Corporate Survival Guide: The Holiday Party

On the battlefield, the importance of entertaining the troops is paramount; always keep the guys with the guns happy. Without this goal and the USO, how else could we have kept Bob Hope overseas and off of our television shows for as long as we did?

The corporate battlefield is no different; the soldiers of bureaucracy must occasionally be entertained by the company, to keep their spirits high, their attitude productive, and their guns at home.

Thus comes the annual holiday party at work. This affair can range widely in the particulars. At the low end, it might be a stilted and awkward gathering in a break room to have a carefully-rationed glass of the cheapest box wine available. On the high end, it can be a lavish, stilted and awkward orgy of booze and food that makes you wonder if you're in the right place. Either way works; as long as there's alcohol to help you forget your pathetic existence in the cube farms for an evening, it's better than crying yourself to sleep on the floor of your mother's kitchen. Again.

But the real question for the corporate warrior is: how can you use the situation to your advantage? The savvy soldier always looks for the opportunity to strike the killing blow, and having all of your peers and managers in festive spirits is the perfect time. Here are some strategic party tips:

Helpful Holiday Hints

1) Drink Far Too Much
First of all, realize that they are giving this food away, and a good solider always packs in the free stuff.

But more importantly for your career, it's critical that your management see you diving head-first into the walls of opportunity that they provide for their employees.
You could say, "Oh, I don't drink," which would appear socially responsible. But it would also come off as aloof and, frankly, tedious. Unless they asked you here to drive everyone else home, do you really think they want to hear about your abstention habit?

You could also simply have one drink to appear social. But that's not much better; they didn't provide all of this free booze just to see it politely consumed. They might as well have offered candy bars or breath mints; where's the fun in seeing everyone sip quietly?

No, the alcohol is provided for one purpose and one purpose only. Okay, two. One of the reasons is that they want to give the outward appearance of having provided something nice to the staff, so that you'll remember the $4 bottles of wine the next time they ask you to stay late off the clock. But the main reason is that they want a party. Alcohol, like jello, is a social lubricator, designed to loosen lips and break down stuffy barriers. If they'd wanted a polite conversation, they'd have offered crackers. No, they want an all-out rave. So give them one that everyone will remember, even if you don't.

So help them out; get completely schnockered.

2) Booze schmooze
Networking with your co-workers is best done when you're drunk. For one thing, they will see you as companionable, fun, and harmless, which is exactly how you want them to feel as you undermine their careers to further your own interests. Also, you probably won't remember these conversations the next day, so you don't have to clutter your mind or memory with them and can focus on the important things going forward: managing your career and curing that splitting headache.

3) Suck it up
As always, the most important thing for you to do is to find the nearest executive and suck up to them. Being drunk helps with this critical task, because it breaks down inhibitions and enables you to say things that you otherwise might not, like "Thank you [wipe tear away] for being such a great leader this year!", and "What a great Christmas sweater!," and possible "Sorry for throwing up on your great Christmas sweater!"

If the opportunity arises, don't be afraid to get into a fight to defend the honor of an executive. Pretend that a co-worker says something offensive about the company and take a swing at the detractor before they know what's happening. Your managers will be impressed at your willingness to defend the corporation, even to the point of getting completely beaten up, as will surely happen in your drunken state.
It is important, as you suck up in your inebriated state, to remember to do this with the Right People. Don't waste your compliments on mere co-workers. Likewise for the hat stand, mistaken for your boss in the dim office lighting.

4) Pass out
Your management will know that you completely enjoyed and appreciated the party when you pass out in the guacamole dip. It will be clear that you not only had a great time, but that you prefer the socially acceptable result of sleeping it off at work instead of driving home drunk. Besides, you will get credit for sleeping at the office and pulling an all-nighter (be sure to submit the overtime request to Payroll).

Put this strategy to use as you navigate the treacherous waters of this year's holiday parties. I think you'll be amazed at what will happen to your career. At the very least, you can be happy that you maximized the free booze benefit. And if you did make a complete fool of yourself, at least the alcohol guarantees that you won't have to suffer memories of the debacle.

Corporate Survival Guide: All Hands on Deck

In war, or at least in war movies, there is always a dramatic scene in which the troops come together to hear a rousing speech from the General, which inspires them to march happily off to certain death. The General moves down the line of bleak, scared faces and offers words of inspiration that, despite being outgunned, outwitted, and out-and-out doomed, they will prevail. All they have to do is this one little thing of marching straight into the line of fire while the General observes from far in the rear.

This same epic battle scene also takes place on today’s corporate battlefields: it’s called the “All Hands” meeting. This is a regular meeting of everyone in the department or the entire company in which executives address the troops, inspiring them with predictions of victory and regaling them with presentations about fiscal responsibility, budgets, and layoffs.

But the All Hands meeting is not just a time for reflection and dozing; it is a prime opportunity for the Corporate Warrior to shine. Think about it: what other forum is there where so many of your co-workers and your management hierarchy are present?

Here are some ways that you can use the meeting to your advantage:

Sit in front

Educators say that sitting in the front row is the best way to learn the material. Your proximity to the teacher forces you to pay more attention, and the lack of distractions in front of you help you focus. But sitting up front in an All Hands meeting has nothing to do with learning (hey, nobody’s listening anyway). Instead, it’s all about access and visibility.

First of all, make sure to reserve a chair front and center before the meeting starts. You could put your notebook or your laptop on the seat, but I’ve found that spilling coffee or, better yet, cooked oatmeal on the chair is more effective at keeping people away.

Next, wait in the back until the meeting starts. The first speaker is usually the highest-ranking executive talking that day. That first slot is a sign of honor and respect for this highest-ranking executive, and this person is also usually the one that has nothing in particular to talk about, so they just do the fluffy intro. Wait until the audience has stopped talking about their kids’ soccer games and the executive starts to speak to a hushed and awestruck crowd. This is your time to move.

Make your way to the front confidently and noticeably. A mobile phone is a good prop for this entrance, as you can make your position clear in a fake conversation. The trick is to appear busy, important, and yet respectful of the All Hands and the presenters. A quote like this might help: “I don’t care how, just make it happen! Now start thinking for yourself – I’m in an important meeting with very important people!”

Now that you’re at your chair, make sure that the executive at the microphone knows you’re there by saying something subtle, like, “A spill? No problem – I’ll clean it up just like our company is cleaning up in the market!” Then wipe up your seat-reserving spill and sit down.

If you played your part successfully, you interrupted the speaker. That person is now staring at you, trying to get back the lost train of thought. This is an excellent time to help, saying something loudly to them like, “You tell them, Pat!” This serves two purposes: it brings you to the attention of the executive, and it shows everyone in the audience that you’re on a first name basis with them. The best part is that you don’t have to know the person at all; you just have to know their name. With the entire company spread in front of them, they’re not going to have the time and presence of mind to stop and ask who you are and would you mind shutting up, please. Instead, you’ll get your salutation out there and they will continue reading from their index cards, and the audience will think that you helped them do it.


Ask questions

Usually, there is time for Q&A at the end of an All Hands meeting. This is the time for employees to ask serious questions about how the company is doing, or how the budget cuts affect their department, or how they’re going to tell their spouses that they have to sell the children to make ends meet. This is all irrelevant, of course; Q&A is your time to get attention.

Ask pointed questions of the executives, calling them by name and making them notice who you are, and what you stand for. Don’t bother asking real questions about hard problems – these people have enough to worry about getting their golf scores down without people pestering them about personal gripes like "jobs" and "salary cuts." Instead, focus on questions that make both them and you look good, because that’s what it’s all about.

Sample questions might include:

“How is it that the economy is so bad, but your financial management of our company is so good?”

“I don’t know about anyone else here, but this is the most wonderful company I’ve ever worked for. My question: was it always this amazing, or was it through your leadership that it got to be so great?”

Feel free to throw in the occasional not-a-question as well, as long as you have a strong point to make:

“I just want to be the first to congratulate you on a fantastic job. Everybody, let’s hear it for Mary!”

Remember the first rule of the Corporate Warrior: never stop sucking up.


Lead the troops

Shell-shocked soldiers and battle-weary veterans need constant motivation to keep on fighting. They need leaders who inspire them to ridiculous feats. You can be that leader.

In this kind of meeting, the speakers are lucky if the audience stays awake, much less pays attention during the entire event. That’s why they need you to drive the applause that lets everyone know not just when to applaud, but, more importantly, who the applause leader is.

Every time a speaker pauses and looks out at the crowd, it’s clear that a note on their index card or teleprompter reads: “[Applause]”. Be the first one to jump up and lead a round. It doesn’t matter what they just said – you won’t be able to follow any of it since you’ll be too busy watching for cues. It’s more important that you let the speaker know that the audience appreciates what they said … when you told them to.

