing director of Smokehouse Plc and eponymous hero of Weak at the Top. When he's not trying to hire a prettier secretary or bump up his expenses, John spends his time deleting e-mails, avoiding phone calls and missing meetings. Confirming every suspicion those of us on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder ever had about directors and marketing in general, John Weak is a leader in the fine tradition of Francis Urquhart and Mr Burns; a twisted Bridget Jones forthe boardroom with a diary that reads like the rule book on professional misconduct.

Working from races with Bill Peters today. The good thing about pagers, WAP phones, laptops etc is that you can be anywhere in theworld, turn all the buggers off and be completely incommunicado. Thus avoided twelve phone calls and ten emails from Smallwood copies to all directors. I have a golden rule that I never open CCd e-mail. I don't do copies--it's the original or nothing for me. I don't mind blind copiesof course because they're often rich in unsubstantiated office dirt. Infact, I often send messages as blind copies because they're guaranteed to get attention.

Sound familiar? Written by Guy Browning, columnist for ManagementToday magazine and the Guardian newspaper, Weak at theTop is an entertaining satire on 21st-century corporate culture. And while you might not admire John Weak, you'll certainly recognise him, and the company he works for. If you've ever been accused of not living the company's brand, misinterpreting the mission statement or failing tothink sufficiently outside the box, this is the book for you. --SallyWhittle

About the Author:

Guy Browning is a business consultant and writer. The man behind the Office Politics column in the Guardian for four successful years, Guy then moved on to the ‘How to’ column, showing how business principles can be applied to home life (and ‘how they don’t work there either’). He also writes Under the Seatbelt for British Airways Business Life magazine, and Weak at the Top for Management Today. In his spare time he runs a very successful innovation consultancy, Smokehouse (www.smokehouse.co.uk).

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