Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up [Hardcover]

Stanley Bing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2002

What would the Buddha do - if he had to deal with a rampaging elephant of a boss every day? That is the premise of Stanley Bing's wickedly funny guide to finding inner peace in the face of relentlessly obnoxious, huge and sometimes smelly bosses. Taking the concept of managing up to a new cosmic plateau, Bing urges no less than a revolution of the spirit in the American workplace: turning overwrought, oppressed, stressed-out employees into models of Zen-like powers of concentration, able to take their elephantile bosses and grey, lumbering companies and twirl them around the little finger of their consciousness. In Bing's unique tradition of social criticism cum business self-help, THROWING THE ELEPHANT presents Four Truths (or possibly Five), a Nine-fold Path, and one useful, hilarious guide to workplace sanity, success, and enlightenment that surpasses all understanding, survival.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 201 pages
• Publisher: Collins; 1 edition (March 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060188618
• ISBN-13: 978-0060188610
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,064,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the bestselling author of Crazy Bosses, What Would Machiavelli Do?, Throwing the Elephant, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, 100 Bullshit Jobs..And How to Get Them, and The Big Bing, as well as the novels Lloyd: What Happened and You Look Nice Today. By day he is an haute executive in a gigantic multinational corporation whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Elephants in life, March 31, 2002

By 

Sarah Meyers (Kansas City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up (Hardcover)

The elephant referred to in this title of this witty 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. "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 this little 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. I also highly recommend another little book of wisdom titled "Open Your Mind, Open Your Life" by Taro Gold which has helped me greatly deal with the elephants in my life!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank goodness I've left the corporate world, June 27, 2003

By 

Robbin Block "marketing expert" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up (Hardcover)

I discovered this great book after starting my own business, having left my cubicle at a large wireless telecom firm only a few months prior. I wish I had read it while at that miserable job. It would have helped me to that perfect state of blissful not-caring that I tried so hard to achieve. For someone who is passionate about what they do, is professional, wants to accomplish something in life (besides kissing someone's a**), this book also helps you realize that unless you want to live in that state, maybe Corporate America isn't for you. The book also reveals exactly what is wrong with the state of corporations today--they are run by big fat egos-- that are truly overpaid, get bonuses for losing money, and don't go to jail even when they steal from their own employees. So thank you Stanley Bing for your clever insights and reinforcing my decision. Keep 'em coming.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining read with a good overall message., March 28, 2002

By 

NDBerzerker "NDBerzerker" (Grand Forks, ND United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up (Hardcover)

"Throwing the Elephant" deals with the situation that the majority of us have had to face at one point or the other...just exactly what do we do with this great big elephant (read: manager) that is towering over us? Throuout the book you will find tales of the Buddha fast forwarded into the modern day in support of the ideas that the author wishes you to learn in order to deal with the elephant at hand. The topics range from how to prepare yourself for the first meeting with the elephant, keeping the elephant well fed, and even how to deal with your own inner elephant. While I do have some experience with Zen in other areas, the lessons that are given throughout the book are easily grasped regardless of any familiarity with the concepts behind Zen.

While this book is focused primarily on the elephants that you encounter in your work a day world, the information is helpful in any situation where you may encounter elephants in your life. If you are looking for a quick read that will have you laughing to yourself, while learning how to deal with elephants and still maintain a sense of calm and serenity, then this book is for you.