Blunt Wit

So a painful admission. I am such a lemming when it comes to the latest management fad. You know, the ones that get immortalized for a few months or days when a particular book outlining a particular passing fancy gets hot like “In Search of Excellence”, “From Great to Terrible”, “Who Cut the Cheese”, and the granddaddy of them all, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

I don’t just buy them, I devour them.

After reading so many over the years I have noticed one huge negative: most are written solely for the successful CEO’s and Captains of Industry. They are not written for a much, much bigger market. That being the unsuccessful people of this world. Seeing this as an under served niche I have decided to step into the breach and write my own management conceit.

I’ve entitled my treatise “Seven Habits of Highly Ineffectual People.” I realize this lacks a little originality but these days, honestly what doesn’t. I mean seriously, was George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq original?
Duh, his Dad … ten years earlier … been there, done that.

Is TomKat original? Hell no, you had Branglina and HillBill (or was it Monbill I get confused) before that.

You see, creativity serves no master and knows no bounds.

So without further ado here is a sampling of my Seven Habits for your critical review:

1. Be Lazy. Aren’t you tired of stressing! We live in a go-go world of drive-through Starbucks, 24 hours news and non-stop demands on our time and our soul. It’s ok to say ef it every once and a while, kick back, open cold one, and space out.

(terms of service: by reading this sentence you are agreeing to absolve this author of any and all responsibility for loss and/or lowering of income due to following his advice.)

2. Begin from the beginning. Who ever heard of starting with the end in mind. If we knew the damn ending we wouldn’t need to suffer through the beginning and middle. Hell, if you knew your life were to end tomorrow in some horrible vegetable peeler accident would you even try hard today to be a good person. No, you’d raise all sorts of Cain. So just take it from the top and see whatever the hell else develops. Your battle cry: c’est la vie.

3. Put firsts thing whenever. Priorities Smiorities. When did completing priorities get you anything other than more work. Just use your gut. Like, I’m hungry so I’ll eat a sandwich. Failing that, have a coin handy and flip it. I find fate the best judge of what anyone should do next.

4. Think Win/Lose. Face it, Win/Win is a strategy for suckers. Like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy it only exists in the minds of naïve babes. We live in a Dog eat Dog world. By the way, do dogs really eat dogs? Anyway, make sure you’re standing triumphantly atop the hill kicking all the other wannabes back down its slippery slope as you polish the brass ring.

5. Seek to Obfuscate then run like hell. Ever heard that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Keep your friends close and your enemies in another country (preferably without extradition treaty with the US).

6. Sexercise. Most management guru’s focus totally on the mind, the ego, and human motivation. They totally neglect the fact that physical health is critical to any individual’s or organization’s success. So I figure combine the ultimate of human motivation with a good healthy aerobic exercise … sex. I plan to add plenty of visual graphics to assist the beginner and professional alike.

7. Sharpen the hammer. If you’ve ever tried to sharpen a hammer I’ve got some choice inexpensive oceanfront property for you (please write me at arkansasbeachviews.com for details). Saws are used to cut things and must remain sharp while requiring ridiculous amounts of sharpening. A hammer on the other hand is a much more versatile device requiring little upkeep. You see it, pound it, done. Always use the hammer.

So there it is. Please let me know if you see this as sage advice for failed or semi-failed CEO’s, Captains of Industry or the normal joe down on his luck in the streets in our rat-a-tat-tat world or crap.

Do you read management advice books?
Which do you admire the most? Which one sits on your shelf collecting the most dust?
Which of the seven habits do you think epitomizes management today?

Today I must finally assuage my conscious and confess my inveterate moral turpitude as for years I’ve been harboring a deep, dark secret. In short, I’ve been a bad boy.

The wellspring of my guilt occurred in the yingwo, or hard sleeper section, of a 35 hour train trip from Beijing to Hong Kong some years ago. I was traveling with my mother who had decided to visit China for the very first time and take advantage of the fact that her eldest son had been studying there for a year. He neglected to tell her he still couldn’t use chopsticks or even fly a kite properly.

Ah, and for the uninitiated, the accommodations on the train to Hell are more comfortable than your average yingwo.

Anyway, when we arrived at our assigned cubby hole there were folks huddled around the single fold down table puffing furiously on unfiltered cigarettes.

Ok my memory might be playing tricks on me. Let’s try again.

Anyway these two smokers barely noticed us through the haze as we piled into the upper bunks on either side. The shorter of the two wore black and sort of glared at the world through the shifty eyes of a possible serial killer. The other one had that dull stare of an unwitting accomplice. Together they scared me.

Once the train had pulled away the two men redoubled their smoking. My Mom, clearly in agony, looked across at me and said, “Tell them to stop smoking. I can’t breathe. And if you don’t, I WILL.” (Not that she could, as she only spoke the sliverest of Chinese and they didn’t speak even a wink of English).

Now I had a quandary. I had lived in China for a while and had various run-ins with these lawless types, impervious to any of the decorum that keeps a normal, polite society from falling to pieces. They would sooner kill you as spit on you. And there was the whole ‘face’ issue. You must never, ever cause such ruffians to lose face. So I wavered. And my mother suffered and seethed. She again threatened to take matters into her own hand when suddenly it came to me!

“Cough,” I said to her, “Loudly and often.”
She looked perplexed so I repeated my entreaty with maniac zeal.
“Cough. Cough. Cough.” She hacked.

I approached them nervously. I noticed the smaller man’s yellow, nicotine-stained fingers as he took a long, lazy drag.
“I apologize in advance,” I said in Chinese, “but the woman here is my mother and she has been afflicted with a bad case of Tuberculosis and your cigarette smoke is inflaming her raw, gnarled lungs.”

At that both men’s eyes grew wide with fright as they extinguished their cigarettes and rushed off to find a safer locale. Thus, we enjoyed the entire trip in relative smoke-free seclusion. My mother asked me what I said to them and I told her that I had simply asked politely that they not smoke as it bothered her.

To this day I have not confessed the fact I afflicted her with such a malevolent, spur-of-the-moment imaginary disease. I thought putting the story out there and confessing in the relative anonymity of the blogosphere would start the healing process. Sorry Mom.

Do you have any deep, dark secrets you to want to own up to and assuage your conflicted conscious?