Tip For Managers #3125 -- Avoid silent laughter

If you can't attend the meeting, and the meeting is about art work, and you are on the conference call and can't see the artwork...Don't issue an opinion.

That way, you won't say anything silly, resulting in the entire room silently laughing you.

That's one of the worst things that can ever happen to you, getting a room full of silent laughs while you are elsehwhere, pretending to be involved in the meeting via telephone.

The Nothing Meeting

Warriors, sometimes during your Cubeland adventures you will be bewildered. You will leave a meeting scratching your head and muttering “WTF?” (Because saying "fuck" too much looks bad and "WTF" is kind of funny in a hip, self-knowing, “I’m on my Balcberry too much” way.)

It won’t be the content of a meeting that causes your confusion, but rather the lack of any content whatsoever, the vacuum in the middle of the room that opens up seconds after you sit down, a vacuum spawned by everyone in the room wondering “Why am I here? What is this meeting really about?”

When this happens, you have experienced The Nothing Meeting. And like all meetings, you must know how to manage it accordingly.

You can tell you are in a Nothing Meeting if your boss starts by saying something like, “I just wanted to check in and see if everything was okay with (Blank).” The blank could be filled with “budget” or “planning” or “forecasting” or “hiring” or “unicorn wrangling” or anything at all, because it doesn't really matter.

The answer to your boss’ question should be, and probably is, “Everything is fine. Can I go now?”

But you can’t say that, because it’s your boss, and even though he has called a nonsensical meeting and is wasting your time, you need to remember your job, your true job – Make your boss glad you work for him.

So explain that everything is fine, then ask a few questions, seeing if you can figure what this meeting is really all about. It could be he was just lonely and felt like having a chat. It could be he heard something that concerned him, but he doesn’t want to tell you about it, so he’s asking generic questions to disguise what information he’s really after.

And sometimes, I swear, he will call a Nothing Meeting just because he can, because it makes him feel relevant, gives him a little buzz of empowerment. Perhaps the thought process is something like… “God, I am totally worthless, irrelevant and completely shit at my job. In fact, I can’t even figure out what my job really is. You know what I’ll do? Call a meeting. That’s a boss thing to do. Let’s get everyone in a room and talk about some stuff.”

So go in the room. Smile. Talk about whatever he wants to talk about.

It’s a Nothing Meeting, but if you increase your boss’s happiness in you working for him by smiling and chatting for an hour about nothing, it’s a Something Meeting.

When drawing and quartering isn't quite punishment enough

Warriors, I‘m trying to think of a good punishment for people who schedule 9 a.m. meetings. Is there anything more annoying? Can someone be more inconsiderate and selfish? Maybe someone who schedules 8 a.m. meetings, but no one ever attends those, so they don’t matter.

However, you have no good excuse not to be at a 9 a.m. meeting. Legally, technically, according to HR, you should be at work and ready to go, with a smile.

But the truth is you need a good 30 to 60 minutes of coffee, chit-chat about True Blood, and YouTube video surfing before you’re actually ready to think about work, much less talk about it. Everyone in Cubeland should know this by now. It’s an unspoken agreement, “No 9 a.m. meetings!” And yet, they happen, scheduled either by the clueless or the evil.

In a 9 a.m. meeting this morning, I was literally daydreaming about the Starbucks I wasn’t visiting right then, about whether I’d get a plain latte or something more fancy, something with syrup, maybe vanilla. A muffin perhaps? Meanwhile, some jackass was yammering away about metrics and pick-ups and tie ratios and  some kind of Internet-y thing about a new smart technology that will send some kind of hook on a wire out of a hard drive and pick the pockets of website visitors.

Every web agency sounds the same when they talk about their magic money-sucking technology. And I swear they invent new acronyms and buzz words every time they present. Flyby, Buzzclick, Eyepopper, Smartdot, Invisopixel, Tastycookie…just a few samples.

Anyway, back to the punishments!

Let’s go with, if you schedule a 9 a.m. meeting, you must name your first born an internet agency pseudo-English buzzword…Pixellint (for a girl) or Ramdrop (for a boy).

If you schedule a 9 a.m. meeting for a Monday morning, and you sent out the meeting invite over the weekend, let’s just agree you get the death penalty. Sorry, but you have got to go. I have dibs on your chair.

If you have other suggestions, let me know!

How to get a job -- It is easy!

Warriors, do you know what works in a job interview?

Just be nice. Smile. But not like a crazy person. Like a pleasant person.

Act like you want to work here, but don’t act like you want to be CEO tomorrow.

Know a few things about the products we make, but don’t tell me how to do my job.

You want me to feel like we will be friendly, if not friends.

You don’t want me to feel like you expect to have my job in a few months, if not a few weeks.

Be enthusiastic, but not fanatical. Confident, but not arrogant. Complimentary, but not ass kissing.

And spell check your fucking resume. Moron.

Do all that, and you might be surprised at how easy it is to get a gig. With me anyway.

Go home, already. Just looking at you is making me tired

Warriors, at some point, you have to go home.

Despite being worried about how it looks to leave before your boss. And despite the fact that you have an endless list of urgent things to do that will prevent you from being laid off, earn you praise, further your career, save the stock price and perhaps keep the Earth from tumbling into the sun.

Every once in a while, you need to break one of the cardinal rules of White Collar Warriors. (That rule? Work today like you might be laid off tomorrow, but your boss hasn’t decided yet.)

If you are exhausted to the point of dizziness. If a third double cap at Starbucks isn’t going to do much for you outside of send you back to the urinal (where you aren’t exactly productive). If a you are trying to string four 5-Hour Energy drinks into a 20-Hour stretch of energy. (Don’t do that, BTW.)

Then go, the fuck, home. Come back tomorrow. The cube isn’t going anywhere.

How To Make People Mad While Trying To Save The World

Warriors, there are times in your career when you’ll asked to be on something called a “strike team.” Sometimes these are called SWAT teams or action teams or “that thing I’m obligated to send someone too, but which I don’t give a shit about, so I’ll send that guy.”

These teams are temporary gatherings of people from around the company brought together to solve a problem or improve a process and, as always, to make PowerPoints. I’m coming to suspect that that is indeed the purpose of all corporate existence, to produce PowerPoint presentations.

The particular strike team I’m on is made up of wonderful people with smart ideas and if the company would listen, it would hear answers.

But it is deaf. Any noise that might cause a change is ignored. Any suggestion that might cause a shift in thinking is politely declined. A whispered hint that we might need an alteration to the way things are done is greeted with gritted teeth and a, "Go fuck yourself.”

But here I am anyway, on the team tasked with making noises, suggestions, and whispers about change.

What to do when you are being paid to flog a dead horse?

Crack that whip. Crack it good.

We Are Not Mining Coal – Example #1

Warriors, even as we sometimes vent the steam from our spleens, when we struggle against the soul-rending frustration of corporate life, when we piss and moan and weep and gnash teeth about our lost years wasted in Cubeland, it is essential that we occasionally step back and acknowledge the we indeed are not mining coal. We are not picking lettuce. We are not digging ditches. We are not Hoovering port-a-potties or swimming through sewers prying loose blockages.

We are of the White Collar tribe. We go home as clean as when we left.

And sometimes, this life can bring moments of sublime pleasure.

One example is this…The Expense Account Dinner, a meal in a nice restaurant that costs about five times what you’d normally pay for a dinner out of your own pocket. Thank you Expense Account Gods, we appreciate the premium steak, the top notch Indian food, the Sushi that was still swimming about five minutes ago.

Even better, give thanks for the dinners spent with extravagant senior executives who like to live well, who are rich and like to eat even richer when the company is picking up the tab. I had no idea what a hundred-dollar bottle of wine tasted like until my first senior executive dinner.

True, I didn’t taste every dollar of that one hundred. But that didn’t stop me from saying, “Ooo, that really is good.”

Thank you, Expense Account Gods, for the bounty you’ve put before us on white table clothes, eaten with real silver, and served by attractive waitress who are also part time models.

CEO Presentation Day

A momentous day. The big CEO presentation day, the showdown, the Thrilla in PowerPoint, the Demo for The Ages, the time to fish or cut bait, shit or get off the pot, get him to sign on the line which is dotted, close the motherfucking deal, make the bastard believe, make him buy what you are selling, make him buy you, who you are, why you are, why you are valuable to the company, to humanity, to him personally. Make him know why you should continue to take up cube space, a parking space, have lunch at the subsidized employee café, breathe company air, why your name shouldn’t be on the next layoff list.

Look at my shit. Buy my shit. You cocksucker. I’m going to make you money. I’m going to help you keep your job, your ugly yellow Lamborghini, your trophy wife who seems as dumb as bag of hammers. You putz. You empty suit. You waste of a good head of hair. Go fuck yourself.