Watch for other cues as well. When an executive smiles, laugh out loud and throw out a, “Good one!” and then jab the person next to you and gesture that you thought that was a really funny point. When a speaker makes a dramatic point, talk back to them: “No! What did you do then?”

This constant salvo from you, their main indicator for audience appreciation, will give them the feedback they need to continue in their speeches, in their jobs, and ideally in recognizing you as someone they can trust.


Eat

If you’re lucky and this is one of those All Hands meetings with food, take as much as you can. Stuff your face with Danishes, put extra donuts in your pockets, and make off with as much as you can carry. For one thing, you know that the executives won’t be anywhere near, so they won't be watching you make a pig of yourself. But also, a soldier never knows where his next meal is coming from. And heck, it’s free.

Corporate Survival Guide: Retreatise

Success on the battlefield doesn’t just depend on how you win, but also how well you lose. The strategy of retreat is exceptionally important not just for how you save your arm and your skin, but also how fast you can make it back to the town to get your story told first.

Besides, as the abbreviated saying goes, “He who fights and runs away lives.”

Similarly, today's Corporate Warrior must know when to charge and when to high-tail it out of there. Sometimes the enemy is too powerful and you must cede the field. And sometimes the other side has compromising pictures of you from the holiday party.

It’s at these times that you have to know how to quit.

One of the most crucial elements of quitting is the goodbye email. This final communication to the team must strike the right note of camaraderie, professionalism, and awesomeness that will leave your co-workers and management with a feeling of warmth and envy for the opportunities that you are pursuing. Even if you’re quitting to flip burgers or pursue the life of homelessness that beckons every time you step over the vagrants on your way into the office, you want to leave your peers with the feeling that your life will surely be better than theirs. This usually entails bold lies, but since you'll never see them again, who's to know?

But it’s tricky composing this email. Many corporate warriors have spent their entire career composing their magnum opus, but still failed to deliver a compelling case. You can do better.

And you will do better by using this handy template I've created, which is suitable for most corporate situations you will encounter. I've borrowed the template from another blog, so I should give credit here, but I feel my additions more than make up for this flagrant theft of copyrighted material.

[To Whom it May Concern, Dear Coworkers, Fellow Drones, Life-Sucking Parasites],

After [make up a number here; nobody will know or care] [years, memos, cups of coffee, harassment complaints], the time has come for me to move on. Although it was a difficult decision made over a series of [weeks, months, beers], I feel it is something I must do because I:

A. ______ want to spend more time with my [family, dog, self]

B. ______ am taking advantage of a new, exciting opportunity

C. ______ am bored out of my mind

D. ______ have been fired for gross and disgusting insubordination

E. ______ need to get my inbox down to zero messages

F. ______ none of the above

G. ______ all of the above except F

H. ______ some combination of ABCDE: __________

I. ______ other reason (please explain in 1 word or less): __________


Good luck to everyone here. It's been my pleasure and honor to work with each and every one of you [optional: list every person in the organization][optional: except [list people you hated]]. Know that I'll be rooting for the team regardless of what I may be doing at your direct competitor. It's a small [industry, valley, city, world, galaxy]; I'm sure we'll have the chance to work together again.

Should anyone feel like contacting me in the future, you can always reach me at [you should give a fake email address here, since nobody will bother. Your are dead to them now].

[Good luck!, Go team!, Love and kisses!, So Long Suckers!]
[Your name here]

So go ahead, use the template. Send out the email and then get the Hell out of the building before Facilities wonders what happened to all of the office supplies on the second floor.

Corporate Survival Guide: Don't Get Fired

In my previous article on New Years Resolutions, the final item was “Don’t Get Fired”. But far from being the least important goal on that list, it was perhaps the most important one of all. First of all, Not Getting Fired (NGF) is such an important step toward becoming tolerated and eventually even relevant in the company. But also, in these times of economic hardship, company downsizing, and unreasonable corporate demand for competence, it is increasingly difficult to avoid getting fired, so it is important that this goal is the one you must strive to reach each year. Besides, Not Getting Fired is, according to one survey, an important way to keep getting a paycheck.

The inexperienced worker might think that Not Getting Fired can be achieved through initiative, hard work, and success, but they are, of course, completely wrong. HR won’t care who you are when they come to your cube with triplicate forms and a company-issued tazer. No, you must be far more clever and devious to win this battle. Here are some proven techniques that you can use to avoid getting fired in your situation.

Blame Someone Else

Sometimes, despite all of your efforts and bullet points to the contrary, you make a mistake. It’s human to make a mistake, but corporations, like politicians and other reptiles, are not human and typically do not tolerate error. Industrial accidents resulting in injury and death, product fraud costing the company millions in damages, plugging the break-room espresso machine with chewing gum and causing a minor explosion: these are just a few of the things that can be put down to simple human error on your part. But they’re also some of the things that can result in termination. So how do you recover from these misunderstandings?

The advantage to working in a big company is that there is always someone else to blame. Ask yourself: how many other people are there in my department? That is coincidentally exactly the number of people that you can point the finger at whenever anything goes wrong. It doesn’t matter whether they did anything, whether they know anything about it, or whether there’s any credibility to your accusation; the fact that you accused them will throw a delay into the process of corporate blame that should last long enough for you to weasel out of whatever you did.

Get Terminally Ill

Companies usually won’t fire someone that is terminally ill. This doesn’t come from any form of human empathy as much as a fear of bad PR and good lawyers. So all you have to do to stick around is to contract some terminal disease. This limits your time at the company overall, of course, but your job is safe in the meantime.

Die

A tactic closely related to the last one is to actually die. This approach has been a proven-safe measure against getting fired since ancient times. However, I wouldn’t recommend this strategy in general, as you lose some of the more interesting benefits from still having the job, such as living. This tactic was often used in ancient battles, where generals would fall on their swords rather than stick around for the humiliation of defeat. They certainly achieved their goal, but unfortunately weren’t around to enjoy it.

Claim Sexual Harassment from Everyone

Sexual harassment has become a serious issue in the workplace, resulting in lawsuits, firings, and hours and hours of required HR sensitivity training for employees to attend. The last thing the company wants is any charge of sexual harassment.

Of course, the simple thing to do if you know you’re going to be fired is to claim harassment from your boss, because that’s what everyone expects. But this tactic is so expected that the company will have measures in place to negate that claim. So you have to go bigger: claim harassment from everyone: your boss, your cube-mate, your HR representative, the guy in the mail room, the woman in Finance, the CEO, and even yourself. The more people you can drag into the situation, the longer it will take for the company to sort it out and the more inclined they will be to just step away from you and let you keep doing your job.

Be Somewhere Else

If everything else on this list fails and the company is going through with the act of firing you, then make sure you can’t be found. They can’t actually throw you out if they can’t get ahold of you. Sure, they can turn off your badge so that you can’t get back in the building, but who says you need to leave? That handicapped stall in the bathroom is larger than your apartment and you can always take showers with the spray nozzle at the sink in the break room. Become invisible and you might just hold onto your job even after every shred of dignity has deserted you.

Remember the Business Battlecry: “He who works and runs away lives to work another day.”

Cry

If the tactics above are unsuccessful and they’re coming to take you away, break down in tears. Besides having a cleansing affect on the soul, it’s just possible that you will spark some feeling, some idea deep inside of that HR representative that you’re going to get water and snot all over their suit and maybe they have better things to do that day than fire you.

Corporate Survival Guide: New Years Resolutions

It’s appropriate, at this time of year, to set goals, to form plans, to set in motion devious and unstoppable strategies for world corporate domination; in short, to make New Year’s Resolutions.

Since ancient times, warriors have performed this ritual as they looked forward with grim determination and blood-soaked chainmail to the coming year’s conquests. From Alexander the Great’s epic “I’d like to see what Persia is like this time of year” to Napolean’s ill-fated “I wonder what the Borscht is like in Moscow?”, soldiers and leaders alike have set battle goals that shaped their not only their lives, but the entire shape of society and the combat-fatigue fashion world around them. Today’s Corporate Warrior owes it to himself and his fellow troops to do the same.

Here are some suggested resolutions to draw from, but feel free to improvise for your particular situation. Remember, the main idea is to set optimistic but reasonable goals, ones that will be difficult to achieve, but which are realistic enough for you to attempt them. I’ve listed these in reverse order of achievability; choose accordingly to your abilities.

Veterans

• Become CEO and fire everyone that ever slighted you. Remember that guy that cut in line in the cafeteria and ordered past ahead of you, causing you to have to wait an extra 2 minutes? Sure, he apologized and said he didn’t understand that the general milling-about was actually a line, but he didn’t really mean it. When you are CEO, you get to fire him. HR will say that you need a reason and a paper trail, but the best part about being in charge is that you can have other people do that work for you.


• Invent a new product that becomes the cash-cow of the corporation. Nobody has power in a corporation like the person running the most profitable product. They get to set the overall corporate agenda, pick the best meeting rooms, and change the coffee vendor. There’s nothing to stop you on the grueling battlefield of internal politics if you’re the guy bringing in the payroll. All you have to do is come up with the product that makes it all happen.

