Stanley Bing's Throwing the Elephant, subtitled Zen and the Art of Managing Up, is a wise and hilarious--mostly hilarious--antidote to the extensive library of works by grim, clenched-fisted business gurus. Bing posits that power strategies cannot be "managed through rational means." Real success--corporate-niche enlightenment--comes only by embracing religion, specifically Zen Buddhism. This enables one to take "an object of enormous weight and size" (i.e. the elephantine boss) and "mold it ... like a ball of Silly Putty." In truth, he continues, senior management is "the silliest putty of them all." Bing doles out his thoughts in dozens of pithy chapters ("Playing Golf with the Elephant," "Getting Drunk with the Elephant"). He also includes many visual aids (some of which nearly make sense) and adds a sprinkling of the wisdom of others--from Martha Stewart and Jimmy Hoffa to the rock band the Doors--to make his wickedly entertaining points. --H. O'Billovitch


From Publishers Weekly
In a spoof of just about every career advice and management-by-metaphor book ever created, Bing (What Would Machiavelli Do?) delivers a Zen-like guide to managing your boss. The premise? Here's what Buddha would tell you if he were your personal career coach. A book juxtaposing faux-Zen advice with embarrassing corporate situations (e.g., how to handle a drunken boss) is almost guaranteed to be funny. Bing, "an ultra-senior officer at an elephantine corporation," has plenty of firsthand anecdotes to tell, and he supplements them with stories about some of the notoriously toughest bosses on the planet, like Martha Stewart and Citigroup's Sandy Weill. There are chapters on critiquing your boss ("any bitter pill of criticism one offers an elephant must be buried within a vast tub of cream cheese") and "facing the angry elephant" (when you're to blame for your boss's anger, "breathe deeply. Breath is life"). Despite the amusing anecdotes, though, Bing's narrative can become a bit wearying if one reads more than a couple of chapters in one sitting. However, if an employee only breaks out Bing's book when the elephant is having a particularly bad couple of weeks, enlightenment is certain. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Bing (What Would Machiavelli Do?) has written a clever book on how to manage elephants, a.k.a. bosses. According to the author, "only the power of Zen contemplation will result in a happy business life for the subordinate who yearns for understanding, control, and enlightenment. It is the practice of Business Zen that will enable you, in the end, after much trial and failure, to throw the elephant who is your boss." Through case studies and guidelines, Bing discusses steps to achieving control over the elephant, with such practical chapters as "Greeting the Elephant," "Rejoicing with the Elephant," and "Getting a Leash on the Elephant." Here, for instance, Bing's advice on greetings: "A quick handshake and formal greeting in an elevator is appropriate. A gushing invocation of lifelong admiration for the elephant is not." Witty and thought-provoking, this imaginative and unique work is recommended for public libraries and practitioners and students of business. Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, NYCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
What Would Machiavelli Do? (2000) was Bing's successful, amoral satire on how to ruthlessly get to the top without guilt. Now he has taken the side of workers everywhere and applies the art of Zen Buddhism to the daily grind, all in a witty, lighthearted fashion. Comparing corporations to elephants, those giant, lumbering, smelly beasts that always get their way, he guides the worker --you--on how to become an elephant handler, mostly by staying out of its way and allowing your job to become a meditation, where ultimately whatever happens doesn't really matter. Through Bing's hilarious version of the Eightfold path (his has nine), you can transcend all want and desire at the workplace (where, as in life, desire is illusion and the source of all suffering) and ultimately create such lightness that you can throw the elephant. This is essential reading for anyone who hates his or her boss and the corporate structure in general. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
If an elephant stomps on your head and there is no one around to see it, did it stomp on your head at all?

The answer is yes, if that elephant is your boss. Can anything be done about these enormous, gray, and sometimes smelly beasts? The answer is yes, if you know Business Zen. For thousands of years, Zen masters have plumbed the secrets of the universe while wearing comfortable clothing. Now you, too, can learn the wisdom of the ancients and win valuable prizes.

It may be easier than you dare to imagine. Don't you already spend a good part of your day sitting and thinking about nothing for hours on end? That's Zen! You're already doing it!

In this simple little handbook, Throwing the Elephant, Stanley Bing, the master of Machiavellian meanness, offers the nicest possible way to manipulate one's executive elephant to achieve enlightenment -- and power.


Download Description
Sit down. Breathe deep. This is the last business book you will ever need. For in these pages, Stanley Bing solves the ultimate problem of your working life: How to manage the boss. The technique is simple . . . as simple as throwing an elephant. All it takes is the proper state of mind, a step-by-step plan, and a great leap of faith. This humble guide provides all these and more. It is Zen that enables one to take an object of enormous weight and size and mold it in one's grasp like a ball of Silly Putty. For senior management, in truth, is the silliest putty of them all.This comprehensive course walks budding business bodhisattvas through basic skills needed to provide the simple elephant handling that makes everyday life possible, including but not limited to the primary task of following along after the elephant with a little broom and dustpan. Serious students will then move to intermediate steps, from Polishing the Elephant's Tusks to Hiding from the Elephant When It Has Been Drinking and Feels Quite Nasty. Beyond this level lies the land of the practiced Zen masters, culminating in the ability to leverage and then throw the now-weightless elephant--and even play catch with it at corporate retreats. If What Would Machiavelli Would Do? was the meanest business book since the Renaissance, Throwing the Elephant provides the yang to that yin. Because sometimes you've got to be selfless, compassionate, and completely empty to get the job done.