And support my product. Give me lots of money to make it. And a big marketing budget would be nice.

Thank you.

Decoding The Corporate Codes -- I hear you, now shut up, that's why

Warriors, are you hearing me? Because I hear you. I do. If you speak to me, your voice will travel through the air, vibrate the machinery of my inner ear, and I will nod understandingly, as if I might care about your words.
Want to know if I really care?

If I say, "I hear you," I don't really give a shit. I've said those three words to let you know you can stop talking now, that nothing you can possibly say next will in any way affect my opinion or my plans or my capacity to care.

If you hear those words -- "I hear you" -- just take it for granted that the person who said them is no longer listening.

Do you hear me?

Are you seeing Recession Insanity?

Has your company gone crazy? Has the recession driven everyone in Cubeland mad?

Has a plummeting stock price caused your CEO to suddenly want to sit in on every meeting, everywhere in the company, all at once? Is he now suddenly an expert in packaging, modeling, electronics, programming, coffee brewing and toilet repair? Is there nothing he doesn’t have an opinion on? Is he acting like a man about to be fired? Can you see the beads of cold sweat on his forehead?

Are you or co-workers flying 5 to 15 hours only to sit in on a 20 minute meetings in territories you didn’t even know your company did business in? Do you find yourself flying and flying to meeting after meeting, showing products, showing marketing plans, showing the bags under your eyes from weeks of jet lag?

Is your company inventing new processes and inventing processes to make new processes, with the hopes that there is a magical way to get all the work done that used to be done by a team that was 10% to 40% larger, you know, before the layoffs, back in the days of milk and honey, when your stock options and mortgage were not underwater?

Let me know. What’s going on at your company? What symptoms of Recession Insanity are you seeing?

I’d like to know that I’m not alone. Thanks!

Chapter Three, Part Two -- Make The List

(Note: This is Chapter Three, Part Two of my book, White Collar Warrior(tm). You can read the chapters that came before this one by clicking on the links to the right. If you are interested in representing or publishing my book, please let me know at whitecollarwarrior@hotmail.com. Thanks!)

Now, let’s break down The List in greater detail…

NAME

Besides plain old first name and last name, you’ll also want to take note of nicknames. If a guy is known as “Skipper” to his friends, start calling him Skipper as soon as you can. You want to be familiar, friendly and unthreatening to your co-workers, especially the ones you want to ruin. Also, if you can call this guy Skipper in front of executives or during a high-profile meeting, that’s a good thing. There aren’t many vice-president Skippers for a reason.

Now, speaking of names, with The List, you’ll also want to keep track of a target’s email addresses (professional and private), chat program names, and user names for the company website and email programs.

Also, on a separate sheet that you keep secured somewhere, keep track of your target’s passwords. I’m not saying spy or use electronic trickery to get someone’s passwords. I’m just saying if you happen to be in someone’s cube and you happen to watch him open his email program, and you just happen to notice that he types in “Fluffy123” for his password, then that might be a piece of useful information one day. For instance, you might have legitimate need to read his email after he’s left for the evening. It could happen. That’s all I’m saying.

Here’s a fun thing to do with names…Put them into an internet search engine like Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Dogpile. Search not just for website mentions, but also for photos and newsgroup postings. You never know what you’ll find. Could be nothing. Could be your rival occasionally wears a prom dress complete with a tiara and can’t resist posting the pictures on www.dudesinpromdresses.com.

I’m assuming if that’s the case you’ll know what to put in your action plan. Clue: it involves a mass emailing from an anonymous account.

RANK

Out of a choice of five: Employee, Peer, Direct Superior, Superior’s Superior, Big Cheese

Employee

This is someone who happens to work for you, your minion, a person you can boss around, a person whose miserable life you hold in the palm of your hand, someone you can crush.

Don’t get cocky about it. No one, and I mean no one, can ruin your faster than someone who works for you. You need to know your people inside and out. You need to know how to make them make you look good, and you need to know how to eliminate them when they stop doing that.

If you feel one of them digging their heels into your back, trying to climb over you on the corporate ladder, you need to know how best to kill them. Not literally. Unless of course they pull a knife or a gun on you. Then you can do what you need to do and it’s all perfectly legal. Just something to keep in mind.

Peer

Peer means someone who has the same job title as you, the same pay grade as you, the same skill set and almost always the same boss. There are some exceptions to this. For instance, if someone with your job title happens to have a different boss or works in a different department, that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t want his job, his boss, or his potential promotion. If you work in a big company, keep an eye on peers in every department. If opportunity is lacking where you happen to be, don’t rule out making a lateral move, especially if you spot a weak peer ready to be cut down quickly. Keep your eyes open.

Obviously, peers are your most direct competition. They are the first people you’ll need to eliminate when necessary. You should consider them mortal enemies first and friends only if the need arises. Someone has to take your boss’ job when he leaves. It will be you or one of your peers. Who is it going to be?

Now, what you really don’t want is your peers knowing what you have in mind for them. You want the fight to be unfair, tilted so far in your direction that your enemy doesn’t have a hope in Hell. And more than that, you don’t want your enemy to know he is even in a fight. You want him to trust you, to ask for your help, to solicit your advice. And if your peer asks you to share the workload on a project or two, you say yes and roll up your sleeves. Just make sure your name is in the credits of any documents created, and make sure you give some, or all, of the presentation when the project is complete. You feel me?

Think of your peers as the people you happen to be sharing a cabin with on the Titanic. You all overslept and didn’t even hear the iceberg hit. Now the cabin is filling with ice water. The boat itself is pretty much underwater now. There is only time for one of you to get through the cabin door. Everyone else in the room will die an icy death. One of you will get to escape to the top deck and fight to get in a life boar. You might even get a front row viewing of Leonardo DiCaprio turning blue and freezing to death because Kate Winslett won’t scootch over a little on her piece of wood. Look at that thing. There’s plenty of room.

Why would you want to miss that? Do you really want to be one of the ones left in the cabin wondering what that really loud noise was?

Direct Superior

This is your boss.

A long time ago, a grumpy preacher from a red state gave a sermon about how people are sinners in the hands of an angry God, and at any second, God could dip them in a pit fire, roasting them alive, and then pull them out again, heal them, make them feel better, give them ice cream and a hand job, then dump them back into the fire just for the fun of it, laughing while their skin crackles to a golden brown.

Think of your boss as that crazy, power drunk God. Benevolent and kind one second, cruel and sadistic the next, your boss can you make you miserable like no one other than your spouse.

Make sure you add you boss to The List. His page is going to get a lot of attention.

Superior’s Superior

This is your boss’ boss. Your boss hates him (or, poor soul, her). He might act like he doesn’t but he does. Your boss wants nothing more in this world but for his superior to go away and let him feel like he actually has some power.

You see, as a middle manager, you get to sip from the cup of power. You get to boss people around. It’s a rush, and the more employees you have, the bigger rush it is. You can make a direct report feel like a million dollars with a few kind words, or you can crush his spirit with one snide remark. It’s like being a god. A really small god with no cool powers but one, you have the power to make your underlings taste heaven or hell, depending on your mood.

And what does a god resent more than anything else? A bigger, tougher more powerful god. All by himself, he feels pretty divine. But when a higher god walks in the room, his divinity looks pale and weak in comparison. That bigger god can even undo all his work, tell his employees to do something completely different, send them off on errands that have nothing to do with their original commands. And then, after that humiliation, his boss can then tell him exactly what to do and how to do it, reminding him of how powerless and pathetic he truly is.

That’s why a little power is a curse. You get a taste for how good it feels, and afterward, all you can think about is how you don’t have nearly enough. A heroin addiction is tougher to kick than a hunger for power.

So, that’s why your boss hates his boss. However, do you know how you feel about your boss’s boss? You love him! (Or, if you’re lucky, her!)

Think of your boss’ boss as a kind of grandparent. Grandparents always love to spoil the grandkids. They love saying things like: “Let’s take off early and grab a steak on the expense account” or “I bet you’d love to get a new computer next quarter” or “How would you like to come with us on the next trip to Fort Lauderdale? We could use a hand during the next executive retreat.”

For some reason, I’ve always found my boss’ boss to be one of the most delightful and generous people on the planet. He’s overly benevolent to his employee’s employees because it gives him a double buzz: 1. He gives joy to someone who probably has little. 2. Giving that joy gives great pain to someone else, your boss, who is busy screaming profanities into a pillow as you walk to the bar across the street with his superior. Your boss’s boss is having all the fun of being Satan combined with all the power of being a god.