Warriors

• Get invited to The Meeting. There’s usually one conference room where it all happens. You can tell the one by looking in the hall outside; there are always catering carts for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea, because these people are busy, and I mean busy implementing corporate strategic imperatives. Obviously, this group of people is critical to the future success of the company or else the company wouldn’t be spending so much on catered cookies every afternoon, so it stands to reason that every person in that room is a star. So all you have to do to be a star yourself is get in that room. You can use subterfuge (“Alan couldn’t make it today, I’m his proxy”) to ignorance (“Oh, I thought this was the Accounting Principles and Practices weekly”) to actual aptitude, although this last one is a pipe dream, so I’d focus on the others.

New recruits

• Suck up every day. This one is obvious; you only get promoted on the Corporate Battlefield by sucking up to your entire chain of command. But make it a goal this year to do it not just once or twice a week, but every day, even several times a day. Remember: there’s always an excuse to talk to your boss, and there’s always some compliment you can come up with (“Nice shoes!”, “Good joke at that meeting last month!”, “You radiate power today!”), so do it, today and every day.


• Don’t get fired. Sometimes the best you can achieve on the battlefield is not dying. Some days, it’s not the bodies that you littered No Mans Land with, but the fact that one of them wasn’t yours. Do whatever you have to, every day, to not get fired. Call in sick, contract a debilitating disease, file for sexual harrassment, kidnap your manager’s dog, acquire compromising photos from the holiday party: whatever it takes. If everything else fails, when you see that HR person coming to your cube with an envelope and a box of tissues, switch nameplates with your coworkers and hide in the printer room.

Maybe you have a better resolution in mind (doubtful, but possible), which is fine. But the important thing is to make some New Year’s resolution. A resolution is like a goal, and a goal is like a plan, and a plan is like a strategy, and a war with no strategy is like decaffeinated coffee or nonfat desserts: what’s the point?

Corporate Survival Guide: Doorway to Success

“Power,” as a great general may have said once, “is gained not through great works, but by great rumors.” It doesn’t matter what you actually do, but rather what others think you might have done. This is as true on the corporate battlefield as it is in real life, particularly in the mad, scheming power-grab that is your everyday office life.

One of the easiest ways to generate buzz is through visible interaction with your management chain. I call it: “The Doorway to Success.”

Try this: walk over to your boss’s office and say loudly, just outside the office, “I’ve got to talk to you, now!” Then quickly enter the office and shut the door audibly. Then ask your boss something innocuous, like “How was your weekend?” or “Nice shoes! Where’d you get them?” In a pinch, you can also try, “Whoops, forgot what I was was going to say! Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

Once the conversation is over, open the door and move quickly back to your desk with an intense look of constipation on your face. Pretend that there’s an alien trying to bust out of your chest, and you’re keeping it trapped inside through sheer willpower.

After you do this a couple of times, you’ll notice heads of coworkers popping above the nearby cube walls like prairie dogs at dinnertime; everyone wants to know what’s going on. Of course, there is nothing happening - it was all pretense. But that’s my point: it’s the same thing.

There are two impressions that you’ve created in your coworkers through this action:

• Something big is going down: People don’t usually get worked up in the office except when the coffee maker is broken or a toilet overflows. Seeing someone agitated and talking to management about the issue must mean that something is happening that’s pretty important.
• You know something about it: This is the most important element. It’s less important what you know than the fact that you know it and they don’t. It is critical to follow-through on this with your coworkers. Some will wander by and hint subtly that they’d like to know what’s going on, but you need to avoid dropping any hints, while still looking that you could. Some will just come out and ask you what you know. Feel free to tell these people that you can’t say anything, and that you’re surprised they don’t know. It’s always good to take people down a peg when you can, because your importance in the hierarchy is always relative to those around you.

Of course, this tactic works best when your boss has an office. Stomping loudly into the cube and asking how their tennis game is coming along doesn’t work nearly as well.

If your manager has a cube, here are a couple of alternatives to think about:

• Find a door: Tell the boss in their cube that you need to talk, but not here. Then bring them through your department, taking a circuitous route past as many coworkers as possible, continuing to repeat things like, “It’s really important” and “We need a private place to talk about this” and maybe some tidbits like, “I don’t know how The Board is going to deal with this.” Finally, drag the boss into an unoccupied office or meeting room and proceed as above. (Bathroom stalls generally don’t work as well, as they tend to give the conversation an entirely different flavor and your boss may try to call security).
• Find someone else: Frankly, if your boss has a cube, you should probably find someone more important. Offices are a mark of distinction on the corporate battlefield, like promotions or executives knowing your name (or at least guessing at it). The subtle message from the executives to the cube-bearing manager is, “You’re not important enough to have private conversations.” So why are you wasting your time talking to them? Find someone that is that important; you should pretend to be in the know with people that actually are.

Finally, be sure not to overplay this strategy. People will only buy it if they think you are getting secret information at reasonable intervals. Also, your manager may start wondering why you keep making such a big deal of asking them what they had for lunch, or how they take their coffee, or how to request lumbar support for your office chair. I’d suggest limiting the “Doorway to Success” technique to no more than ten times per day.

Corporate Survival Guide: Add Spies to Life

Success on the corporate battlefield is all about information: what you know and how you use it. But there are always two kinds of information: the data that you have and, and, and that other stuff.

On the battlefield of corporate life, it is inevitable that your enemies will discover facts about you that you would rather be kept private. For example, they may have pictures from your trip to Vegas when you woke up with a massive hangover and three young goats. Or they may know about the torrid affair with Smith from HR. Or perhaps they discovered the pack of lies you call your resume. Or maybe they witnessed the simple misunderstanding between you and the other internal candidate for the Supervisor position, where you beat them to death with your hole punch.

Nobody leads a perfect life, especially warriors bent on success upon the battlefield. As the book “Flawless Fellows Finish Fifteenth” claims, good people have bad careers.

So what do you do about information leaks? How can you protect your career while also doing what you must to get ahead?

One solution is to simply lead a better life.

But seriously, you need to learn to control the damage. There are two approaches that I recommend to today’s corporate warrior: Counter Espionage and Spin.

Spy vs. Spy

Ever since Brutus got the point across to Julius Caesar that a little more intel on his friends would have been helpful, unscrupulous tyrants have understood that spy networks are a critical part of getting and keeping power. How else would King Arthur have known of his knights’ lancing a lot with his wife? Or how else could Neville Chamberlain have successfully achieved peace for our time without secret intelligence that Hitler merely wanted a vacation home in Czechoslovakia? And how could any parent possibly trust their teenage kid without paying their friends to nark on them?

Spying is a critical and necessary part of power. And it’s fun, to boot!

What you need to do is get the same kind of information on your coworkers that they could get on you. But you have to go further. Remember: you don’t just want to maintain parity with them like some awkward Cold War. No, you want to crush them like carpet-bombing an afternoon tea party. This means that you have to act first and act fast. Spy on them, find out things they don’t want publicized, and fill your secret files.

On rare occasion, you will come across people that have nothing to hide. Perhaps they are actually happily married, don’t sleep around with people at work, and haven’t even committed a felony. However unlikely, you must be prepared to deal with this situation, either by forcing the situation (which usually involves getting them drunk and making the compromising situations happen), or by just making stuff up. Fabrication is perfectly fine, as long as it would be damaging in the extreme cannot be proven to be false. Politicians have built entire careers on this single tactic.

Now that you have the information, you can decide what to do with it. If you have the upper hand because they do not yet have anything on you, then you may choose to run with it. You could take the information to them and squeeze them hard for such things as promotions, recommendations, or permanent cutsies in the cafeteria line. Or, depending on how dangerous they are to you in the chain of command, you may want to leak the information now and be rid of them. One less person on the payroll is one less body in the promotion and bonus shark tank.

Spin

The other approach to secrets is to use yours to your advantage. Depending on the information that someone has on you, you may choose to simply message it appropriately. For example, that affair with the person in HR could be used to paint you as someone who is willing to sleep your way to the top. This trait could be seen by your management as a benefit, depending on how blind and desperate they are.


Regardless of which approach you take, start building your ammunition dump now. If information is power, then secret information is superpower, like X-Ray vision or running really fast in a spandex suit. Get that information and crush your enemies, for the good of humanity, or at least your career.

Corporate Survival Guide: Be the Master of All You Survey

If you’re slogging through the trenches of today’s corporate battlefield, you’re probably bombarded constantly by internal company surveys. Management apparently wants to know how happy you are, what you think of the company, how much you like the food in the cafeteria, and how clean the restrooms are.

Those who are not true Corporate Warriors (“Fodder”) may be thinking one of two things about these surveys:

• “I’d really like to help the organization improve itself; I will gladly fill out these forms so that the company keeps getting better and better!”


