Thursday, July 1, 2010

How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying


Ah, the good old days, when men were men, status was akin to the number of windows in one's office, and all the best secretaries wore conical bras.

You may have seen the musical version of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, starring Matthew Broderick on Broadway in the early 1990's, or you may have been lucky enough to have lived the life author Sheppard Mead described in 1952.

Getting straight to the point - I found How to Succeed...(aka: The Dastard's Guide to Fame and Fortune) not quite worth the read.

I realize that I might take myself just a little too seriously to ever fully "get" any satirical work but the text left me cold.
Maybe it is just me, but can you really appreciate a step by step guide for climbing/scrambling/scheming up the 1950's corporate ladder when you live in culture where privacy is practically nonexistent and personal assistants have names like Droid, rather than Daphne?

Page 101: "BE A POLITICIAN. Do not confuse this with being a politician in the ward politics sense. Businesses are governed, not by the majority, but by the men at the top, in a manner reminiscent of the medieval Italian city-state. Read Machiavelli - and then learn the following easy rules:
1) Pick the Right Team. In your company, as in all healthy, live-wire groups, there are bound to be areas of friction. Enter them with a will. There are always two or more factons fighting for control, or for favor with the Big Wheels. It is essential to maintain strict neutrality long enough to determine which side is going to win. No matter how will you do your work, if you choose the wrong side you will soon be in a sorry plight indeed.

2) Be a Pussyfooter...
3) Make Your Move...

4) Stab the Right Backs...
5) Guard Your Own Back...
6) Upward and Onward...

7) Choose the Right Wife...

8) Pick the Right Suburb...

9) Pick the Right Country Club...


As a whole, How to Succeed in Business...is a silly book that probably made a good musical, but without the glamour of AMC's current drama Mad Men, I would likely never have picked it up, much less read past the third page.

I have a feeling that, satire or not, the advice Mead gives to young P. Finch in the book was pretty strictly adhered to by the savvy corporate Joe of the day. Let's be honest here - within the heart of every joke or sarcastic comment lies a poignant truth. I'm impressed by Mead's ability to recognize that the commonplace of the day would later become the stuff of entertaining fiction and elicit eye rolls from most in the business world. Makes me wonder if I could do the same for our current economic customs. I'm thinking: "How to Succeed in Business Without ever Logging Off," or "GPS Your Way to the Top," or "Tweet Dreaming." I just might make thousands of dollars and millions of enemies.

My favorite chapter in this book had to be the last - about being a benevolent Big Brother - where up and coming "Junior Executives" whose own dastardly dreams the fictional main character P. Finch, having finally stepped on enough heads to become Old Man himself is dutifully cautioned to crush. Ah the irony.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, you're taking yourself a little too seriously. I thought the musical was funnier than the book, but the musical wouldn't have existed at all if not for the funny satire that was the book.

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