Surviving Management Fads Book Proposal

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Introduction

      Management fads sweep through business like six-week-old hot dogs go through the intestinal tract. The fads wreak most of their havoc on employees rather than managers. Surviving Management Fads is a humorous look at how employees can not only keep their jobs while fads run through their companies, but also how to use the fads to their advantage.

      Management is looking for the magic bullet that will increase profits, decrease costs, boost productivity, raise quality, get them noticed by upper management, earn big money, help them lose 20 pounds, re-grow hair, and take 10 years off their looks. How do they do this? By jumping on the latest management fad. Surviving Management Fads offers the normal Wager a method to recognize fads, deal with fad-enamored bosses, survive fads, and advance their careers. We do this all while keeping our tongues firmly in our cheeks.

Chapter One

If It Were Fun, They Wouldn't Call It Work

A history of work from the dawn of time to the heat-death of the universe.

      In a small number of cases, people are actually doing work they enjoy. But, for the vast majority of us, we'd rather be sitting on the front porch sipping a lovely beverage and counting cars as they go by.

      From the time when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and told them to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, we’ve had to work to exist. It’s not a bad plan, you trade your time, effort, and talent for money. Depending on your talent, you can make a nice living. F u cn rd ths u cn urn bg $. If you were one of those folks back in high school who thought cutting classes was a brilliant thing to do, yes, I will have fries with that order.

      As America moved away from an agrarian society, about three months after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, a new class of society arose: Management.

Chapter Two

Baases

     Back when apartheid was a nasty fact of life in South Africa, the black population was forced to address the white ruling class by the term “baas.” Sound a lot like “boss,” doesn’t it? And for good reason.

      Every tin-pot manager who thinks they’ve been anointed from On High because they’ve been promoted to some position of meager authority longs to be called “baas.”

       There are a few good managers out there. Some who remember their roots as worker bees and manage the employees under their authority with the same compassion and justice they longed for when they were part of the rabble like us. The rest of them are baases.

      Types of Baases

►  The “Pal”

►  Daddy [or Mommy]

►  The Enforcer

►  Just One of the Guys

►  The Lifeboat Captain

      and many others.

Chapter Three

Management Hierarchy

      A description of the baas structure, from the guy who tells you what to do up through the guy who owns the company and buys $6,000 shower curtains. Each has a unique name and a place above you on the org chart.

Chapter Four

Human Resources: The Running-Dog Lackeys of Management – and That’s Insulting Dogs

      Is there any management trend that HR doesn’t buy into? Used to be these were the people who kept your personnel file. But, how can they justify their existence by being glorified clerks? That’s when “Personnel” became “Human Resources.” They had such wonderful ideas as evaluations, comparable pay, and performance plans.

      They are the buffers between Wagers and management. “Why didn’t I get a raise this year? I did outstanding work!” a Wager asks an HR dog. What she gets is a shrug from the HR dog and an explanation as hard to pin down as fog. The buck not only stops at the HR dog’s desk, it dies a pitiful death.

Chapter Five

Globalization: There Are Six Guys in Calcutta Waiting for Your Job

      Once in a while most Wagers will have had their fill of fads and crazy managers. They ponder drawing a line in the sand: I’ll be pushed this far and no farther. That’s when managers begin talking about offshoring jobs. Hey, maybe that line isn’t so firm, and it’s good to know that I’m worth six guys in Calcutta with advanced degrees. Forget I ever said anything.

Chapter Six

Management Fads

      Everyone with a pencil, pad, and too much time on his hands takes a crack at creating a better form of management. Why? Because there must be something basically wrong with the way business operates because there are so many managers. Some of these people even think what they are offering is unique and helpful, like the physician who invented ways workers can deal with cheese migration or the guy who says managers can fix things in 60 seconds.

Chapter Seven

Orders from the Burning Bush

      Not all managers have the Insanity gene flowing rampant through their DNA. Sometimes they see the folly of the latest fad. Too bad the order has come down form on-high that it’s either the fad or farewell. If you think a manager cares about a Wager, just look at the last six people who left your company, and why.

Chapter Eight

The Appeal of Management Fads

      Why do management fads appeal to baases? It’s simple. They’re simple. Yes, both the fads are simple as are most managers. If the baas was smart, he wouldn’t be falling for management fads, now would he?

Chapter Nine

Imperfect Implementation

      In the vast world of management fads, there may be one out there that works, in a small, modest, specialized way after a long, excruciating installation. That success is what fosters the inventor of the fad to tout its usefulness across every industry. Rather than implement the fad as it should, most managers what instant results. Why take 18 months to incorporate a new way of operating? Slam that puppy in and see instant results. None of them good.