• “why do I have to fill out another survey? Shouldn’t I do some real work instead?”

Both of these responses are, of course, dead wrong. The company doesn’t actually care about improving itself; it’s already doing pretty well. But those in charge of the surveys would definitely like you to spend your time on the surveys instead of real work; the amount of time you spend thinking about your corporate environment is directly proportional to how important the bureaucracy can feel about itself. The more surveys, the more satisfied the company.

No, the real way to think about these surveys is the way that you, the Corporate Warrior, think about everything you do at work and in life in general:

How can I improve my position through this task?

There are actually two different ways that you can profit from employee surveys: completing them and authoring them. Both require different approaches and skill sets, so I will cover them separately.

Completing Surveys

There are two main tips for filling out any company survey:

1. Get your name in there
2. Use “Other” fields as much as possible

Credit where Credit is Due (to You)

Most surveys make a point of being anonymous. The theory is that they just want general feedback and statistics so that they can collect an overall impression of how the employees feel. But seriously: do you think that if someone says something really horrible about the place they wouldn’t want to know exactly who that loser was so that they could fire their sorry butt, pronto?

Similarly, if someone (read: you) said glowing things about the company (read: your management chain), they would want to know who that person was. Imagine: if someone said that you were good-looking, wouldn’t you want to know who said it so that you could determine whether you felt honored, deserving, or just creeped-out by it?

Chances are that the surveys have some means for determining who filled them out. But just in case, you want to make it very obvious in your answers so that there was no way they could avoid tracing it back to you.

The way you make this possible is by copious use of the “Explain” field.

Explain Yourself

Most of these surveys consist of simple multiple-choice questions. Many of the questions will have no write-in field, in which case you should just pick the answer that you think the executives most want to hear. But for any question which has an “Other” answer with an “Explain:” field, it’s all yours. You should select that “Other” choice and then call forth your inner Shakespeare to wax eloquent on the topic presented in the question, the overall survey, the executives that authorized the survey, and the company leadership in general. And always tie it back to you.

Let’s look at a couple of examples to see how this works.

Here’s one from a survey about employee morale, complete with how a true Corporate Warrior would respond:

167. Please rate your overall satisfaction with the company. Consider whether you would recommend this company to others:
__A. Very High
__B. High
__C. Medium
__D. Low
__E. Very Low
X_F. Other
If “Other”, please explain:
I was confused by this question – is there really any correct answer besides “Very High?” Seriously, does anyone bother to choose anything else? If so, you might consider whether the jobs they are performing here couldn’t be better performed by someone else (such as me, Bill Frentzner).
I not only *feel* great about this company and want to recommend it – I *do* recommend it to others on a constant basis. I make it a point to call everyone I know, every day, to tell them what a wonderful place this is to be. I figure my day isn’t complete until I’ve made everyone jealous of how perfect my life is because of this job. And it must be working, because now they all hang up on me when they hear it’s me; they must be really jealous!
I also tell my coworkers how great it is here, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page. Sometimes, like last Tuesday while helping mentor my co-worker Greg Schneel, I get the feeling that some employees aren’t ecstatic to be here. Greg (Schneel, two “e”s, one “l”), for example, rolled his eyes when I said my regular piece about how happy I was to be working here. But I’m positive people like Greg are just oddballs in the mix and that all of the right-minded people are completely on board with where this company is at.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Bill (“Bill”) Frentzner
Cube 74b (next to the 3rd floor stapling room)
Badge #478,982

Here’s another example, from a survey about restroom cleanliness:

47. Please rate the overall timeliness of bathroom facilities personnel in responding to issues:
__A. Fast
__B. Adequate
__C. Slow
X_D. Other
If you selected “Other”, please explain:
I was going to select Fast, but frankly that’s not an adequate description – the facilities group is without fail immediately on the problem, no matter what the issue, nor how long it takes. I (Bill Frentzner) was saying to my co-worker (Jerry Crously) the other day, “Jerry, you should stop complaining about the restrooms, the facilities department, and the overall company structure – this company is great in every respect. You might say that the company, like that guy in the bathroom, is really going places!”
Clearly, management is doing great things here: always has, and always will!
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Bill (“Bill”) Frentzner
Cube 74b (next to the 3rd floor stapling room)
Badge #478,982

Note, in the examples above, that there are some key points made in every response. Like political candidates in a debate, it doesn’t matter that you answer the question, but that you stay on message:

• It’s all about you. Include your name and any other relevant information that can help the survey analyzers track you down. It’s not worth saying great things about the company if you don’t get credit.


• Always tell them how great they are. Even though you picked “other”, make it clear that you did so only because either the top-rated selection wasn’t high enough or because you needed room to explain how great it really is. Your goal in these responses is to be excerpted for slide presentations at all-hands meetings. Management will want to show everyone how wonderful things are, so they will choose some quotes from these ‘anonymous’ surveys as examples of how others felt. You’ll know that you’ve gotten your personal agenda across by writing one of those chosen.


• Upward mobility is relative. Always remember that there are two ways to get ahead of your co-workers: by being advanced yourself and by having your peers pulled back. Your answers can help you on both fronts by allowing you to paint yourself in a good light while also portraying some of your co-workers negatively. Be sure to be very specific, with names and possibly home addresses, so that your Human Resources department can get right on those morale problems.

It goes without saying that if there’s a field at the end of the survey that invites an open response, go for it. Use the tips above to create a response of such eloquence and obsequiousness that the executives cannot help but notice and reward you.

So start filling out those surveys. But go beyond that: seek out other surveys to complete: join email aliases at work just to have the opportunity of getting and filling out more of these, ask around to see if there are other surveys you haven’t seen yet, and fill out multiple copies of surveys whenever possible.

Surveys, like ridiculously expensive holiday gifts for your boss and acquiring blackmail photos of executives’ weekends in Vegas, represent some of the best opportunities for stepping up the ladder that you will encounter. Besides, they’re free and they give you a nice break from all of that tedious ‘work’ you have to do.

Authoring surveys, the other half of the survey ecosystem, is another critical skill on the Corporate Battlefield. But we’re all out of room for this week and I have some surveys to write; we’ll cover this in a future installment.

Corporate Survival Guide: Complimentality

When someone at work says, “Great trip report!” what they’re really saying is, “You suck at everything else!”

Obviously, the ability for today’s Corporate Warrior to accurately digest and clearly communicate information is a critical skill on the Battlefield of Business. But when it becomes your defining characteristic, it’s time to start hoarding office supplies and packing up your desk.

Compliments, like financial reports, are more significant in what they don’t say. If someone reads some article you wrote and says, “Great piece!” you can take some amount of satisfaction that, even though they probably didn’t mean it and may not have actually read it, they did say that they liked it. As a whole, sum total, in entirety. On the other hand, if they read it and everything else you’ve written and take the time to point out a single sentence or word and say, “I liked that,” you should understand both that they may have liked that nugget … and that they didn’t actually like anything else in your vast volume of work.

Like most methods of personal attack, it is critical for today’s Corporate Warrior to hone this skill. The ability to superficially compliment co-workers while simultaneously slamming them for their inadequacies is crucial in achieving your end goals of being seen as better than them and, as a result, rising above them. You want to mix the paired skills of coming across as generous and yet not giving any ground to people whom you would rather see below you on the ladder than above.

At the same time, you will be building a foundation of insecurity in your co-workers that will, if done right, last them a lifetime.

The key to this skill is to congratulate your peers on completely unimportant things, while never acknowledging anything that they may either care about or which may be an attribute that is actually important in the workplace. The trip report example above is a good one. What better way to recognize a peer’s efforts than to compliment them on the results of them? And yet what better way to belittle their overall efforts in the corporation than to fail to recognize skills more closely connected with the job they are paid to do?

Let’s take a look at some other examples of effective compliments. Feel free to use these in your workplace or, for the more advanced Corporate Warriors, to learn the pattern and come up with some compliments of your own.

• “Good thing John’s on the team – he makes great coffee!”
• “About that report, Joan – great font!”
• “Everyone: I’d like you to stop by Jim’s cube sometime and see how clean his monitor screen is. What do you use for that, Jim?”
• “Susan – fantastic punctuation!”
  

That’s all I have for this lesson. Excellent reading!

Corporate Survival Guide: The Performance Review

On the real battlefield, advancement happens through attrition. On the Corporate Battlefield, it happens through the annual Performance Review.

The performance review is the process by which, through the phases of peer feedback, self-evaluation, and one-on-one meetings with management, we can lie through our teeth to get what we want.

There are several steps to the review process. Let's examine how you can use every one of them to improve your career:

1) Peer Reviews of You
The typical review cycle begins with your manager gathering names of your peers that have worked with you and who may be able to provide input on your performance. Sometimes, the manager will know some names to start with. But your manager may solicit names from you since they have been focused so much on their own career that they really haven't paid much attention to their team. This is where your plan begins.

