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

Bing, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060934220 ISBN 13: 9780060934224

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2004

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.

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Stanley Bing is the bestselling author of Crazy Bosses, What Would Machiavelli Do?, Throwing the Elephant, Sun Tzu Was a Sizzy, 100 Bullshit Jobs . . . And How to Get Them, The Big Bing, and The Curriculum, as well as the novels Lloyd: What Happened, You Look Nice Today, and Immortal Life. By day he is an haute executive in a gigantic multinational corporation whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.

Synopsis:

The author of What Would Machiavelli Do? provides humorous guidance that considers the advice of the Buddha as if he were a personal consultant, outlining how to transform a stressful workforce into one based on more effective, spiritual practices. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060934220
• ISBN 13: 9780060934224
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240