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Throwing the Elephant book cover
Throwing the Elephant
Zen and the Art of Managing Up
2002
First Published
3.45
Average Rating
240
Number of Pages

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.

Avg Rating
3.45
Number of Ratings
341
5 STARS
23%
4 STARS
28%
3 STARS
27%
2 STARS
13%
1 STARS
9%
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Author

Stanley Bing
Stanley Bing
Author · 16 books
Stanley Bing is a bestselling fiction and nonfiction writer, and a longtime columnist for Esquire, Fortune, and many other national publications. He is the author of almost a dozen books that explore the boundaries of hard-nosed, practical business strategy and satire. These include Crazy Bosses, which, in mapping the relationship between pathology and power, predicted so much of the current political climate; What Would Machiavelli Do, which addressed why mean people often do better than nice ones; and most recently a comprehensive replacement for the traditional MBA program, The Curriculum. His three novels are Lloyd: What Happened, You Look Nice Today, and Immortal Life.
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