First of all, give your manager some names of executives of the company whom you have supposedly worked closely with. Your manager will be surprised and impressed, and will gladly add those names to the list because it gives your manager a chance to get his own name in front of them. Of course, you have never met these people, but you know for a fact that they're way too busy in executive meetings, golf games, and SEC depositions to take the time to respond to a performance review request for some employee they've never heard of. But the idea was not to actually get a review, but instead to score points with your manager for supposedly having worked with these people enough to request a review.

Next, give you manager names of people in other departments, preferably with important-sounding titles. Then, find a way to intercept communications to these people so that you can field the review requests and respond on your own. If intercepting proves too difficult (this strategy was far easier in the days of inter-office memos and smoke signals), come prepared with letters from these people to simply give to your manager. Explain that they are too busy to be bothered with a review, but took the time this past weekend to jot down some thoughts on your major contributions to the company. Be sure to avoid using the personal pronoun "I", and don't sign your own name to these letters.

Finally, your manager will probably insist on names of some people in your group. Give names of the people whom know you the least in the group. What you're looking for is a vague acknowledgement that you have worked on the team, but no real in-depth review of what you have done. Save those more personal reviews for the fake letters from others (see above). It is critical to not let people with close knowledge of your accomplishments into the review process. After all, if you have been fighting the Corporate Battle successfully in the past year, you have been focused solely on your own career, and the poor slobs that have had to bear the burden of your unfinished tasks may not react kindly when asked about your performance.

2) Your Review of Peers
Your manager may ask you for reviews of some of your peers. At this time, you should also send him reviews of any of the star performers in the group; these people are your competition.

Success on the Corporate Battlefield s not an absolute measure, but a relative one. It is not just how you are doing, but how others are doing in comparison to you. So it is just as important to tear others down as it is to build up your own accomplishments to godlike quality.

Your actual reviews should take many forms, but in general should start out with something like this:

"I have enjoyed mentoring [peer] for the past year, despite [his|her] obvious limitations and inability to execute on even the simplest tasks. Compared to my own work on our shared projects this year, their work was shoddy and unfinished, but of course they are still quite junior and may be able to improve some day. For example, on the Fenster Account, I was able to secure commitments from 7 other department heads to proceed forthwith....."

Note how the review starts out positive, saying something nice about your co-worker before completely savaging them. Also, note how even when you discuss others on your team, you should mention your own stellar performance; tossing in words like "mentoring," "leading," or in some cases "tolerating" will do nicely. Finally, notice how you can eventually turn the conversation entirely to a description of your performance. Make your manager know that you are really the only person that counts on the team.

3) Self Evaluation
Although your review of peers, if well done, are thinly-veiled autobiographies, your self evaluation is really your chance to shine. This is the time when the manacles come off and you can brag to your fullest ability. No superlative is too great, no description too verbose, and no way you should stop at less than 50 pages. I have even seen some leather-bound books submitted as self-evaluations, which probably made for good night-time reading for the managers. The important thing here is to bury your manager so deeply in details and explanations that they won't have time to check any of the facts. Make any claim you want here, because it's all free.

One tip: when you turn your copy into your manager, apologize for not getting it to him sooner, but explain that some of the executives had asked for it and you had to run those copies off at the same time.

4) Manager Meeting
The review process climaxes in a one-on-one meeting with your manager. They have compiled all of the data above and may have even read some of it. They will then come to some conclusions about your performance that they wish to discuss with you.

This is your final chance. Remember: your manager's conclusions are not set until the end of this meeting. So do whatever you can to improve their impression of you even more.

Suck up.

Start the meeting, before they've even started to speak, with something like:
"I just wanted to tell you that it's been a real pleasure working for you. As I was telling [some executive's name], were it not for such strong management support, I would not have been able to perform at the peak I achieved in the past year. This is my dream job, and you are my dream boss. No matter what the rest of the folks on the team may say about you, I really like working for you."

5) Goals
Finally, after the performance review is over, you may be asked to come up with goals for the next year which you can then be judged upon for the next review.

Only one tip here: keep them vague.



Now get out onto that battlefield and charge forth into the next year.

Remember: in Corporate War, it's not about how well you're doing your job, but how well people think you're doing it. The performance review is a perfect opportunity for you to tell them exactly what to think.

Corporate Survival Guide: Girding for Battle

Any warrior knows that you don’t go into battle without appropriate weaponry, and Corporate Warriors are no exception. But the tools of bygone armies aren’t sufficient for the needs of today’s Corporate Warrior. It turns out that management frowns on swords in a meeting, catapults don’t even fit onto the elevator, and bagpipes are laughed out the door.

So what should today’s Corporate Warrior bring to ensure victory and glorious bathing in the blood of the enemy after a full day on the Bureaucratic Battlefield?

If there is one thing that man has perfected, besides molded plastic packaging on kids toys that is impervious to all attempts to open it shy of nuclear explosion, it’s a set of weaponry designed to reduce an enemy to a thenemy. Although the weapons themselves differ between the real battlefield and the much harsher corporate battlefield, the fundamentals of weapons haven’t changed since the first monkey carved his toothbrush into a shiv and offed his buddy at the watering hole for mocking his enunciation. Weaponry basically boils down to: sword, shield, armor, and an optional decorative cup device for the men who‘d like to stay that way. Let’s step through each of the required three and see how they work in today’s corporate wars.

Sword: This is clearly the most important weapon at your disposal; it’s your weapon of attack and defense, and also serves as a suicide device for warriors that completely screw up and are afraid to ’fess up about the debacle. Who can forget that heart-warming scene in Julius Caesar when Marc Antony falls on his own sword, apparently mistaking it for a fluffy bed?

Obviously, swords simply will not do in today’s environment. It has been tried and it just sets off alarms on the way into the building. Also, the things are just plain awkward, and cause you to constantly bump into things simply making your way to your cube. And while it is useful as a pointer in meetings, it tends to reduce the live attendance.

Someone once said, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” A ridiculous statement to be sure; that author obviously never went up against a crazy Scot swinging a broadsword. And pens are so passé in today’s corporate environment that it wouldn’t get you any more than a chuckle in a meeting. No, today’s warrior carries a cup of coffee in his hand. Apart from the sustenance that it provides, a large cup in your hand can serve to emphasize points you’re making. In defensive mode, a quick ‘accidental spill’ can distract the opposition long enough for you to find a way around the impasse. And in extreme situations, you can always throw the contents at your opponent, probably doing no physical damage, but the stains on their clothes will damage their image for the rest of the day. Finally, when all goes horribly wrong in a project, you can always save face by drowning yourself in your latte.

Shield: The shield was crucial to yesterday’s warrior in parrying blows while they readied their counter-attack. Also, shields served as handy stretchers for bearing home the wounded, the dead, or the extra donuts from the battle. The corporate warrior also needs a good defensive weapon like this.

Your laptop is your shield. Not only is it similarly shaped (initial laptop designs were actually derived directly from full-body shields of the middle ages, while modern laptops resemble the smaller shields used by famous heroes so that the local portrait artists could depict more of their body), but it is also an object that you can endlessly hide behind when being attacked from all corners of the room. Imagine: someone attacks your conclusions on a recent project, and your laptop can quickly come up with full-color, animated slide presentations that can refute their points or, even better, completely distract the audience. And if everyone in a meeting is attacking you or undercutting some point, you can go into ‘focus’ mode and simply start typing on your laptop, pretending that you didn’t hear their points because you had something more important on your machine to attend to. Finally, if you upset your enemy enough for them to launch their cup of coffee at you (see the earlier discussion on this strategy), a well-wielded laptop can easily deflect the spray, or even bat it back at the attacker.

Armor: Finally, a warrior needs armor to protect those vulnerable spots that can be pierced by your enemy if they succeed in getting past your sword or shield. In the olden days, armor would consist of anything from a leather vest (for the disposable cannon-fodder: “Here, wear this vest. Now, march over to that big pile of bodies wearing leather vests and attack!”) to chain mail shirts (for those that didn’t quite understand the concept of “holes”) to large plates of metal covering every bare patch of skin. Although the leather approach can work in a pinch in today’s company, the general approach of a suit of armor just doesn’t cut it. For one thing, the metal suits are so loud that it is difficult to overhear the speaker in a meeting. Also, the helmets make it difficult to hear anything anyway, and answering calls from golfing buddies is nearly impossible.

Obviously, the corporate warrior’s armor is the “power suit,” designed to strike fear into everyone as you stalk around the department. But I have found it helpful to add some nuances to this basic clothing, to ensure that the armor is more effective. For one thing, nobody can harm you if they cannot get within striking distance, so it’s usually a good idea to avoid showering for the day or two before an important battle. This invisible barrier will form a force field around you that both prevents others from getting close and causes physical damage to those that attempt it. Also, carry several personal devices, one for each pocket of the suit. How many times have we heard the anecdote about someone’s life being saved by the object in their pocket because it stopped the bullet? By putting a mobile device (phone, PDA, laptop battery) in every pocket, you increase the likelihood of stopping whatever attacks they throw at you. Finally, cover your suit completely in plastic wrap. Not only will this make the suit more shiny and noticeable, it will also provide nearly perfect protection from any coffee attacks from those who would bring you down.