Another thing you need to think about: You want one day for your superior’s superior to be your superior. Your boss needs to go, and one day he will, and you want to replace him. To do that, you need to be ready to step right in. You need to make sure it’s inconceivable that anyone else could do the job. And the person you need to think that is your boss’ boss.

And that’s why he’s on The List. Not because you want to destroy him, but because you want to know what he likes and dislikes so you can embody everything he favors and reject everything he doesn’t. You want to be the grandson he wishes he had (not the snotty, pot smoking, money-grubbing troublemaker he has to bail out of jail once a year). If he likes paisley ties, find yourself some ameba-covered silk. If he likes to talk football, you are now a fan of his teams, and you are going to spend a few hours every week studying them to the point you know where the quarterback went to high school and who he lost his virginity to. If he’s gay, you’re not going to turn away when he puts his hand on your knee. Of course, you’re not going to do anything you don’t want to. But you’re not going to make him feel bad. Christ, it’s just a friendly hand on a knee. You big baby.

A Big Cheese

These are the true gods of the corporate world. These are the guys who can fire you without even meeting you. If they don’t care for your division anymore, bam, you’re gone with one email.

These are the guys that before they arrive on your floor, someone calls ahead so you can prepare. “Hey! The big cheese is on his way. Get ready.” And at that point, there is a flurry of tidying up and men in $3,000 business suits are suddenly wielding brooms and dust rags. Such is the power of a Big Cheese.

I especially appreciate all the fake work that happens once the big cheese finally arrives and the air becomes filled with keyboard clacking and inside every cube is a person trying to desperately look to importantly busy. The braver souls actually take part in fake phone calls, haggling down prices, chewing out vendors and taking imaginary orders. Only a truly important person can cause this much spontaneous dishonesty.

So why is the Big Cheese on The List? Isn’t he so far above your head that it’s not even worth thinking about him? Of course not, idiot.

The guy has the power to do whatever the hell he wants, including promoting you to King Jr., if he wishes. Sure, it’s a long shot, but it has happened before. If the Big Cheese presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you need to be ready. If you put him on The List, you’ll be just that.

The problem with the Big Cheese is that you aren’t going to know much about him unless he’s one of those CEOs who insist on writing books about himself. If that’s the case, then read his book and make your life easier.

What you want to do is talk to old timers who have been around the company for a few years, the folks who have stories to tell and will tell them all for the price of a steak and a Jack on the rocks. That might be your boss, or it might be your boss’ boss, or it might be a co-worker. Either way, there are people around who know the king.

Also, feel free to search the internet as well. Big Cheese’s leave all kinds of footprints, where they were hired, where they were fired, what house’s they’ve bought, and who they’ve married. Big Cheese’s are addicted to PR, and thanks to the Internet, PR is permanent.

Look, if you Google yourself and get a few hits (the pictures of your dog on your Facebook page, your listing on your high school alumni page, a guy with your name who is doubtless more successful and better looking than you), then there will be plenty of articles about any Big Cheese worthy of the title.

In fact, I just Googled five CEOs from 5 company not even in the Fortune 500, and got plenty on each one to fill up The List. There are Q&As covering everything from their visions for the future to what schools their kids go to their pets’ names. I have almost enough info on these guys to steal their identities (too bad there are no Social Security numbers in any of these listings) or pretend to be the son of a long lost high school buddy long enough to scam a free night in the guest bedroom and maybe a loan.

One quick note about Big Cheese’s: They are almost always smart and ruthless, which should be obvious, but can also be bat shit insane, which might be surprise to you, as one might expect sanity to be basic requirement for holding that much responsibility. All that money does something to their grasp of reality. Howard Hughes is an easy example, a guy who didn’t cut his hair or finger nails for the last 20 years of his life, and who bought a TV station so he could make it play the movies he wanted to see. (They didn’t have DVDs or VCRs back then.)

But he’s far from alone in the Big Cheese Funny Farm. I know of one CEO who eats nothing but white toast and drinks nothing but whole milk. Other than that, nicest guy in the world. Another Big Cheese I know of will fire you if you don’t argue with him. Doesn’t matter what about. He just likes to argue. He likes conflict, be it over football teams, Stephen Spielberg’s best movie or whether OJ did it or not. Not arguing with him is your ticket to the unemployment line.

Another Big Cheese, this one from the entertainment industry (which does seem to spawn insanity in executives more than any other), would tell specific chosen employees how to dress, everything from suit colors and cuts, to ties, to shirts (French cuffs with elegant cufflinks), to shoes (nothing Italian and light, he liked bulky English heels, laces, and wing tips). And yes, even underwear (boxers, Egyptian cotton or silk). The employees he graced with wardrobe advice were always the ones who ended up being promoted and doing well in the company. If he never bothered to teach you how to tie a Windsor knot, then you might as well have started sending out your resumes.

So, when you add a Big Cheese to The List, make special note of his eccentricities. Be ready to have your cube stocked with white bread, a toaster and a fridge full of milk. Know what to argue about and what to chat amiably about. If a Big Cheese favors those horrid, multi-colored, $300 sweaters that look knitted by Stevie Wonder, then by all means, have one ready to slip into should a BC visit be ready to happen.

And for the love of all that’s holy, if you start fake typing to make yourself look busy during a BC visit, actually type something that looks like work. You don’t want the exec to walk by your cube and see you intensely typing out: “aa;vubrev;iqebeqibwrv;uwvb;bw.”

(To be continued in Chapter Three, Part Three)

Processing the process of process

Summary of a meeting I just had (edited to protect the frustrated)…
“So, we are going to recommend a new process.”

“Yes. But we can’t recommend a new process.”

“How’s that again?”

“If we recommend a new process, we’ll imply that the existing process is broken.”

“It is.”

“You can’t just say that. It will make people defensive.”

“So, we are not going to recommend a new process?”

“No.”

“But we need a new process.”

“Yes.”

“How are we going to do that then?”

“We’ll recommend a process to evaluate the current process and then recommend that we implement a new process.”

“Isn’t that what we just did? Isn’t that why we are having this ‘process improvement’ meeting?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Lunch then?”

“Sounds good.”

CHAPTER 3, PART 1 -- Know Your Enemies, Otherwise Known as Your Co-Workers

(Note: This is Chapter Three, Part One of my book, White Collar Warrior(tm). You can read the chapters that came before this one by clicking on the links to the right. If you are interested in representing or publishing my book, please let me know at whitecollarwarrior@hotmail.com. Thanks!)

JIMMY’S DAY 30

Jimmy has worked for the company a month now, and while still almost completely useless, he is doing something worthwhile, something I advised him to do that will serve him well in the battles to come. He’s created The List.

Some might see it an enemies list, a black list, or a revenge list. It is not any of those things. (However, if your enemies ever find this list, they will give it an evil name and hang it around your neck as they lead you to slaughter. Beware. Next time you are in Hell, ask Richard Nixon about his famed “Enemies List.”)

The List is simply a list of the people you come in contact with each day, people you work with and for, and who work for you. For each person, you simply document a few key facts. It’s quite easy. I’m going to give you a worksheet and everything.

Basically, it comes down to identifying a co-worker’s type, strengths and weakness, along with some other needed info, like birthdate, marital status, sexual preference, hobbies, a list of job territories (the corporate areas they control and that you might want to relieve them of), and a relationship scale, which marks where the subject is on your friend-to-enemy continuum. Also, you need to jot down a brief action plan, detailing what you plan on doing with all this handy information you’re documenting.

Here’s how useful having The List is. Let’s visit Jimmy once again…

In Jimmy’s first week, he exploited Bob’s one big obvious weakness, his leaving work early to be with his grumpy wife. Jimmy was able to benefit from the weakness in a small way by gathering intelligence after hours and creating the impression of putting extra time in.

In the future, Jimmy will be more carefully collecting details about Bob and everyone else around him. Jimmy has added Bob to The List. Here’s what it looks like…

---

Name: Bob Jones

Rank: Peer (Out of five choices: employee, peer, direct superior, superior’s superior, big cheese)

Job Title: Assistant to the assistant account executive.

Type: The Complete Dick (I’m going to give you a list of several possible co-worker types and explain how to identify those types.)

Age: Mid-30s, not sure. (When you can, fill in any missing info as you get it. Small details are more important than you think.)

Time of Hire: 1 year before me. (This is an important detail, as it will give you a good idea how much of a head start you have to overcome.)

Birthdate: Don’t know.

Married? Yes.

Happily? Don’t think so.

Sexual preference? 9 (This is not a simple yes or no question. It is based on a spectrum, 1 being totally flaming gay and 10 being NASCAR-dad straight. Bob got himself a 9 because of the sports car and babe pictures in his cube. But keep in mind that these answers are written in pencil for a reason. Could Bob be over compensating?)

