- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (May 22 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060934220
- ISBN-13: 978-0060934224
- Product Dimensions: 18.5 x 12.2 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #275,924 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Stanley Bing's Throwing the Elephant, subtitled Zen and the Art of Managing Up, is a wise and hilarious--mostly hilarious--antidote to the extensive library of works by grim, clenched-fisted business gurus. Bing posits that power strategies cannot be "managed through rational means." Real success--corporate-niche enlightenment--comes only by embracing religion, specifically Zen Buddhism. This enables one to take "an object of enormous weight and size" (i.e. the elephantine boss) and "mold it ... like a ball of Silly Putty." In truth, he continues, senior management is "the silliest putty of them all." Bing doles out his thoughts in dozens of pithy chapters ("Playing Golf with the Elephant," "Getting Drunk with the Elephant"). He also includes many visual aids (some of which nearly make sense) and adds a sprinkling of the wisdom of others--from Martha Stewart and Jimmy Hoffa to the rock band the Doors--to make his wickedly entertaining points. --H. O'Billovitch
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In a spoof of just about every career advice and management-by-metaphor book ever created, Bing (What Would Machiavelli Do?) delivers a Zen-like guide to managing your boss. The premise? Here's what Buddha would tell you if he were your personal career coach. A book juxtaposing faux-Zen advice with embarrassing corporate situations (e.g., how to handle a drunken boss) is almost guaranteed to be funny. Bing, "an ultra-senior officer at an elephantine corporation," has plenty of firsthand anecdotes to tell, and he supplements them with stories about some of the notoriously toughest bosses on the planet, like Martha Stewart and Citigroup's Sandy Weill. There are chapters on critiquing your boss ("any bitter pill of criticism one offers an elephant must be buried within a vast tub of cream cheese") and "facing the angry elephant" (when you're to blame for your boss's anger, "breathe deeply. Breath is life"). Despite the amusing anecdotes, though, Bing's narrative can become a bit wearying if one reads more than a couple of chapters in one sitting. However, if an employee only breaks out Bing's book when the elephant is having a particularly bad couple of weeks, enlightenment is certain.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The ways to find one's way to Enlightenment are many. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The ways to find one's way to Enlightenment are many. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
A book about nothing,
By
This review is from: Throwing The Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up (Paperback)
It must have been fun to write this book. It is much better than Mr Bing's What Would Machiavelli Do? There is more humor than knowledge in this one. Even if you are a Bing fan, I would suggest you borrow it from the library.
5.0 out of 5 stars
My elephant likes to rage and stomp me!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Throwing The Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up (Paperback)
This is going down as one of my all-time favorite books. I also highly recommend the excellent book on tape version which is read by the very amusing Simon Jones. My employer is a self-made multimillionaire who is a elephant in the truest meaning of the what this book discusses. He will scream and spit in your face while firing off threats of how he wants to kill you if he feels pushed to far. But the man is at his worst (or finest) when he calmly and collectedly confronts someone in his lair and with smirks and onesided logic breaks them down. I have yet to learn to properly handle my elephant and so he repeatedly stomps me as he trumpets his rage. The beast is the master of browbeating. Ironically (At this very moment of my typing this) he has summoned me to his upstairs office for most likely another stomping. This man/elephant has gone decades without someone effectively standing up to him and saying ***&&!!! this is where you get off the bus!! As the old saying goes "absolute power corrupts." I just got back from my meeting with him. I have been granted a reprieve and will supposedly get much better treatment. But is he really trying to "rehabilitate me" or simply fattening me up for the kill later on? A part of me yearns for the axe and freedom. But I have invested so much work into what I have with him and the company. I think he wants to turn me into an elephant "mini-me." He is in my view a generally good & brilliant human being (amazingly) but with a bad side at times the size of the Grand Canyon. The strange thing about my pachyderm is that he wishes to live forever and never have to be laid to rest in an elephant graveyard. To this end he will be frozen at death in the hope of being brought back to stomp and trumpet among the humans and elephants of the future. I hope the denizens of that time will know what they are bargaining for by bringing him back! But perhaps they will teach him the lessons he has not gotten in this segment of his life. I have a fantasy about winning the lottery and becoming his business partner. My dreams of putting him in his place are much stronger than simply being able to go out and buy anything I want, traveling the world or even making love to beautiful women! Best wishes to all potential elephant wranglers out there! You will need it.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious but not so useful,
By Brooklyn Girl (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Throwing The Elephant: Zen And The Art Of Managing Up (Hardcover)
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.
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