Remember: the clothes make the person, and this is particularly true for today’s Corporate Warrior. After all, how do you think the word ‘wardrobe’ originated?

Corporate Survival Guide: Dollars and Nonsense

In these times of economic hardship, what do you think your boss wants the most? Right: a foot massage and tickets to the game this weekend. But close behind those is their desire for a solution to the company's dire situation.

Face it: the economy's in the tank, nobody is buying anything, and companies have to start eating their young just to survive.

But it's times like these in which the battle-ready corporate Warrior can not only survive, but thrive.

What you should do now is to spend about a minute thinking about how the company can cut costs, and then spend weeks slaving over charts, slides and meetings, and schmoozing the management chain until they know you better than they know the local barista.

The important thing here is that it is irrelevant what solutions you come up with, or even if they will work; the executives are all so confused that they'll try any sorry plan that comes along. And if that sorry plan came from you, all the better for your career.

Here are some quick ideas to get you started: you should be able to turn any one of these into a full-blown Plan for Economic Corporate Knowledge Recovery (PECKR):

• Pay cuts for executives: Let this one sit there in silence for a couple of seconds, and then crack up. The execs in the room will love this joke, and they will know that you are one of them. Then get onto the real suggestions.
• Pay toilets: Every employee uses the facilities in the company several times a day. Think what it could mean to the bottom line if per-use fees went toward corporate revenues. But consider your audience: make sure that you propose that the executive washroom is still free.
  This one is in the can.
• Waterless urinalsThis one hits two hot buttons at once: cost and eco-friendly green-managed enviro-ware business. You've probably seen the waterless toilets in different public or corporate environments. It's a great idea, saving water that can then be spent washing your hands more after dealing with urinals that had no water. But it still costs money for the fancy urinals and the mechanisms inside. Let's take this a step further, and go back to our societal roots: what about simply a hole that went down through the building and into the ground? Now we're saving money on water and on the fixtures.I call it "The in-house outhouse". It's going to be huge.
• Car wash: The company could hold a local car wash to raise money, with the employees of the company donating their weekend time to make it happen. To raise awareness of the event, all executive cars would be washed (for free) to start it off. It works for the cheerleading squad at the local high school; surely it can save the company, too.
  
• Cube compression: It's easy to come up with spreadsheets that show savings when you start dealing with real estate, because nobody really knows how much the company is spending on any of that. Come up with a plan to cut cube sizes in half, thus reducing overall worker square footage and the amount of real estate required by the company. Of course, the company won't be able to actually lease or sell that extra space in this down market, which is why you'll propose that until it's sold, that extra space will go into larger executive suites, including a bowling alley.

The observant reader will probably notice that many of these ideas draw money from the hard-working employees of the company itself. This is intentional, because the executives would love to figure out how to get some of that money back. If they can do that while also making money for the company, you're plan is safe. Or at least your plan will be attempted long enough to get you onto the fast track, and nobody will ever remember the complete mess that your plan made later on.

Remember: It's not about saving the company; it's about advancing your career.

Corporate Survival Guide: Keeping the Job

In an earlier diatribe, I covered getting the job. So now you're here: you passed the interview process, you got yourself an office, and you're busy scrabbling up the corporate ladder with every tooth, nail, and sharpened shoe heel available.

But hard times come to all companies, whether it's due to the state of the economy or just because the company doesn't have a clue how to avoid getting flattened like a frog on an interstate.

At times like these, when the company is asking everyone to pull together, you need to be looking out for yourself. When they tighten the corporate belt, you want to be on the inside of those company pants.

In fact, dire times might be the perfect time for you to climb further up that management chain. Sure, the company may be sinking, but the very top of it will be the last to slip under the waves.

So how do you persevere, much less triumph, when your company is hurting like hot sauce on a paper cut?

Here is what I call my Several Step Plan for when Companies are going Down the Toilet (SSPCDT).

Convenient Absence
Layoffs will come. They will be awful and horrible. And they will supposedly be a secret. Your Human Resources department thinks that it's clever and that nobody will know when the big day is coming, but everyone will. For one thing, they will book all of the conference rooms in advance and populate them with boxes of tissues and Tazers, just in case.
Make plans to be away that day. Move your office. Change your company phone extension. Switch nameplates with co-workers. You don't know that you're on the list, but make sure that if you are, they can't find you.

Consolidation
Some of your co-workers have now left the company, either willfully, involuntarily, or on a stretcher. There is now a depressing abundance of office space around you where there used to be people, or, as you should have thought of them, competitors for advancement.
Now is the time to consolidate your holdings. Life is a land grab, and it starts at work. Knock down your cube walls and expand into the neighboring cubes. Shift your growing cube slowly over to the window or closer to the boss's office. Try to occupy the entire area eventually. If you meet resistance in the form of people still occupying their offices, tell them that HR was looking for them and roll right through their cube in their absence.
When you're all done, there's no way that the boss can fail to notice you anymore, since you know occupy the whole area between his office and the elevator.

Friendly Conversation
With so many people missing from your department, your boss will be that much more available. They'll probably be lonely, as well. Make a point to stop by their office and chat, several times a day. Become a friend, or at least someone who acts like a friend.
This may take some effort, as you may not know anything about your boss yet. For one thing, you probably want to start every conversation with your name, since they may have ignored it so far. Also, you may need to stalk them at home to discover more about what they do and who they are so that you can casually bring it up in conversation when you walk into their office: "Hey! How's the morning treating you? How are the kids, ages 3, 5, and 8? See the game last night?" Note that mentioning last night's TV entertainment is perfect, because you know exactly what they watched and what happened in that show because you were watching it on the same set from outside their window.

Undermine
At the same time as you're getting more familiar with your boss, you might want to casually and frequently 'bump into' their boss. Elevators are reasonable places for this, although it's difficult to have a private conversation without pushing the other people out onto floors they didn't want to go to.
The best place for a private casual conversation is neighboring urinals in the restroom. This only works if both of you are men; otherwise, you'll have to improvise on that theme.
The point of these meetings is two-fold: you'll want to get to know the boss, or at least for them to know your name. But more importantly, you'll want to sow some seeds of doubt about your boss, leaving the impression that they'd be better off with you in charge. Here are some examples of these subtle exchanges:
"Hi, I don't know if you remember me. I'm Bob Kreenst, from Payroll. It's too bad about the situation there. My boss is doing a great job, just great. Given his limitations. We'd probably do much better with someone else leading the charge there. Like me."
"Hi, did you hear about Ken, the manager in Payroll? I think the pressure is really getting to him. He's holding it together pretty well, given what he's been through. But I've seen a crazy look in his eyes. All I want is the best for him. But if you want to replace him, I'm your guy."
The most important part of the entire exchange is to shake hands with them; it seals the deal and creates a personal bond. But wait until you're both finished at the urinal and have washed your hands.

Impress
The company didn't get itself into this state by actually knowing what it was doing. Now all of the execs are busy running from meeting to meeting trying to figure out what happened and how to change it before the entire thing implodes.
They're looking for new ideas.
This is your time. Just like the real battlefield, promotions on the Corporate Battlefield happen through attrition. All you need is to impress management with your visions.
The important thing is that your ideas don't have to work, or even to make sense. The company has already tried sensible plans that they understood, and they didn't pan out at all. At this point, they'll be desperate enough to latch onto anything. They'd trust a monkey, if he was dressed in a suit. This is where you come in.
Come up with a plan. You may want to get liquored up first, so that you can achieve the right combination of novelty, inspiration, and insanity that it will take.
Now the important part: Create a presentation. Anything makes sense if they see it in slide form.
Now, send in a teaser of the plan to management and ask for a meeting.
When the big day comes, get yourself amped up on a quadruple espresso and go knock them dead with your presentation. Or at least create small wounds.

Corporate Survival Guide: Getting the Job

Before we can become great warriors for the corporation, we must gird ourselves for battle. This means getting the right job with the right company. And to do that will take interviewing skills so powerful that the company not only wants to hire you; they would be afraid not to.

First impressions are the most important ones, the ones that make or break the deal. So you have to make sure that your first impression for the company leaves them quaking with respect, fear, and wonder. It's like a first date, but without making out. Unless you must to seal the deal.

Following are some important techniques that you can use the nail the job.

Dress

One of the most difficult problems we all face in today's Corporate Battlefield is how to dress for an interview. Dressing too casually gives the impression that you don't care about the job. Dressing too nice gives the impression that you don't have a clue about this particular corporate environment. So what should the Warrior do?