Hobbies: Loves sports cars, and semi-naked women sitting on top of sports cars. Whimpering to his wife.

Job Territories You Want: 1. Working With Dick on Product X Launch Presentation 2. Competitive Research (You have to choose carefully what territory you want. Some job space is worthless and some will add decades to your job security.)

Job Territory You Don’t Want: Tending To Already Launched Products Y and Z (Notice that Jimmy envies projects that haven’t launched yet and is happy to concede previously launched projects.)

Strengths: Knows more about the competition than anyone else, and Dick relies on him for that.

Weaknesses: Always leaving early due to bitchy wife. Also, he’s a dick. (I’d rather Jimmy be more specific. How is Bob a dick? Because he isn’t friendly to new employees? Because he sexually harasses people? He passes gas in his cube? Because he kisses ass? What? Go deeper. There are so many dicks in the corporate world you really need to define what flavor of dickishness you are referring to.)

Relationship Scale: 5 (1 to 10, 10 being best friends for life and 1 being your on the verge of slicing his throat with a letter opener. A five is exactly what you DON’T want. A five is worthless. A one is someone you know you can destroy without losing a minute of sleep and a 10 could be an ally for life. A five is nothing but a problem.)

Relationship Goal: Destroy him. (This is from a choice of three: Destroy Him, Ally With, Ignore)

Action Plan: Offer to help work on the Project X launch plan, or pick up some of the competitive research as well. If Bob refuses to let you help, then spend more time with Dick after Bob goes home for the night.

---

It’s a little thin, but it’s a start. Jimmy now has a clear idea of who he is competing with and how to compete well. As Bob has the exact same job title as Jimmy, the same boss, the same skill set and as Bob owns a good hunk of territory that Jimmy wants, and because Bob is a dick, Jimmy has made the wise decision to destroy Bob.

I know. That sounds cold. It doesn’t seem polite to start your career by deciding you want to destroy someone. If you like, use words like “compete with” or “excel past” if being politically correct makes you feel better. Go ahead and think to yourself: “May the best person win.” Send your enemy (oh sorry, your “competition”) Christmas cards and buy him lunch once a week. Give him a goddamn daily back massage if you want. In fact, I highly recommend doing all those things, and still work diligently to destroy him.

When I say destroy, I don’t mean murder him, which is illegal, and difficult to do without getting caught. I don’t recommend it all at all, unless you know you won’t get caught. And you will. Unless you won’t. Let me be clear…I don’t recommend murder, and you can tell the district attorney that, should you get caught, unless you aren’t.

When I say destroy, I mean secure yourself the next available promotion or grab a leadership role on the next high profile project. I mean find a way to move past or remove the guy on the ladder ahead of you, who is there simply because his start date occurred before yours.

If Jimmy outworks Bob, outthinks him, out ass kisses him, out maneuvers him, and turns in better results, who do you think will get Dick’s job when it comes time for Dick to move up or move out? Of course it should be Jimmy, and at that point Bob will be ruined. He’ll have been passed over, even though he had seniority. Effectively, Bob’s career will be destroyed, because it’s extremely doubtful that Bob will hang around to become Jimmy’s employee. In fact, Jimmy, as a good White Collar Warrior, won’t let that happen.

So, Jimmy’s goal is to destroy Bob. You can call it what you like. However, if you expect to get anywhere in the corporate world, you need to embrace the fact that the people in between you and your goals need to be dealt with. And, you need to be able to handle the results of that. After Bob’s embarrassing demise, will Jimmy be able to handle seeing Bob cry? Will he be able to stomach knowing that Bob is headed towards another dead end position in another department or potentially even unemployment? If Bob’s wife leaves him, if Bob ends up working at the corner 7-11, if Bob ends up homeless and living in a refrigerator box under a highway overpass, will Jimmy be able to sleep well at night?

He better. If success makes you lose sleep, I recommend sleeping pills, or alcohol, or drugs. But not all at the same time.

Now, let’s break down The List in greater detail…(To be continued in Chapter Three, Part Two)

Recession cured! Through the magic of PowerPoint!

Warriors, it’s becoming clear that the way to cure this recession is more meetings, lots more meetings.

It must be, because that seems to be my company’s way of dealing with it, scheduling more meetings, with more worldwide travel, more conference calls, with more PowerPoint creation, more rehearsals, more late night meetings to prepare for the meetings, more rounds of feedback on presentations, which results in more working on presentations.

We’ve decided that instead of speaking to customers, and figuring out better products and better ways to talk to customers, we are going to talk to ourselves, often, and through an animated slideshow program with pictures clipped from Flickr and funny moves from YouTube. What are we telling ourselves? Basically, when you boil it down, we’re telling each other everything is going to be okay. We have products. We are going to market them. We will remain employed. Probably.

All these meetings? It’s the same thing as getting a hug from your mother after you scrapped your knee. And as about as helpful.

Well, not really. It’s less helpful. It is more like your mom is so intent on your listening to her that she won’t let you up so you can spray antiseptic on your bleeding wound and bandage it. Instead, she’s going to hold you down and scream meaningless into your face until your knee gets gangrene and has to be amputated.

(Helpful PowerPoint tip: If you need pictures of people who look kind of like your target market, just search on Flickr!)

Corporate Personality Types -- The French Rock Star

Warriors, every once in a while, even at the most boring business conferences, you sometimes see a presenter so shocking, so absurd, so French, that you just have to say, “Whoa, what the fuck is the guy wearing? Oh yeah, I’m in Europe. I forgot.”

I am in Europe and I am at a conference, and I did see such a person, a person who quite seriously stood up in front of 50 important people working in offices around the world and presented in a serious and, except for his clothes, boring manner.

He’s the kind of corporate type I call, in my book White Collar Warrior, The Rock Star. A Rock Star I define as someone who dresses for the business day like he’s going to gather up his band and open for U2 right after work.

The French guy I saw today was a peculiar European flavor of Rock Star.

In front of an audience dressed conservatively in slacks, sports jackets and the occasion pair of expensive jeans, French Rock Star went with this look…

1. Thin white T-shirt, cut low around his neck with a thin collar, looking vaguely like an antique undershirt. He seemed to be trying show off his collar bones. And as he was rock star thin, why not?

2. On top of the T-shirt was a blue sports jacket. That conservative garment seemed to be arguing with the T-shirt, the formal versus the informal. On anyone else (me for instance) that combo would have looked like a dress shirt had been forgotten during the rush to get dressed, perhaps due to jet lag or drunkenness or both. On French Rock Star, it was a look, carried out with panache, like it would have been shameful to hold back his coolness with a mundane dress shirt.

3. His hair was full of product, spiked, pointy and offering a swirl of dark across his brow that constantly threatened to drop into his eyes.

4. His beard was about a quarter inch long, just passed “unshaved” and just before “full beard.” You know what’s between those two beard lengths? Something the ladies call, “Oooo, you’ll be all scratchy if I kiss you.” I remember being able to wear that length. These days, if I grew my beard for a few days in the hopes of enhancing my sexiness, I’d just get to the length called “looks unemployed and potentially homeless.”

5. And the shoes, ah those Italian shoes with pointy toes. They curved upward, like elf shoes. They didn’t quite have a swirled point that you could hang little bells from, but they were clearly pointing to a place no self-respecting American shoes would ever point.

Warning Warriors, when you encounter a Rock Star in your journey through Cubeland, do not, I repeat, do not, try to dress like him. Unless, of course, you are under 30, and are rock star thin, and have particularly handsome collar bones.

Corporate Vocabulary #1 – Schadenfeedbackrude

Today’s word is a derivative from the German compound word “Schadenfreude,” which is the peculiar and slightly guilty pleasure one takes from misfortunes of others. Leave it to the German to define that particularly ugly human emotion.

In the corporate world, we have “Schadenfeedbackrude,” which is the pleasure one takes from the negative feedback someone else gets.

For instance, say a co-worker, a friendly competitor, or your boss is up in front of an audience pitching a presentation, clicking through those PowerPoint slides, feeling so good about how wonderful it is to be on stage and spewing highly polished bullshit.

And then, feedback lightning strikes, a senior exec in the audience calls bullshit, criticizes logic flaws in the plan, complains that the research methods are invalid or that the choice of fonts and colors is atrocious.

"Oh god, if I see Tohoma Bold ever again I'll just claw my eyes out!" (Hardcore PowerPointers are passionate about fonts. And don't get them started on animations.)

The presenter deflates. His eyes fill with panic and hurt. He gets defensive. You can see his soul suffering. Wetting his pants is not out of the question.

And maybe your presentation, the one before his, wasn’t so great, but wasn't tied to a stake and stoned. In fact, in comparison, you’re looking pretty damn good.

