THROWING THE ELEPHANT Zen and the Art of Managing Up By Stanley Bing Publisher: HarperBusiness Publication Date: March 25, 2002 Price: $20.95/hardcover ISBN: 0-06-018861-8 "A hilarious guide to succeeding in business" - Don Imus, on What Would Machiavelli Do? "You can read this book as a delicious skewering of corporate Darwinism or as a straight-up, take-no-prisoners primer on getting to the top and staying there." - Dan Rather, on What Would Machiavelli Do? NEW BOOK BY HUMORIST AND SOCIAL CRITIC STANLEY BING SHOWS EMPLOYEES HOW TO DEAL WITH THE ELEPHANTS THEY WORK FOR For nearly twenty years, Stanley Bing - who in his other life is a high level executive at a media conglomerate - has been providing witty and ruthlessly on-target insights into the business world. A Fortune columnist since 1995, Bing has also written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. His new book, THROWING THE ELEPHANT: Zen and the Art of Managing Up, is a wickedly funny guidebook that helps employees manage the gray behemoths otherwise known as their bosses. Following in the tradition of Bing's enormously successful book, What Would Machiavelli Do?, THROWING THE ELEPHANT shows overwrought, oppressed, and stressed-out employees how to use the power of Zen to manipulate and control their obnoxious, huge, and demanding bosses. The book opens with a brief grounding in the philosophy and practice of Business Buddhism - tracing its development from the life of the Buddha himself. Born into a prominent and wealthy family, the young man was driven to undertake a quest to discover the solution to the problem of suffering in the workplace. Without too much trouble, he found its source to be the obnoxious things that elephants do to those who work for them. As Bing explains the truth revealed by Business Buddhism, "work is suffering" and "desire is the root of suffering." Therefore, suffering can be conquered by eradicating desire. "One must eradicate the self to achieve peace that surpasses understanding," he writes. "Only through Zen can the no-self transcend the power of others, liberate the soul, and win valuable prizes." Bing then offers a series of instructive chapters that walk the employee through a step-by-step program that will deliver, in the end, total control over the elephant boss. From basic elephant handling, to intermediate pachyderm management, to advanced leveraging of the great beast, THROWING THE ELEPHANT: Zen and the Art of Managing Up presents a range of techniques of increasing difficulty. Illustrating these concepts are the sly, demented, insightful charts and graphs that have become Bingıs trademark. Chapters include: Greeting the elephant - "A quick handshake and formal greeting in an elevator is appropriate. A gushing invocation of lifelong admiration for the elephant is not. That same gooey tower of flattery, on the other hand, would be fine if the elephant is encountered at an industry dinner in his honor at the Waldorf." Feeding the elephant - "What you are meant to feed is not the elephant's stomach... what you are responsible for feeding is its ego, its ambition, its hopes, its fears when that is to your advantage." Complimenting the elephant - "Inside every elephant, no matter how grand and confident, is a saggy, baggy little elephant in need of validation... Do not resist your impulse to compliment that elephant. It does expect it. And appreciate it. And it will believe anything reasonable (and even unreasonable) that you say." Obeying the elephant - "One may obey partially. A perilous game, to be sure. But sometimes the elephant issues incomplete instructions, or instructions that, if followed completely, would lead to disaster. In such cases, a partial response is a most eloquent statement." Educating the elephant - "It may be possible at first that the elephant has no idea that other people do have feelings. It may be possible that it doesn't recognize that there are other people. Praise the elephant when it responds to the humanity of others... Be quietly censorious when it fails to perform well in this regard. But do not blame it. It is merely being itself." Convincing the elephant that it was the elephantıs idea - "It is in the elephant's nature to see all things as creations and extensions of itself. You are therefore doing nothing in this regard but validating the elephant's true self." Getting credit from the elephant for work well done - "Donıt ask for credit. Simply make sure that you find yourself in its path as it is apportioned... You can best ensure that position by being the one to offer the last scrap of work to the elephant when the job in question is nearing completion." Frightening the elephant with mice - "Big creatures need equilibrium to remain viable... You can provide destabilizing small matters quite easily and thereby accomplish the ultimate goal of the intermediate elephant handler: to at once create a problem and provide its immediate solution." Protecting the elephant from harm - "Elephant Defense Tools - The Town Car: It protects the elephant from the elements and other people who might intrude on its hermetically sealed existence." Riding the elephant - "Don't be reluctant to invite trusted visitors up to ride with you. Those kinds of friendships last almost forever, even when the elephant itself is gone." And more! By the end of this little book the student will actually be able to play catch with the now-weightless elephant and, when advisable, abandon an old, worn-out beast for a new and more attractive one! "Zen will enable you to take an object of enormous weight and size and mold it in your grasp like a ball of Silly Putty. For senior management is, in truth, the silliest putty of them all," writes Bing. In THROWING THE ELEPHANT, he offers a useful, hilarious guide to workplace sanity, survival, and success - essential reading for anyone who works for somebody else, or anyone who just might, in the future, like to develop some elephantine qualities for themselves. # # # ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stanley Bing has been a columnist at Fortune since 1995. In addition, his work has appeared in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of What Would Machiavelli Do? and the novel Lloyd: What Happened. He is an ultra-senior officer at an elephantine corporation. Bing lives in New Rochelle, NY.
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