PLAYING THE GAME: A Psychopolitical Strategy for Your Career

Though he claims his techniques bring ""beauty, excellence, and joy"" to the workplace, this management consultant is really peddling a dire warning: learn your way around the organization politically (i.e., manipulate) or risk getting fired! Specific tactics are soft-peddled as ""leadership""--of the boss, one's subordinates, one's peers--but some sound more like leading by the nose. For instance: end the boss' habit of evening meetings by first complimenting his stamina, then pointing out that some of his subordinates simply can't keep up. Look at the organization as a family, treat subordinates as fairly as one's children: that even means not forgetting to say good morning and good night, since the kids need that kind of reassurance. Become a leader to your peers by keeping a notebook of their needs, then conducting ""roundhouse"" discussions about how to get them filled. Presumptuous? Blank's careerists would even ""increase their political data base"" by snooping around the accounting department to check SEC filings; by reading between the lines in the Annual Report; and by interviewing anyone around to pick up such scuttlebutt as ""does my boss drink?"" There are some more innocuous moments--advice about setting up goals and performance reviews for subordinates, for example--but most of this is set in concrete self-centeredness. (That doesn't mean, of course, that it won't have an audience.)