The best solution to this and, in fact, most problems you will face during your career is to do exactly what the people around you do. In this case, that means dressing like the people in the company. But it's not good enough to dress generically like random other people in the company: you should dress exactly like the people interviewing you.

Typically, you will get a list of people that you will be talking to for your interviews. If you don't get this beforehand, insist on it, claiming some allergy to certain names or whatever excuse you can come up with. Once you have these names, you must stalk the people on the list; watch them coming in and out of the building, taking note of what they are wearing.

Once you've compiled a list of the various outfits being worn by your interviewers, go buy those exact clothes. On the day of the interview, dress in layers, wearing all of the clothes in the proper order, so that between each interview, you merely need to peel off the outer layer to present yourself in an outfit that is tuned to the next person on the schedule.

Some important nuances to note:
- Sometimes the interview schedule will switch around at the last minute. If this happens to you, first see if you can get the original schedule back. If this is not possible, perhaps because one of your scheduled interviewers has malaria or is dead, then you'll have to improvise. Bring a lab coat to wear during the interview with the unknown person. This neutral approach will avoid all clothing issues and preserve the rest of your outfits for the people that they were tailored to impress.
- Some of your interviewers may be of a different sex. For example, you may not be used to wearing a dress like you saw your third interviewer wearing. This is not a problem - they will be all the more impressed that you happen to have their fashion taste even at the risk of societal awkwardness.

Start negotiations early

Typical salary negotiations start when the company finally admits that they want you. But this is far too late; you've already lost the upper hand at this point, and the negotiations will reflect this.

The true Corporate Warrior begins negotiations first thing, as soon as you walk into the company. Demand a pay package commensurate with what you know you are worth to them. Agree on terms before proceeding any further in the interview. After all, if they can't match your expectations, then the whole process is a waste of time.

Sometimes it's difficult to know what the right salary is. After all, you haven't had this exact job before, and you don't know how much the people at the company make. So it's usually safe to start with "Double your salary," to whomever you're meeting with first. This puts the numbers within an acceptable range, making it relative to the pay package of other company employees.

This brazen approach will convince them not only of your value, but also of your confidence and your ability to seal a deal.

Answering Interview Questions

One of the typical problems that arises in interviews is that you have to answer questions that you don't know the answer to.

Psychologists have been doing this for years, ever since Freud first said, "I don't know, what do you want to talk about?" This technique is now practiced by politicians everywhere. No matter what question is asked, they stick to their policy message: "Senator, do you know the time?" "The time is now, and always has been, and always will be, for my healthcare solution for all Americans."

In fact, the last time a politician answered a direct query was when President Taft answered the question, "Do you want another slice of pie?"

Inevitably, you will get questions in your interviews that you really haven't a clue how to answer. The trick is threefold, and is what I like to call the RTR method:
- Redirect
- Talk about something you know more about
- Remind them about some other question they asked that you actually did answer.

I'll give you an example:

interviewer: It says here on your resume that you're an expert in the Kroonglebaum Process. Can you tell me about the Three Tenets of that Methodology?

candidate: Kroonglebaum is an excellent process, and certainly one that I favor in the groups that I lead.
For example, I managed a team of over 90 people spread throughout over 100 Geo's to implement a solution for corporate goaling, and I was recognized by the executives at the company not only as having excellent leadership skills, but also dressing well under pressure.
By the way, I'd like to return to your earlier question about coffee as an example of my decisiveness; I trust that you were satisfied by my quick and confident assertion that I would like a cup of coffee. It's just another example of the type of action-oriented contributor that you'd be getting when you hire me.

Did you notice how cleverly we avoided the entire issue of the question, while at the same time giving interesting and crucial information about other aspects of our skills that we know far more about?

The important thing to note here is that it is far easier to develop skills of avoiding a straight answer than it is to actually learn any subject in particular. If you develop the first skill, you'll never need the second. As long as you can avoid talking about anything in particular, then you can also avoid having to know anything in particular.

Your Resume is a Pack of Lies

Another thing to notice about the previous item is that the reusme point about Kroonglebaum was obviously fabricated; our candidate hadn't a clue about it. But given the cleverness with which he deflected any questions about it, he didn't need to know anything. This is a skill to capitalize on: stuff your resume with all kinds of fiction: bullet points on skills you've never heard of, buzz words you made up, and accomplishments you couldn't possibly have achieved without another 75 years on the job.

This approach has multiple benefits, such as:
- Easy credit: None of us has anywhere near the experience that hiring companies expect of us, but that's no reason to stop us from making them think that we do. By listing it on the resume, you've staked a claim that you do know about it. Most of them won't know all of the stuff that you list either, so it's unlikely that you'll have to talk about most of it. When you do get a question, just make sure to skirt the issue appropriately and you're home free.
- Conversation: The goal of your interview is to stretch the conversation out and cover the time allotted. The worst thing you can ever do is to let the conversation die. So if you give them more talking points, then you are automatically building more conversation into the process. Don't make them work to figure out who you are; lay it out in black and white who you want them to think you are.

Ending the Interview

It's important to let the hiring company know who they are dealing with. In particular, you must keep the upper hand in the relationship. Interviews typically put the candidate at a disadvantage; the very concept that they get to make the decision about you is already a bad start.

But you can easily counter that and claim the home court advantage.

When the interviews are nearly over, check you watch pointedly and then exclaim that you're late for an important appointment and you must leave. Get up, shake their hand once, tell them that you will think about what they have said and get back to them, and let yourself out of the room.

If you do this quickly enough, you will so completely throw off the last interviewer that they will still be in the room, trying to figure out what just happened. Meanwhile, you can wander around the building, searching out a good place for your new office and stopping by the break room to pocket some free sugar and creamer packets. You may not need these, but it's an important psychological point that you have not been interviewing for free, but have now been compensated for your time.

If, by this time, they still haven't found you and escorted you out, consider finding an empty office and starting work. Roll those sleeves up, get some charts out of your bag, and look busy. The only difference between you now and you as an employee is the paycheck, and that will surely follow.

Corporate Survival Guide: Catch the Buzz

The truly authoritative leader speaks his own language, with words of power, suggestion, and multiple interpretations. In addition, these leaders don't have any time, or at least can't appear to have it, for idle chit-chat and complete thoughts or sentences: they've got to spit it out quickly.

This is the domain of catch-phrases, where a single word or phrase can mean entire paragraphs of gibberish.

It is critical that you, the corporate soldier, begin using these phrases soon, and fold them more and more into your conversations until finally you speak only in buzz. As you grow in experience, you will being to speak both more and less with each utterance.

For the beginning buzzer, it is sufficient to simply use phrases that others use as well. The best phrases would be those that you have heard your management chain use; this indicates to them a perceptive ear, an understanding of their dialect, and a willingness to suck up.

But as you get more comfortable with these speech patterns, including the ability to create entire paragraphs of meaningless jargon and a tone of authority in delivering nonsense, it is time for phase II: making up your own phrases.

The key to buzz phrases is a combination of action verbs and metaphors, which when said with the right emphasis can be applied to any situation. The metaphor need not make sense, nor does it need to actually apply to the situation; the importance is in saying the phrase and having it heard by awestruck co-workers as well as management.

You should make up your own phrases in general, at first by random word association late at night followed by memorization, but eventually on the fly as the situation demands. But here are some for consideration:

Parting shots in saying goodbye to someone:

• Flip it on the up side!
• Catch you before it falls

General wisdom to impart, during random silences in meetings:

• Head it off before it's off with your head
• Fat bristles
• Building pontoon bridges
• Broken solid
• We should fence-post it
• He's on the uptake
• Quicker than jello
• A gambler's winnings
• Green it and clean it!
  

Compliments (Note: use compliments judiciously. You want to be seen as the hero, so don't pass that piece of cake to someone else. Use them just enough to show what a great leader you are, generally for pathetically small things that can't get that other person promoted):

• Stratospheric thinking!

Now go start buzzing. Remember: on the corporate battlefield, it's not what you know, but what others think you know. and with buzz phrases, it's not what you say, but what they think you're saying.

Catch you on the update.

Corporate Survival Guide: Substance Secretion

A critical battlefield tactic is to know something that the enemy does not. It's crucial as an element of surprise, leverage in negotiations, and having a general feeling of superiority. This is just as true in corporate life: knowing things that other people don't can make you feared, promoted, and more attractive, in a secret-agent kind of way.

Of course, the trick with knowing secret things is actually finding them out. This can be a very difficult task, depending on where you fall in the pecking order. You may not actually be invited to meetings where people are discussing important things. Important people in the corporation may not know you as anything other than that person that keeps walking by their office nodding knowingly and saying hello while mis-pronouncing their name. And you don't actually know enough about the company or core business to even know what is important.