That feeling warming in your chest that makes the air taste good? That urge to lift the corners of your mouth into a slight, almost imperceptible smile?

That, warriors, is Schadenfeedbackrude.

Insecure Executive Turrets Syndrome

Warriors, there are times you’ll need to diagnose illnesses, corporate illnesses, the kind not curable through traditional medicine, the kind with symptoms that could cause you craziness, frustration, hours of extra work, hysterical laughter and quite possibly rage.

Today, we will discuss Insecure Executive Turrets Syndrome, a horrible scourge that plagues Cubeland. ETS is quite common among the white collared, from whom you’ll hear all kinds of wrong, stupid and bizarre things. These people are sane, educated and probably not drunk. They are simply suffering from ETS.

There are various varieties of ETS, but today we’ll just be discussing the “Insecure” strain.

Insecure Executive Turrets Syndrome presents itself in meetings where the patient isn’t saying much, where everyone else is participating, discussing, and being productive. The patient will be the guy in the corner, furrowing his brow and nodding his head, maybe looking confused, and remaining silent.

The Insecure Executive, who might be new to the company, or maybe just dumb, will eventually become uncomfortable with his own silence. His boss will say something. His direct reports will be contributing. Others in the room will add to the discussion. Things might be going quite well, except for the fact that he’s not saying anything, not proving himself to be worthy of being in the room, and perhaps not worthy of his paycheck.

He’s thinking about himself and what everyone is thinking of him, and not the problem being discussed. He feels himself in quicksand, sinking slowly deeper into his silence, where he will eventually become completely unneeded, ignored and inconsequential.

At that point, to stave off the panic, he’ll blurt out something beside the point, redundant or crazy.

“I think our target market should be everybody!” could be one blurted out statement, and anyone who knows anything about marketing knows that that statement is the dumbest ever uttered. Yet, people keep saying it like it means something. Why? Because it sounds big and bold, like you’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. It’s as meaningless as saying, “What I think we should do is push the boundaries of what’s possible!”

Sure, skipper, you write up a project plan for all that boundary pushing you think we should be doing.

Other things you might hear the IETS victim blurt out include:

“What if we brought this idea to Facebook!”

“What if we buy a Super Bowl ad!”

“We should get even further outside the box!”

“Take a look at Avatar! What’s the common dominator between us and Avatar? It’s the biggest movie ever! Maybe something about the color blue…”

“What if we went so far outside of the box that we end up back in the box?!”

“Let’s set up more brainstorm meetings to generate ideation around the boundaries we need to push outside of the box and into another box where Facebook apps live. Also, Twitter. What about Twitter?”

In short, if you hear something crazy, redundant, blindingly obvious or that is a head-rattling non sequitur, you are in the presence of someone experiencing Insecure Executive Turrets Syndrome.

There is no cure, sadly. Just pretend you didn’t hear anything and move along. The victim will eventually get over it, or, if your company is like my company, promoted over and over again.

Tip! If you experience IETS, do not speak. Hold it in. It might hurt; it might even burn. But keep your mouth shut. If you absolutely have to say something, ask a question. Contrary to popular belief, people who ask questions almost always sound smarter than people who blurt out inanities or blinding flashes of the obvious.

CHAPTER 2 – Working Hard at Hardly Working

(Note: This is Chapter Two of my book, White Collar Warrior. You can read the chapters that come before this one by clicking on the chapter links to the right. If you are interested in representing or publishing my book, please let me know at whitecollarwarrior@hotmail.com. Thanks!)

Key Lesson: Appear to work longer and harder than everyone else. (It doesn’t matter if you really do or not. The key word in this lesson is “appear.”)

JIMMY’S DAY SEVEN

Jimmy is settling in, hasn’t got himself fired, and managed to get computer passwords and office supplies. Good for Jimmy. So far, he’s proven himself to be useless, but harmless. In today’s world, useless can keep you employed for quite a while, so he’s safe for now. He hasn’t been there long enough to screw up publicly or take the blame for someone else’s public screw up, the two things that will often get you canned.

Jimmy is also working on a few small projects and assignments, mostly low level tasks because Dick doesn’t think too much of Jimmy…yet.

One thing Jimmy did do right, he called the number on that business card. He called the White Collar Warrior, and he got himself a little advice. Not much. The WCW doesn’t give away a lot of knowledge at first. He doles it out to those who earn it, who deserve it, and who pay monthly fee for it. And Jimmy, by making that call, earned a few words of advice.

Those words resulted in Jimmy doing something useful during his otherwise spectacularly unproductive seven days. He’s taken note of Bob’s often tension filled phone calls, and he’s noticed that on the days Bob has one of those calls, Bob leaves the office right at 6 p.m., or even a little early.

And on those days, after he bids Bob a warm farewell, he waits ten minutes, then goes to Dick’s office and asks a question, normally for some bit of information that Bob is responsible for. He never comes out and says: “Bob isn’t here.” In fact, he never says Bob’s name unless Dick says it first. Remember -- be subtle. Your intent must be invisible and your tactics imperceptible.

For instance, Jimmy has asked: “Do you have those 1997 numbers for the comparative graph I’m building?”

“Bob has those. He keeps track of all the archived metrics,” says Dick.

“I’ll get them tomorrow from Bob then.”

“What? Did Bob leave?”

“Yeah, he had to take off. No biggie. I’ll catch up with him tomorrow.”

See? Subtle. This exchange wasn’t a big deal. And by itself, would have no effect positive or negative on Jimmy’s career. However, what if a conversation like that was to be had every week, or two or three times a week? What if it became more and more obvious that Jimmy worked longer hours than Bob?

If you were Dick, wouldn’t you gain just a little more respect for Jimmy. Maybe you’d give him a few of Bob’s duties, a little sliver of Bob’s territory, because you need stuff done and Jimmy is around to do it. At that point, Jimmy has begun winning the battle against Bob, and Bob doesn’t even know he’s in a fight.

I know what you’re thinking. For that to work, Jimmy will actually have to work longer hours than Bob and often more than his boss. You hate working long hours. You’ve got TV to watch, videos games to play, and kids to put to bed. They miss their dad and are growing up without your influence. They call you “the guy who sleeps in the bed with mom” in between exploring your not-so-well hidden porn collection and smoking fatties rolled with your stash, also not hidden so well. (An ice cream tub in the freezer? What were you thinking?). Wah. Wah. Here’s a tissue, you big baby. If you think like that, you’ll never be a white collar warrior.

I’m not saying be an idiot about it. Feel free to leave right after all your co-workers leave. Also, if you want to spend time in a restroom reading the newspaper, or playing craps with the security guards or chatting up the cleaning lady, feel free to do that too. Being at work long hours doesn’t mean actually working long hours. Fill those hours however you want, but just don’t get caught.

Do your goofing off during the day and then actually work during the evening, when you have some peace and when your superiors will better notice it. Sending in a report at 3 p.m. is no big deal. But send one in at 8 p.m., and you’re a big hero because you “put in the extra hours to get the job done.”

How do you do that? How do you stave off actual work during the day so you actually work at night? Meetings. Not real ones. But the ones you tell people you’re going to.

In a company with lots of departments, you’re going to have lots and lots of meetings. They are the curse of the modern workplace (along with the hellish invention of email, of which there is a chapter in this book called Email – Proof That God Hates Us), and you’ll have days when you do nothing but sit in a chair in a room full of people who will say nothing remotely interesting or relevant to you. (See the chapter Meeting Masturbation for how to get the most use out of them.)

You can take advantage of this plague of the corporate world by declaring you’re going to a meeting and then taking off for an hour or two. Everyone will believe you because everyone is besieged by meetings. And what’s really great is that when your boss comes looking for you, or your spouse, or your mother, or your creepy kids, the word is given from someone who is quite sincere: “He’s in a meeting.”

Back in the olden days, when fax machines printed on thermal paper and office administrators were secretaries chased around by martini-swigging bosses, you had to lie to get out of work, faking a soar throat or complaining about nausea or diarrhea. (If you were good at it, you called with your head actually inside a toilet bowl, in order to get just the right echo while you poured canned beef stew into the water. It sounds perfect. Try it sometime and see.)

But today, the business gods have given us the curse of meetings, and the blessing of having the perfect excuse to disappear for an hour or two.

Important note on that: Be sure and take a pad and paper, or even better, your laptop computer. You go to and from fake meetings with crap in your arms and a worried, determine look in your eyes. You don’t trot off empty handed and smiling. Don’t be an ass and say “I’m off to the planning meeting” without so much as a pen and pad in your hand. And please, don’t forget to write something on the pad before you get back. Two pages of doodles, fake notes or death threats to members of Congress per hour you were gone should be sufficiently convincing.

