The corporate bandwagon is much sought after till hard lessons fall sooner or later. How does the beck and call of the corporate grandees trap you? To jumpstart the stargazing career you keep no space for trivialities and then what a treachery comes to shag you!

This book is laid on an allegorical management table to go prancing far from the madding corporate of archetypal dragnet.

The author follows a witty lingo to fire a salvo and denude the foppish grandees – just grin and bear it. It is the aberration in the cogwheel that the author wants to point out, the frittering of life force in the corporate corridor.

Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair

 

Aaron Abbotsford


The corporate bandwagon is much sought after till hard lessons fall sooner or later. How does the beck and call of the corporate grandees trap you? To jumpstart the stargazing career you keep no space for trivialities and then what a treachery comes to shag you!

This book is laid on an allegorical management table to go prancing far from the madding corporate of archetypal dragnet. The reader is bound to get cynical and ask, ‘Is the author squeamish, hyperbolic, a renegade or is it his experienced life note of expansive shores of yet another El Dorado or is he seeking nirvana altogether?’ And the die is cast - the book excels with both proponents and opponents of the author.

Is your company reeling under APSD? A new acronym is inducted in the corporate lexicon and so anyhow the author deserves a pat for a new disorder discovery. Well, the symptoms are like desiccated empathy and a long psychopathological list rattles on to identify ‘Hannibal the cannibal.’ The author follows a witty lingo to fire a salvo and denude the foppish grandees – just grin and bear it. It is the aberration in the cogwheel that the author wants to point out, the frittering of life force in the corporate corridor.

The author embarks on a corporate vivisection to find out the axes of movement – the human resources vis-à-vis the corporate mandate. The author juxtaposes both these pivots to see their convergence and divergence, all through the visor of a drifter. The corporate veneer is emblazoned with straitlaced homily sermons.

The author has invented a writing style unique in itself. And this stands out to wean away all cynics and willy-nilly readers turn into frenzied zealots. The reckoning of the author’s double walker – ‘the voice of reason’ goes on to echo George Bernard Shaw, ‘Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.’ Such incisive attacks linger on ‘The Wicked Magnum Intimidator’ to cast off its holier-than-thou image. The author is after all making a clean breast of his follies and foibles in ‘A Survivor’s Guide to Combat the Corporate Arena’ in four sections of this book.

Are you aboard the Ship of Theseus to be jettisoned out at the slightest whim of your management? And companies are all the same – ‘Every company, and I mean every company, follows a very similar life cycle’. The author lays threadbare the so-called vision document of a company to warn of its transient existence owing to ‘Psychopaths lurking around’ who pose a barrage of an imminent threat to ‘corporate time travelers and future fossil fuel’. Leviathan attitude prevails undaunted.

The book is replete with the fecund oeuvre of a par excellence copywriter. For instance, ‘The circle of disruption is the carousel of change, where innovation takes its all too brief turn in the spotlight before not very gracefully it exists kicking and screaming like an extra in the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, making way for the next oblivious victim…and today's disrupter is just another rider in the cyclical dance of progress.’ And one can ‘plot the trajectory’, it’s a stereotyped gambol. The book has such acerbic tirade leashed upon the high and mighty. Many of the readers would find a familiar ring to it. 

The fourth section discusses the career development plan that is like ‘A Snakes and Ladders Board!’ One chapter therein says, ‘How To Manage A Heard Of Cats’. The nemesis of company growth is that even the top manager falls inaccessible to those over and above him. And the phenomenal saga ensues - ‘From being a humble foot soldier up to the grand puppet master, your journey up the corporate Cosa Nostra’ to aggrandize ‘the authority of the Godfather Vito Corleone, or the riches of a drug lord like Pablo Escobar’.

What does Managerial Mastery require from you?  ‘It's not about having the experience or the expertise; it's still about the expectation of loyalty and managing your crew with the single-minded ruthlessness and finesse of a mob captain.’ The author vouchsafes - ‘As you ascend the corporate hierarchy, you become a Capo’. 

The author posits a string of questions to analyse several situations and phenomena that builds up corporate malaise. The entire narration is cloyed with sarcasm – ‘Let’s help you dance by nailing your foot to the floor: How to simplify anything by making it more complicated?’

To blow the gaff, ‘As the consigliore, you navigate the treacherous waters of office politics, offering counsel to the Don, and ensuring that the corporate family stays one step ahead of the competition, the law, and the tax man.’ The author goes on edifying the corporate Cosa Nostra and your fortitude to Omertà.

Is the author a misery gut, giving all a piece of his mind? Putting a damper on the exalted money pile! Is the book thrusting cat among the pigeons? Unleashing nemesis upon the squillionaire! 

About the corporate management lingo and neologisms, the book has a special mention – 'a language so rich in jargon, acronyms and buzzwords that it rivals Shakespearean prose if it was written by a dyslexic six year old for whom English is not his first language.’ The chapter will leave some of you in splits even in a split of a second or some may be driven up the wall unable to bear this grandiloquent lampooning.

What will the maverick Generation X crack up to be? The Zen Masters of Indifference, ‘the aloof philosophers of the workforce, exude an air of nonchalance and a knack for eye-rolling that rivals Shakespearean tragedy. They've seen it all, done it all, and now, they'll do it again, but with an added dose of sarcasm.’ What a climactic paroxysmal crescendo!  Now the author is having a field day too! 


Paper length : 242 pages