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Richard Conniff, the acclaimed author of The Natural History of the Rich, has survived savage beasts in the workplace jungle, where he hooted and preened in the corner office as a publishing executive. He's also spent time studying how animals operate in the real jungles of the Amazon and the African bush.
What he shows in The Ape in the Corner Office is that nature built you to be nice. Doing favors, grooming coworkers with kind words, building coalitions, these tools for getting ahead come straight from the jungle. The stereotypical Darwinian hard-charger supposedly thinks only about accumulating resources. But highly effective apes know it's often smarter to give them away. That doesn't mean it's a peaceable kingdom out there, however. Conniff shows that you can become more effective by understanding how other species negotiate the tricky balance between conflict and cooperation.
Conniff quotes one biologist on a chimpanzee's obsession with rank: "His attempts to maintain and achieve alpha status are cunning, persistent, energetic, and time-consuming. They affect whom he travels with, whom he grooms, where he glances, how often he scratches, where he goes, what times he gets up in the morning." Sound familiar? It's the same behavior you can find written up in any issue of BusinessWeek or The Wall Street Journal.The Ape in the Corner Office connects with the day-to-day of the workplace because it helps explain what people are really concerned about: How come he got the wing chair with the gold trim? How can I survive as that big ape's subordinate without becoming a spineless yes-man? Why does being a lone wolf mean being a loser? And, yes, why is it that jerks seem to prosper, at least in the short run?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great resource!,
By Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Workplace Beast in All of Us (Hardcover)
The Ape in the Corner Office is an interesting, entertaining and often too truthful a read. It appears we cannot divest ourselves fully from our instinctual ancestors, the Ape and even the Rat. We share too much biological similarities.Richard Conniff has researched and written a credible account of how our ancestral behaviors play an important role in establishing and maintaining a sense of safety, social hierarchy, community and competitive advantage. This could be a terrifying thought, yet, Conniff's storytelling ability, vast business experience (reads like a who's who in business), well-cited research and humor serves to pacify the reader, at least momentarily.
As a trainer and speaker I want to beware The Ape in the Corner Office, lest I become buffaloed by a passive, yet, hostile audience. This is a book I will return to for insights anytime I see the furry face rising in either myself or others. Conniff candidly shares how his behaviors have at times prevented him from endearing the client and gaining the contract. His advice: if you are going to let your beast roar, compete or fight consciously, be aware of the risks, rewards and lasting implications your instinctual behavior may have. The book is entertaining, thought provoking and a useful tool for people who want to know the human and beastly side of their business. And we are not out of the woods. Just because humans have verbal communication, a relatively newly acquired form of communication, it only serves to cover up our more instinctual responses. Despite polite words and social appropriate manner it is still our nonverbal communications that reveals the truth. Armchair Interviews says, after you read The Ape in the Corner office, you'll have a pen handy to jot down any of the great contacts and resources the author gives you to navigate the river of commerce that runs through your office jungle.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Great Ape,
By
This review is from: The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Workplace Beast in All of Us (Hardcover)
This book is an excellent treatment of how we behave in organizations. The comparisons and metaphors to apes, tribes and others in the animal kingdom provides a terrific lens through which we can view all sorts of corporate behavior. As a management consultant and executive coach, I am always looking for unique and interesting ways to teach my clients new approaches for performance improvement and organizational effectiveness. Conniff's book gives you all that and more.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good book with a bad title,
By
This review is from: The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Workplace Beast in All of Us (Hardcover)
This book would have done even better if the publisher hadn't decided to put a photo of an ape in a suit on the back cover. The title suggests a critique of corporate executives - more like a diatribe or light-weight commentary. Unfortunately comparing people to apes comes across as an insult (to put it mildly) rather than as a scientific statement about the biological basis of behavior.
In fact, the book draws on published research to explain why people behave as they do in the workplace. Conflict and day-to-day hassles just go with the territory. Conniff doesn't give us a lot of guidance for handling sticky situations, but I think many people will benefit from understanding that their own situation is hardly unusual. As he says, we tend to focus on what's negative, and we tend to behave dysfunctionally. Some examples are chilling: the consultant who went oout of his way to scare a junior consultant just before a big meeting and the angry rant of Andy Grove at a big Intel meeting. Definitely recommended.
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