And what to do during this free time?

Take an early dinner at 4 p.m. at the restaurant that always crowded after 5 p.m. Visit the bookstore across the street. Get a lap dance or two if an exotic entertainment establishment is close by. Sleep in your car. Sleep in a bathroom with your head on the toilet paper dispenser. Do whatever it is you need to do to feel like you aren’t working.

Then, return to work, where your co-workers are watching the clock waiting for 6 p.m., getting ready to shoot out the door like someone received an envelope full of white powder. With them finally gone, you can settle in for some actual productivity. As they trot out, there you’ll be, hard at work for all to see.

That will earn you “midnight oil” points, which you’ll be able to spend during your performance review self-appraisal, when you write: “I work late into the night when it’s called for and don’t leave until the job is done.” And that will be true, though you will be leaving out this line: “…but during the day I watch The Sopranos on DVD in the back seat of my SUV.”

What about those other points, the less popular, more unpleasant-to-get points…the “early bird catches the worm” points?

Yeah, I hate them too, but you need them, especially at the start of your career. You need to be the first one in AND the last one out. You need to be sitting in your cube, typing away, LOUDLY, so that people hear you. (It would be really dumb of you to come in early and not make sure people noticed.)

You need to see that look in their eyes when they arrive at work to find you already at your desk, that look that says: “What the fuck is that guy doing here all ready? He’s making me look bad.”

And more than being early, make your presence felt. Put on the coffee so it’s waiting for people when they arrive, so the rest of the morning they’ll be drinking your coffee. Put out donuts every two or three weeks. There’s nothing as tempting as a free donut, and with each deep-fried apple fritter they bite into, they’ll know it was you who paid for it

When you show up before everyone else, the building is yours, the company is yours, the stash of Girl Scout cookies in your co-worker’s cube is yours. You’re the boss and you’re making critical decisions. About what? How does being early give you power?

If you are the first one in, you can drop meeting invites on people while they are still sipping weak coffee from their travel mugs in rush hour traffic. By logging into the meeting maker first, you can set up meetings concerning your projects before anyone else has a chance. First one to schedule a meeting wins. And when you set up a meeting, you’ve established that meeting room as your territory, the domain you rule. (Again, see the chapter called Meeting Masturbation.)

So, you’re coming in earlier than everyone, leaving later than everyone and even though you’re taking advantage of some free time during the day, you’re still unhappy. It still feels like work if you aren’t at home eating ice cream out of the carton and watching Oprah in your own living room.

I can’t help you if that’s how you feel. You think Donald Trump didn’t put in some hours? You think Bill Gates kept up to date on his soaps while he was making his first billion dollars? You think Bush Jr. got to be president by being a spoiled brat and coasting through life on his family fortune and political connections? It’s true, that is exactly what W did, but unless you’ve got an oil field or two on the family ledger, you aren’t going to get by like W did.

You’re going to work your ass off. Take your pleasures when they come, but if you think you can do this without doing some actual work, forget it. I’m promising to help you to work smarter, but I’m not saying you don’t have to work.

Also, I am not giving you a license to complain about working hard. When I say make your boss and co-workers aware of the hours you’re putting in, I’m saying to subtly let them know you are being cheerfully productive while they go home to their families, favorite TV shows and warm, cozy beds. You smile at them and modestly say you’re going to finish up and go home when you can. You are cheerful in the morning when they arrive. You are not grumpy and you don’t snipe at people for not being there when you are.

You are gracious and happy at all times. You love your work, or at least you act like you love your work. And that’s the real threat to everyone around you in Cubeland, and the reason your boss is going to keep giving you hunks of other people’s territory, because you never complain. You’re eager to take on anything and everything because you’d love nothing more than to work every waking minute. If you start bitching, the boss will start taking things away from you just to shut you up. Capisci?

And that brings us back to Jimmy. Look at him. He’s working late on his report. Even Dick is gone, after having said, “Goodnight! Don’t work too late. You’ll make me look bad. Heh. Heh.”

After the building is quiet and it is certain no one else is around, Jimmy types for a few minutes, then closes the file. He was actually done an hour ago.

He sets up his email to send the report at 11 p.m., instead of the current time of 7 p.m. Using an easily downloadable bit of freeware, he will get credit for another 4 hours of work, because all Dick will know is that email was sent at 11 p.m., and Dick will be appreciative that Jimmy put in so many extra hours on his project.

Jimmy then goes into the meeting maker and schedules two meetings, each with three people, each for projects that Dick threw at him earlier. Then, he schedules another meeting, from 3 to 6 p.m., and Jimmy invites just himself. He labels it “High Level Project Planning,” so when people try to find Jimmy, they’ll get the message that he’s already taking part in a highly important gathering.

Actually, he’s going to go ice skating, and will then treat himself to a facial at the spa around the corner. Then he’s going to come back to work and settle in just as his co-workers are leaving, each of them wondering if they should work longer hours as well, because that damn new guy is really putting in some time. Damn him.

Perfect. Good job, Jimmy.

THE WHITE COLLAR WARRIOR’S ADVICE FOR STANDING OUT ABOVE THE COMPETION AT THE START OF YOUR CAREER

1. Work longer than everyone else, but not necessarily harder. You are the first one in and the last one out. Make sure your boss knows. Make sure your co-workers know.

2. Don’t be an ass about it. Remember, be subtle. Don’t sigh and moan about having to work so many hours. Don’t be complainer. The last thing anyone wants to hear is someone bitching about how hard work is. Here’s a little secret: Everyone thinks they work too many hours. Everyone is overworked, or feels that they are. Just about everyone hates their job, and they aren’t interested in knowing that you hate your job too.

3. Scam a few extra hours of credit by using an email delay send program. Don’t abuse it, but once a week or so set up some email to be sent between 11 p.m. and midnight.

4. Use a meeting as an excuse to escape work during the day, when you can have your fun and take a few minor pleasures, just enough to get through your hellish corporate existence.

5. At night, be happily working as your co-workers and boss walk past you and out the door. Say goodnight with a smile, especially to your boss. Get some real work done now that the place is quiet. Or watch movies on a portable DVD player. Or take a nap. Whatever. Up to you.

6. Set up meetings after co-workers have left or before they come in. Take control of their schedules before they can take control of yours.

7. Come in before your boss. Make sure everyone knows you were there first by making coffee, bringing in donuts, and saying good morning loudly to each person as they walk past your cube. Like I said, don’t be a grouch. But if you really are in a bad mood and you need a little morning giggle, lick each the donuts and put them back on the tray. It’s cheap, I know, but it will give you a smile when you need one.

END OF CHAPTER TWO
 

Great Moments In Corporate Diversity

Warriors, race is always a touchy subject. You should never mention race in almost any context.

Unless there is something extremely and obviously off.

Take a look here, a good long look…

http://www.nbcuni.com/About_NBC_Universal/Executive_Bios/

There are 18 executives running NBC. Two of them are of color. One of those with a little extra melanin also happens to be the executive vice president in charge of diversity.

And now go to and count the faces of color at…

http://www.nbc.com/

And now un-count Jamie Fox, a guest on The Tonight Show this week.

Isn’t it nice that we are living in post-racial America?

And sure, this observation might be a little unfair, and no, I don't think NBC is a racist organization.

But if you are a middle manager with stellar performance reviews at NBC, and you see the make up of its controlling officers, how are you feeling about your chances of cracking into that top floor of the Ivory Tower?

Great Moments In Corporate Jackassery

Warriors, if there is one almost completely sure fire way to get a project approved, it is this…
Pitch building a mediocre product with half the budget it normally takes to build a mediocre project.

Do NOT, unless you are James Cameron, pitch an amazing product that costs more to build than a merely good product.

Quality doesn’t count. Costs do. Remember that.

The soulless, visionless, blue-suited zombies who run large corporations have had all willingness to take risks beaten out of them. The chance of a failure on their otherwise pristine records keeps them awake at night cuddling their teddy bears and popping Ambien.

Case in point…The TV show Southland, which just had its second season premiere on TNT. Amazing show. A clear candidate for best show on TV. I was watching it last night and thinking to myself, “Oh NBC, you couldn’t make this show a hit? Great acting, masterful writing and compelling characters that you love rooting for, while also dealing with troubling social issues of the day – You couldn’t figure out how to get people to watch that?”

The answer is no. Instead, they took five hours of prime time TV and turned it into something you could maybe see on a cable access channel, but with better furniture. Why did they do that? Why was Jay Leno occupying valuable prime time slots, where he was busy losing ratings to Seinfeld repeats every night?

Because someone at NBC thought he had a brilliant idea. Instead of trying to make high quality shows, which are expensive, it would be better to make a mediocre show for less money than it would take to buy a toupee for Jeff Zucker. Mathematically, it made perfect sense, even though the equation used to make that decision probably didn’t include NBC becoming a laughing stock.

That guy probably got a raise and a promotion. That guy is probably going to continue to make decisions like that, and he will always have an apartment on Manhattan’s West Side, a brand new BMW in the garage and his wife will always be hotter than yours. That’s what embracing low-cost mediocrity will do for you.

Meanwhile, watch Southland, before someone at TNT has the bright idea to cancel it and start running a puppet show.

Corporate Metaphor Mixmaster

Heard around Cubeland…

“Smell the writing on the wall.”

“He’s between a rock and a hard place because he’s got to make elephants dance.”

“There is an 800 pound gorilla in the room and that’s because we can’t find the pony in this thing.”

“I don’t believe the research. (That thing) is only for women or men who want to be women.”

A: “Ideation is the product of brainstorming.”

B: “No it’s not. Ideation is brainstorming.”

A: “I’ve got an idea. Go fuck yourself.”

The Lost Weekend

Alcohol. Pot. Smack. Shrooms. Bolivian marching powder. Illicit sex (with or without other people being involved). Gambling. Watching every episode of Dancing With The Stars on DVD while gorging on mint chocolate chip ice cream.

All are horrible, debauched and pathetic ways to spend a weekend. But none of those match the shear sadness of a weekend spent PowerPointing. And all of them are preferable, even the Dancing With The Stars weekend, because at least that comes with ice cream.

PowerPointing has made writing a simple product plan just so much more than putting your best ideas into a document and sending it around. That would be just too easy, too effective, to old school.

Thanks to PowerPoint, you’ve also got to spend time selecting just the right photos from Google images, adding in funny cartoons, worrying over font selection, and staring at your computer screen for hours trying to shorten 10 word sentences into four-word bullet points. Your template needs to be as beautiful. Your jokes need to be hilarious. Your organization needs to flow.

It’s got to please people who will review it without letting you speak, so the words need to convey all the points you need to make. And it’s got to make happy those who think your slides should say almost nothing, and you should be speaking to all your important points. Those people want big pictures, slides that have but a single word in a 72-point font, and an overall "feel" that says more than words can ever say.

What’s truly awesome is when your boss is a PowerPoint minimalist and your boss’s boss is a PowerPoint detailist. How do you please both of them? You don’t. But you spend your weekend trying.

Chapter One, Part 2 - ADVICE FOR CAREER DAY ONE

THE WHITE COLLAR WARRIOR’S ADVICE FOR CAREER DAY ONE

Jimmy made just about every mistake possible, the same exact mistakes most cube dwellers make on Day One.

Here is what you need to do on your first day as a White Collar Warrior:

1. Realize this and believe it with every ounce of your being: No one at your company gives a flying, flaming fuck about you if it’s your first day at a bottom-of-the-ladder job.

a. Everyone in Cubeland is trying to get up the ladder, and what they don’t need is someone climbing up their backs trying to get ahead of them. Your boss, co-workers, every person in your department, every person in every other department, and every one else right down to the cleaning staff resent your existence and wish you would go away. You’re either more work for them or a threat to their own little hunk of territory.

b. And that’s why you need to follow this next rule:

2. Don’t rely on anyone for help, especially those who are assigned to help you. Be aggressive in getting the supplies and information you need to work.

a. Sometimes needed info and advice will be offered on Day One, but it will likely be incomplete info and bad advice. You’ll be lucky to get accurate directions to the restroom. Most companies have some kind of orientation (complete with a stupor-inducing tour) and some form of welcomer or, in the case of one company I know of, a “day one buddy.” (One day is about all the friendship you’re going to get from this buddy, who probably volunteered for the job to get the $20 company café voucher, of which he will spend about $10 on your welcome lunch and pocket the rest.)

3. When you come into contact with your welcomer (or whatever they call it at your company) get these things before you are abandoned:

a. An up-to-date company phone directory, which you will visually confirm was printed at some point in the last 30 days.

b. Your computer passwords, which you will make sure work before your welcomer leaves your cube. If she needs to bring in some tech guys, then fine, but she doesn’t leave until you’re up and running.

c. Your welcomer’s name, location of her cube, phone extension and the name of her supervisor, so you can send a nice note on how you were treated (or how bewildered and ignorant she left you).

d. Plenty of legal pads, pens, a stapler, a tape dispenser (with plenty of tape) and a box of paper clips (no less than 100).

4. Once all that’s done, call your boss and schedule a meeting for as soon as possible.

a. Begin taking control of the relationship with your supervisor. You need to think about managing him, and not letting yourself be managed. He needs to know that you’re so efficient and hard working you don’t need supervision.

5. Begin taking stocking of your co-workers.

a. You need to know them. What are they working on? What are their likes and dislikes? What are their fears? And most importantly, what are their weaknesses?

b. Eventually, you’re going to make a list of enemies and allies. No matter which side a co-worker falls on, you need all the intelligence you can gather. You never know who you’re going to need to destroy.

c. Much more on this in Chapter Three: Know Your Enemies, Otherwise Known as Your Co-Workers.


ANALYSIS OF JIMMY’S DAY ONE

Back to Jimmy, and his sorry example. Aside from the obvious stuff, there were a couple things he could have done to give him a serious edge on Day One.

One, he should have taken note of everything in Bob’s cube. Bob, being a dick and fairly stupid, turned his back on Jimmy. At that point Jimmy should have scanned Bob’s desk, any memos or notepad with writing on them, and anything written on the white board. If Bob is controlling any territory that Jimmy wants, Jimmy lost a chance to find out.

Two, he should have taken note of Bob’s conversation, which was probably with a girlfriend or spouse. The tone of it was filled with low-level anger and frustration, a sign of relationship trouble, a serious weakness. That fact should have been filed away in Jimmy’s list of usable facts. Workers with relationship problems are extremely easy to manipulate. There is much more on this in Chapter Three: Know Your Enemies, Otherwise Known as Your Co-Workers.

And another thing Jimmy didn’t take note of, but he’ll realize it soon enough…His boss is an ass. You might think Dick is a disciple of the White Collar Warrior because he has an air of confidence and used the lame technique of “accidentally” talking shit about someone when you know they can hear you.

Let’s get something straight. A WCW is almost always subtle, almost always perceived as a nice person, almost always liked by those around him. Going out of your way to piss people off is a dumb move, especially the people who work for you because those are the people to whom you are the most vulnerable.

In the olden days, when you went into battle with sword and shield, you held your shield toward the enemy, anticipating that’s where an attack will come from. And that left your back is exposed to whom? An ally with a sword as sharp as yours. You really want the guy behind you, with a clear shot at your unprotected backside, pissed at you?

END OF CHAPTER ONE

Suspended Cynicism Temporarily

If you spend a decade or so in corporate life, it’s easy, perhaps even mandatory, to get cynical. I don’t know a successful long-term cube dweller who doesn’t look at everything the company does without a critical, skeptical, jaundiced eye.

Cubelanders who start hopeful and optimistic eventually get their souls crushed. Some leave for other destinies (perhaps at start ups, or as teachers, or as people in unemployment lines). Or, they get cynical, understand the rules this game is played by, and begin playing to win (or at least to not lose).

I’m as cynical as they come. And yet, every once in a while, I have moment where the optimism and pride of my youth returns, when I am reminded of what I felt when I was a new employee with a new computer in a slightly used cube working for a massive company even my parents had heard of.

Yesterday at the cold fusion meeting was one of those times. One of the upsides to giant corporations is that at almost every level, in every division, you bump into amazing, talented, intelligent and genuinely nice people. For the last two days, I had the pleasure of sitting in a room with a handful of those people, and I’m once again glad I work here.

So, here’s to you, guy who is doing something risky that could change our business forever, and other guy who is inventing something amazing with a small budget no one knows about, and gal who genuinely cares about the people who work for her, and other guy who calls bullshit on bullshit with seemingly no fear. Nicely done. Nice working with you.

Seems We Don't Need Cold Fusion

Most of yesterday we spent talking a lot about cold fusion and the cure for AIDS, why we need them, what was in the way of getting them, how great life would be if we could have them, and some potential ideas about where unicorns with their life saving farts might be hiding.

At the end of the day, our CEO walks in for a chat, and eventualy let's us know that cold fusion is no longer needed, as the fusion we have is just fine, just perfect, couldn't be better, best fusion ever, why would we even bother with cold fusion? But maybe, if we can find a unicorn somewhere, and if maybe we we can capture some of the wind it might have passed, then perhaps he would take a whiff. Maybe.

Where did I put that unicorn net?