Book Info
In a spoof of just about every career advice and management by metaphor book ever created, Bing delivers a Zen-like guide to managing your boss.


About the Author
Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the author of What Would Machiavelli Do? and Lloyd: What Happened, a novel. By day, he works for a gigantic multinational conglomerate whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The elephant referred to in this title of this witty, subversive, and joyfully manipulative little book is your boss, the powerful but lumbering and self-involved authority figure that Fortune columnist Stanley Bing believes is comfortably ensconced in your company's corner office. Bing begins his manual on the care and feeding of these "business elephants" with the admonition that people don't get to choose their bosses; like the weather or gravity, bosses exist as laws of nature that exceed the control of the mere mortal mosquitoes that hover about them. If you can't pick your boss, you must then learn to do the second-best thing, which Bing defines as coping with, mollifying, and perhaps even taming the beast to whom your fortunes are tied. And just how is that feat to be managed? What Bing offers is a tongue-in-cheek version of Zen thought that resembles nothing so much as the philosophy Machiavelli would have come up with if he'd meditated under the banyan tree in place of Buddha. Consider this quote from early in the book: "Zen will enable you to take an object of enormous weight and size and mold it in your grasp like a ball of Silly Putty. For senior management is, in truth, the silliest putty of them all." This book is filled with similar comments as well as phony pie charts, chapters with such titles such as "The Six-Petaled Flower of Bogus Atonement," and bar graphs that document the relative inappropriateness of uttering certain words at important meetings ("budget shortfall" is the most heinous topic you can broach, with "earwax" a not too distant second). Without too much effort, Bing manages to skewer new age truisms, PowerPoint presentations, and business culture in general. But beneath the fun, there's a real message here -- your boss matters, and you'd better learn how to deal with that.

Throwing the Elephant is likely to become the kind of book that people start reading because it makes them laugh and end up giving to their friends because there's so much to learn from it. While it's a little lopsided to see the boss/employee dynamic as exclusively a power-based relationship, there's still a lot of wisdom about corporate life packed into Bing's petite book, which, like the "Dilbert" cartoons, succeeds in suggesting aspects of workplace culture that almost everyone can relate to. Now, of course, someone needs to write a book for the elephants, telling them how to deal with those pesky mosquitoes who keep buzzing around them, clamoring for attention and drinking up their lifeblood. (Sunil Sharma)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Sit down. Breathe deep. This is the last business book you will ever need. For in these pages, Stanley Bing solves the ultimate problem of your working life: How to manage the boss.

The technique is simple . . . as simple as throwing an elephant. All it takes is the proper state of mind, a step-by-step plan, and a great leap of faith. This humble guide provides all these and more. It is Zen that enables one to take an object of enormous weight and size and mold it in one's grasp like a ball of Silly Putty. For senior management, in truth, is the silliest putty of them all.

This comprehensive course walks budding business bodhisattvas through basic skills needed to provide the simple elephant handling that makes everyday life possible, including but not limited to the primary task of following along after the elephant with a little broom and dustpan. Serious students will then move to intermediate steps, from Polishing the Elephant's Tusks to Hiding from the Elephant When It Has Been Drinking and Feels Quite Nasty. Beyond this level lies the land of the practiced Zen masters, culminating in the ability to leverage and then throw the now-weightless elephant—and even play catch with it at corporate retreats.

If What Would Machiavelli Do? was the meanest business book since the Renaissance, Throwing the Elephant provides the yang to that yin. Because sometimes you've got to be selfless, compassionate, and completely empty to get the job done.

Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the author of What Would Machiavelli Do? and Lloyd: What Happened, a novel. By day, he works for a gigantic multinational conglomeratewhose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.

SYNOPSIS

Sit down. Breathe deep. This is the last business book you will ever need. For in these pages, Stanley Bing solves the ultimate problem of your working life: How to manage the boss.

The technique is simple . . . as simple as throwing an elephant. All it takes is the proper state of mind, a step-by-step plan, and a great leap of faith.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In a spoof of just about every career advice and management-by-metaphor book ever created, Bing (What Would Machiavelli Do?) delivers a Zen-like guide to managing your boss. The premise? Here's what Buddha would tell you if he were your personal career coach. A book juxtaposing faux-Zen advice with embarrassing corporate situations (e.g., how to handle a drunken boss) is almost guaranteed to be funny. Bing, "an ultra-senior officer at an elephantine corporation," has plenty of firsthand anecdotes to tell, and he supplements them with stories about some of the notoriously toughest bosses on the planet, like Martha Stewart and Citigroup's Sandy Weill. There are chapters on critiquing your boss ("any bitter pill of criticism one offers an elephant must be buried within a vast tub of cream cheese") and "facing the angry elephant" (when you're to blame for your boss's anger, "breathe deeply. Breath is life"). Despite the amusing anecdotes, though, Bing's narrative can become a bit wearying if one reads more than a couple of chapters in one sitting. However, if an employee only breaks out Bing's book when the elephant is having a particularly bad couple of weeks, enlightenment is certain. (Mar. 25) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal