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Title: Throwing the Elephant : Zen and the Art of Managing Up by Stanley Bing ISBN: 0-06-093422-0 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (9 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Hilarious but not so useful
Comment: I gave this book 3 stars instead of 2 because it really made me laugh. However, if you have been in corporate American for more than 5 years, you probably already know that "elephants" (Sr. Management) are self-centered weirdos, not normal people like you and me. And the best way to get by is to let them be what they are and ensure you simply manage around their craziness. If you are hoping for useful advice, seek elsewhere. For a funny read, enjoy this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Thank goodness I've left the corporate world
Comment: I discovered this great book after starting my own business, having left my cubicle at a large wireless telecom firm only a few months prior. I wish I had read it while at that miserable job. It would have helped me to that perfect state of blissful not-caring that I tried so hard to achieve. For someone who is passionate about what they do, is professional, wants to accomplish something in life (besides kissing someone's a**), this book also helps you realize that unless you want to live in that state, maybe Corporate America isn't for you. The book also reveals exactly what is wrong with the state of corporations today--they are run by big fat egos-- that are truly overpaid, get bonuses for losing money, and don't go to jail even when they steal from their own employees. So thank you Stanley Bing for your clever insights and reinforcing my decision. Keep 'em coming.
Rating: 5
Summary: But first, get a broom and shovel
Comment: The allegory of the herding of the ox appeared in English as long ago as 1934 in Alan Watts's first book: The Spirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work and Art in the Far East. It has since appeared again and again in the literature of Zen Buddhism, but see especially D. T. Suzuki's Manual of Zen Buddhism. Here Fortune magazine columnist and sometime corporate cog and very funny guy, Stanley Bing brings us up to date on how the allegory might play out in the corporate structure. Instead of an ox that the boy innocent manages to tame, Bing gives us an elephant. And instead of taming one's inner self (which is the point of the ox herding story) one tames one's boss, who is after all but a dumb animal. However again, and very cleverly, Bing shows us that to tame one's boss or to tame one's self amounts to the same thing.
Curious. But true.
There is a kind of The Tao of Pooh meets Dilbert and Murphy's Law on the Way to Enlightenment, done up with the kind of side bars and shaded boxes and cute graphics that one finds in computer learning or "Dummie's" guides "feel" to this little gem. The design of the book is gorgeous, and the book itself is small enough even in hardcover to fit into a suit jacket pocket, should the need arise.
Bing's "Buddha Bullets" and other asides (scattered throughout) are sometimes funny, sometimes illuminating, and sometimes just plain dumb, but always in the Zen spirit of kicking the Buddha by the side of the road (should you meet him). His "portrait" of the elephant will amuse, delight and find ready acknowledgment by any who have ever served an elephant--powerful, inimitable, crude, primitive and cagey force that the elephant is. Remember, the elephant is BIGGER than you are, so it never hurts to kiss it up, fairly well sums up Bing's deep and strangely moving message.
The quotes at the beginning of each chapter from the Ten Ox Herding Paintings to, e.g., The Dhammapada, Groucho Marx, Dan Quayle and various CEOs--not to mention Mary Meeker, The Doors, and Mark Twain--blend together seamlessly so that curiously they become one in their wisdom or ironic lack thereof.
On a deeper level the elephant is the corporation itself, at once your master, your mother, your livelihood. Bring that broom and shovel and follow along as you must until, as Bing has it in the last chapter on page 196, you "become proficient in the Zen art of elephant handling." At such time, your heart "drained...of desire," your mind "emptied," you have the elephant on leash, and the elephant knows that is where he belongs (as the boy has the ox by the nose ring).
Some might say that the deeper meaning of the ox herding story is it serves as a guide to meditation, the ox being the recalcitrant mind of the boy who becomes a man. And so it is here: and so Bing advises as he ends the book: "sit down and don't think at all."
Bottom line: this is a deliciously clever idea beautifully realized.
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Title: What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness by Stanley Bing ISBN: 0066620112 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 01 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The Big Bing : Black Holes of Time Management, Gaseous Executive Bodies, Exploding Careers , and Other Theories on the Origins of the Business Universe by Stanley Bing ISBN: 0060529555 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: You Look Nice Today : A Novel by Stanley Bing ISBN: 1582342806 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: 17 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Lloyd: What Happened : A Novel of Business by Stanley Bing ISBN: 0375705643 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 26 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Managing Up : How to Forge an Effective Relationship With Those Above You by Roger Gittines, Rosanne Badowski ISBN: 0385507720 Publisher: Currency Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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