Inventing Cold Fusion

There are times when company officers are tormented by the recession devils, poked by declining revenues, prodded by financial analysts, and terrified of a market place that's changing so fast you can barely keep up with the buzz words.

Sometimes when times like that happen, a high-up Ivory Tower dweller will decided to pull together a group of his best and brightest. This action team or strike team or blue ribbon panel will be given the task to figure out how to make everything better, how to sell more stuff, how to make the stock price go back up, how make those recession devils go away.

Today, I will be a part of such a group. And our task, as I see it, is do the equivilant of inventing cold fusion while curing AIDS with unicorn farts. Good luck to us.

Can You Make That Meeting?

Please attend the next meeting, the meeting-meeting.

Not that one. The other one. The new one. It's a new meeting. Not the other one from yesterday, or this morning, or the conference call on Saturday morning, or the one Tuesday night where we missed American Idol, or the lunch meeting where whatshisname ate like a pound of potato salad.

I’m talking about the next meeting-meeting, where we need to talk about meetings, the planning of meetings, the scheduling of meetings, the timing of meetings, how many meetings we need, and when food, and what food, is allowed at meetings.

If the meeting-meeting conflicts with a meeting, let me know when you are free, because right now, your schedule looks completely blocked out. Are those all real meetings or fake meetings you scheduled in order to have some meeting-free time?

If you could free up one of your meeting-free hours, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks!

Tip For Managers #3256

If you have a meeting starting at, say, 9 a.m. Try and send the agenda out, say, at least by 8:50 a.m.

If you didn't send out an agenda before the meeting start, then don't send it at 9:01 a.m. and then show up at the meeting at 9:05 and say, "Did anyone have a chance to print out the agenda?"

And especially don't feign surprise and mild dissappointment that no one printed out the agenda that was so important that you couldn't be bothered to send it before the start of the meeting.

First off, you might not have noticed but emails have time stamps. It is possible to tell exactly when you sent a document. People check that kind of thing.

Second, it is really, really hard to be in a meeting room waiting for you to show up and also be at the printer making copies. Duel existence sometimes does seem to be a job requirement, but it remains an impossibility, except perhaps for the writers of Lost.

CHAPTER 1, PART 1 -- A Journey of a Thousand Miles Starts With No One Caring That You Are About To Start a Journey Of A Thousand Miles

JIMMY’S DAY ONE -- Welcome To The Cube

Poor Jimmy, all alone in his cube, his first day at work, one worker in a building filled with a thousand, in a company of ten thousand, in a professional world of millions, as insignificant as one tiny ant in a colony, the smallest ant, the weakest ant, the ant least likely to succeed.

Pathetic, isn’t he? His white dress shirt too big in the shoulders, his tie poorly tied, his ill-fitting khaki pants sporting a logo with an anchor above the back pocket. Does he really expect anyone to take him seriously?

He’s fresh from business school, carrying a copy of his MBA in his leatherette briefcase. He got the job because of the degree, which happens to be from an Ivy League school. The company recruiter almost always hires the Ivy Leaguers, no matter how disappointing they look in person. Besides, as an assistant to the assistant account coordinator, the lowest rung on the corporate ladder, Jimmy couldn’t cause much harm.

Also, the recruiter gets a bonus when an open slot is filled within a week, so when she sees a candidate that seems to shower regularly and is smart enough to turn on his computer, she hires him. And thus, Jimmy is in his cube, staring at his computer screen, waiting for the blue loading screen to go away so he can start his first day.

He stands. He looks over the gray wall of his cube. He’s in the middle of a field of cubes, stretching to the horizon in every direction. His “welcomer” (a tired-looking woman from Human Resources who rattled off the company rules and regulations with an android’s monotone) said that more than 300 people work on his floor. He can hear them clacking on keyboards, occasionally coughing, sometimes mumbling, sometimes whispering, sometimes their phones ringing, but he can’t actually see one other living soul. He sits back down. The blue loading screen is still loading.

He exhales. He doesn’t know what to do. He looks at his phone, but it doesn’t ring, doesn’t offer a friendly voice telling him where to go or what to do. He doesn’t know where his boss, Dick, sits, or what his number might be. There isn’t a company directory in his cube. He should ask for one.

Yes, good, he thinks. He now has a reason to talk to one of his cube mates, break the ice a little by asking for some minor help. He straightens his tie, stands, adjusts his pants, tucks in his shirt. He glances at his computer. The blue loading screen still blinks at him.

He walks out of his cube, walks around its outside wall, and arrives at another opening where he does indeed find a human-like life form. The name tag outside the cube’s opening reads, “Bob.”

Inside, a plump man in a white shirt, khakis and poorly tied tie is whispering into a phone intently. His cube his filled with framed pictures of sports cars, sometimes on beaches, sometimes on race tracks, sometimes with bikini clad models sitting on the hoods.

“Bob likes cars,” Jimmy thinks. “That will give us something to talk about, maybe.”

Bob glances at Jimmy and doesn’t stop whispering into the phone. He says: “No. I said no. Not at all. No. I have to go. I said I have to go. No.”

Jimmy waves and smiles. Bob turns his back to Jimmy and stares at the framed picture of a red BMW M3 that’s next to his computer monitor. He continues into the phone: “Maybe. Well, no. Probably not. No. I really have to go.”

Jimmy breathes deep, in, then out, then he walks on.

Before he can get to the next cube and try again to make human contact, he hears a phone ring. Could it be his phone? It does seem to be coming from that direction. He trots around to his cube and sure enough, his phone his ringing, signaling the start of his workday, his new job and his new career.

He answers the phone as quick as he can grab it, just after the fourth ring, and hears nothing but a dial tone. He missed the call. The voice mail light lights, a dim red glow next to the caller ID window, which reads, “Dick Wadde.” His boss just called and he missed it, his new boss with the truly unfortunate name. He reminds himself not to even smile about it.

The computer’s blue loading screen has gone away, replaced by a box that wants a User ID and Password. No one gave Jimmy a user ID and password. Maybe that’s what his boss wanted, to give him his password, and maybe some direction on what he should be doing.

No one gave him instructions on how to get voice mail, so he can’t actually listen to the message his boss left him.

Jimmy sits. He looks at the empty gray walls of cube. He wishes he had pictures of cars to hang. He wishes someone would talk to him, tell him what to do, let him prove himself to be smart and capable and worthy of his paycheck.

He hears Dick’s voice, floating over the top of his cubes. He recognizes it from the job interview. Dick’s voice always seems to be booming, like his volume is turned up two notches higher than everyone else’s. He’s an assistant account representative, but he carries himself like a CEO who just got a pay raise.

“First day on the job and already I can’t find him,” Dick says. “Why is it not possible for us to hire good people?”

Dick appears in the doorway to Jimmy’s cube. Dick’s in a blue suit, well-tailored, with a bright red tie over a crisp white shirt. Dick looks like he’s running for president.

“There you are,” he says to Jimmy. “I thought you were all ready AWOL on me. You have everything you need?”

Jimmy stands.

“Well, not really,” Jimmy says. “I don’t have a password for the computer, or the voice mail. But I’m looking forward to starting work and I was wondering what projects you want me to start on. I’m really anxious to get going.”

“Yeah, we really need to talk about all that. Thing is, I have a meeting right now. What I want you to do is go back to Human Resources, find your welcomer, tell her she’s an idiot and she’s wasting your time and my time, and then tell her to get your computer and phone set up, and also, you’re going to need lots of legal pads and lots of pens. I hope you’re good at taking notes. I talk really fast.”

“Got it. I can do that. Thanks again for this opportunity.”

“Yeah. I gotta go. Glad to have you on board.”

Jimmy is about to extend his hand for a friendly and professional shake, but Dick has disappeared. Jimmy breathes, in, then out. He wonders who Dick was talking to before he reached his cube.

He realizes he has no idea where Human Resources is or how to find his welcomer. He feels helpless, abandoned, and that it’s his fault for not knowing what to do, what to ask, who to ask or how to ask.

He looks around his barren cube. There are still thumbtacks in the walls, where someone had posters or something pinned up. There is a coffee mug cast aside in one corner. It reads “Caffeine, alcohol, killing my boss…I’ll choose caffeine…for now.”

The pencil drawer in his desk is slightly ajar. He opens it and finds the items that seem to be in every pencil drawer everywhere in the universe, five paperclips, 36 cents in change, two rubber bands (one broken), two pencils, and an old business card.

He picks up the business card. It reads: “White Collar Warrior – In today’s corporate battlefield, you can be a general, with my help. Call…”

“Who was in this cube before me?” he wonders. “And where did he, or she, end up?”

END OF CHAPTER ONE, PART ONE