Chapter Ten

It’s Easier to Invent Fads than to Work

      Everyone who thinks they’ve built a better mousetrap to boost business efficiency eventually writes a book. Sometimes these fads catch fire, sometimes they die the quiet death they deserve. Consultants make a fortune implementing a fad, and they scram before it becomes painfully apparent that what they were selling was a load of hooey. Included are examples of fads that never took off, such as Scourging Employees to Happiness, and Managing Employees Through Terrorism.

Chapter Eleven

If It’s Such a Good Idea, Where Was It 10 Years Ago?

      Business, as we know it’s most modern incarnation, probably dates back to the Bronze Age, maybe 150,000 years ago. In that long history of transacting work for cash, you’d think every fad would have invented, implemented, and discarded by now. But, that’s the beauty of fads: inventors file off the serial numbers, give the fad a new coat of paint, and then convince management that it’s brand new with a proven track record of success.

Chapter Twelve

Fads Are for the Little People

      Fads, by their very nature are for the Wagers, not the managers. Managers want to improve the output of all of those headcounts that work for them. If managers wanted to change, they wouldn’t be in the positions they occupy, now would they?

Chapter Thirteen

Some Fad, Don’t Work

      We once did some contract work for an old-timer who still called floppy disks “tapes.” We gave him a demo on a disk. He said it always failed to run: “Some demo, don’t work.” We later found he was inserting the disk in upside down. So it is with fads. Upper level managers think that throwing a new management fad book at their subordinates will make magic happen. When it doesn’t, the fault isn’t within themselves, it’s within the stars.

Chapter Fourteen

Meetings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

      There’s an old saying: Nothing happens until someone sells something. So it is with fads, they don’t work until there are meetings. Many meetings. All of them long and at the most convenient times. Why meetings? Because if the results can’t be reported in PowerPoint, then they can’t be working.

Chapter Fifteen

 Employee Profiles: Co-Worker Reactions to Management Fads

      A catalog of how Wagers react to fads: the winners, the losers, and those who don’t know what they are.

Chapter Sixteen

Work Isn’t Life

      The first thing that Wagers have to learn is that Work  Life. While it is true that “no rice, pretty soon die,” we work in order to provide the necessities of life rather than the opposite. For instance one benighted Wager is so tied to his job that even when he takes a vacation day, his employer will page him and even insist he attend meetings via telephone. “I spent most of Christmas on the phone trying to solve a server problem.” I’m sure his children loved it when Daddy told them he’d celebrate the holiday with them on his comp time. Oops. He’s being paged again.

     What kind of company puts so many eggs into such a Wager basket? Once too cheap to have more than one person qualified to the work.

Chapter Seventeen

Survival Strategies and Crash-and-Burn Cases

      If you can’t avoid a fad, the best thing to do is lay back and think of England. As with facing the Borg, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated. There are strategies for surviving a management fad, and in fact, profiting from it. The worst thing to do is to pull a Howard Roark [see Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead] and stand staunchly by and try to bring the whole silliness down around you. Be like the willow, Grasshopper rather than auguring in and leaving a smoking hole.

Chapter Eighteen

How to Shine No Matter What Fad Comes Through

      As fads slosh through business like tides, it’s possible to do more than stand around with wet pants. It is not only possible to survive management fads, but use them as a tool to shine in the baas’ eyes. We outline methods by which a fad can be judo-flipped to benefit the Wager.

Chapter Nineteen

We’ve Established What Your Are, Now We’re Just Haggling Over the Price

      How to use hypocrisy to survive. In what is probably an apocryphal story, George Bernard Shaw was once at a dinner party. As part of the discussion, he spoke to his female tablemate. She decried the rise of prostitution in England after World War II. Shaw, ever one to pierce pomposity, asked her if she would sell her favors for a million pounds. She thought a moment and said “yes.” He then asked her if she would share a romantic interlude with him for five pounds. She was outraged.

      “Mr. Shaw, what do you think I am?”

      “We’ve already established what your are, my dear. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”

      We all have a price for which we’d sell our mothers to Klingon slave traders. Luckily, we don’t have to go that far. We just take jobs where the money is so nice that we think we’re willing to put up with anything. In the words of a Meatloaf song: They hand you a paycheck every week and steal a piece of your soul every day. Heck, you can’t cash in that soul anyway.

      Smile, take your pay, and pretend to be the bestest employee ever. Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.

Chapter Twenty

Watch Your Six

      In fighter-pilot parlance, that means look out for what’s behind you: stay aware of threats. The trick of surviving management fads is to never let anyone at work know you’re spoofing the system. Whether inadvertent, or with malice, there’s always someone you least expect that will rat you out to management. That can mean fifteen minutes of discomfort in talking your way out of trouble, or a long, mean-spirited chewing-out by the baas before he fires you, you miserable ingrate.

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