Fortunately, it is sufficient to just pretend that you know things. By definition, a secret is something which you don't tell people (although you can and should taunt them with it, do distinguish it from something that you just didn't happen to say). The difference between actually knowing something and pretending that you do is irrelevant. If the net result was that you didn't tell someone something, then the fact that you didn't know anything about it to begin with shouldn't matter. As long as that person thinks you did; that's the key.

You should begin honing your secret-keeping skills as soon as you enter the corporation. You want to become known as someone who knows things. You also want to be seen by the really important people as someone who can keep a secret.

Until such a time as you actually have any knowledge of anything interesting, which may never happen, you need to practice your secret-broadcasting skills, which I refer to as the "I have a secret!" strategy. Keeping fictional secrets is an entire portfolio of techniques, some of which I'll describe here:

Confidential documents
It is important for people to see you handling secret papers. Of course, one piece of paper looks like another from any distance, so you'll need to emphasize that the documents are terribly important through clever and subtle acting and props.
I suggest you buy several red folders at an office supply store, and a couple of larger red portfolio cases as well. Then affix and appropriate, large label to these objects, saying things like, "Confidential!," "Secret!," "Really Important Things!," "Don't Tell Anyone!," "Destroy After Reading!," "Never Reveal Contents, on Pain of Death!" Use as large a font as you can to make the labels readable from across the room. And try to avoid embarassing misspellings.
Now, the important part: Shuffle papers in and out of these folders frequently, moving them between the folders, or taking them out and reading them and putting them back, or else emptying them from the folder into the shredder. Be sure to stand up and walk around when you're doing this to make sure that you're seen. Whip your head back and forth as you do this, on the lookout for corporate spies.

Cryptic conversations
The key to keeping fictional secrets is never revealing them. But of course you have to have people know that you know something, so dropping hints is required. Have conversations with co-workers, or complete strangers in the company, which hint at something interesting but never reveal it.
"Hey, did you hear about the... Ah, never mind. Can't say."
"Are you privy to the...?"
"Did you see the Feinster memo? Unbelievable!"
Nonverbal conversations are sometimes just as good. When you pass someone in the hall, give them a knowing look and a nod, with maybe a secret smile and a wink. Try not to look like you're having a seizure.
Finally, one-way conversations can be fantastic for creating illusion. Dial your office phone from another phone (making sure you set your office phone ringer on the loudest ring). Now, answer the phone and proceed to have half of a top-secret conversation. Speak loudly and stand up if you can.
"Hello, this is Smithers."
...
"Yes, sir, I understand."
...
"Absolutely, you can trust me. Not a word."
Now, continue standing and looking around, making sounds like, "Whew!" and "Boy!" At this point, you try to catch someone's eye, and smile while shaking your head. Ideally, someone will ask you, "What was that about?" But this is not critical, as you can always say to the larger room, "I bet you're wondering what that was about, but I can't tell you because it's a Secret!"

Apparel
It is important to dress the part of a secret-keeper. Dark sunglasses and a low-brim hat, worn at all times inside and out, are mandatory. A trenchcoat is also helpful, and can be useful for transporting and exchanging the red confidential folders discussed above. Finally, buy some handcuffs and clip yourself to your briefcase. Be sure to not lose the key, as this makes for tricky and potentially messy bathroom experiencies.


Practice all of the above techniques every 2 minutes or so, to make sure that you get maximum benefit from minimum substance.

There are many more, of course, and I'd like to tell you about them, but I can't. They're secret.

Corporate Survival Guide: The Art of iculation

As explained in an earlier article, communication is the most important activity in the corporate battlefield, apart from constantly sucking up. Your ability to communicate clearly and effectively will determine how fast and high you will rise in the ranks as well as whether the waiter at lunch brings you what you thought you asked for.

Many people talk about communication skills. There are books on the subject, and videos, and seminars, and entire university majors and departments founded on it. But none of these sources covers the basic element that is so critical to the corporation: using big words. It is not good enough to "speak clearly." Instead, you want to "articulate effectively." After all, does anyone in a corporation ever "go pee?" Hardly. Instead, people "will return momentarily," probably with moist hands and suspect spots on their slacks.

You will often have to resort to big words and phrases that others use, but ideally you will invent unique words and phrases of your own. You will know that you have been successful when you hear these same words and phrases repeated by others. They are not doing it out of respect or because it's the best choice of words in a situation, but rather because they didn't understand what you said and thought they should. This is exactly the result you are aiming for. If people understand you then they will also understand how little you know. But if you can confuse them with words and get them to just believe you because it's easier than admitting they have no idea what you're talking about, you win. This is the general strategy of CEOs and politicians the world over.

Because this skill is so important, I'd like to spend this article reviewing some new words that you can use. At the same time, you should see if you can try to invent words of your own:

Rationalitation: This could mean an active form of rationalization, or trying to actively justify something. This is actually a common occurrence in management circles today, with most meetings consisting entirely of fervent rationalitation as everyone tries to blame everyone else in the room and then, in an attempt to compromise and break for lunch, blame groups and people not present at the meeting.
Usage: "It seems that some people here [look around the meeting room pointedly at this point] engage in a policy of rationalitation, while others, like me, enjoy a fluid energizing of pursuance."

Cooperzing: This word could be used to describe the effort of getting partners to work with you. Or converting slums to condos.
Usage: "I'm in the process of cooperizing both our partners and those who work with us."

Tentinaciousness: This word imparts a state of being actively tenuous.
Usage: "I encouraged my group to proactively pursue an attitude of prudent tentinaciousness."

Fractionaligurgitation: This word could mean something about an adverse reaction to market segmenting. Or a fourth-grader's reaction to a math worksheet.
Usage: "As you can visualize on the present slide, market factors are causing widespread fractionaligurgitation in our Eurpoean market."

FRTD: While words are important, acronyms are sometimes even better. They combine the advantages of an incomprehensible word with a quick delivery. And nobody will ever call you on an acronym, because they assume that it's something they should know and they don't want to call attention to their knowledge gap. Generally aim for four-letter acronyms to avoid mistakenly choosing an existing three-letter acronym. Also, that extra letter will impress your audience all the more.
Usage: "Did you see the FRTD report? Unbelievable numbers!"

Remember, success in business is not based on what you know, or whether you know more than the other guy, but rather on the fear by that guy that you know more. Communication is a weapon in the war of words. The bigger and more confusing that weapon is, the more afraid your foe will be.

Corporate Survival Guide: CPUser

As a Soldier of Bureaucracy, it is important for you to have a computer system commensurate with your position of importance. It doesn't matter what you use it for, but it needs to be as large and powerful as possible so that everyone that sees it knows how important you must be.

Chances are good that the only thing you'll need a computer for will be writing presentation slides for meetings nobody attends, surfing the corporate benefits site, and watching hilarious cat videos on YouTube. Nevertheless, you need people to be awestruck with the size of your system.
Ideally, you will have a laptop. This allows your importance to travel with you. You can take your awesome system to every meeting, meal, and bathroom break, enabling you to impress more people in the company in this way. A suitable laptop will be one that is roughly the size of a small yacht. You may need a small team of Sherpas to carry it around the building for you, but this will impress the masses even more.

Regardless of whether you have a laptop or desktop system (or, even better, both), you will need a computer display in your cube. It is not good enough to have a monitor just large enough to show an application or two. You need to be able to run at least ten applications simultaneously, all completely visible at once. How else could you see whether anyone has sent you a critical meeting notice or forwarded jokes to your inbox at the same time as you're watching another "America's Funniest Dog Videos" episode and doing a refresh on your FaceBook site to see if you have any friends yet? For this reason, I suggest you forego a typical computer monitor and instead request a large-screen television, preferably 60" or larger. This display will dominate, or even overrun, your desk space, proving to everyone around you just how busy you must be.

To ensure proper operation of your system, you may want to have the IT department construct raised flooring in your cube for the extra cabling or cooling ducts that could be required. You won't ever need these capabilities, but you want people to think you might. Also, that extra few inches boost will raise you above your peers and give you the ability to see whether your bosses are in their offices, probably waiting anxiously for a visit from you and your amazing laptop.

Corporate Survival Guide: Slide Ruler

If corporate life is a war, then conferences are the critical skirmishes, turf wars that, one by one, capture the land parcels and postage-stamp lawns that eventually add up to a captured subdivision. These battles not only help lay the groundwork for the overall conflict, they also serve as tests of your will and help you hone your skirmishing skills.

The Corporate Warrior must attend conferences in their chosen field at least one a year, but ideally many more. The successful soldier will attend at least a conference per month, more if possible. If you occasionally forget what your family looks like and start referring to the hotel front desk person as "Hon," you'll know that you're reaching the right balance in your life.

Attending conferences is one thing, but knowing how to conduct yourself to achieve your Maximum Importance Factor is another thing entirely. This is why I've written up the terribly important tips below.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to cover the gamut of effective conference attendance behavior, which includes such items as cutting to the front of the toilet line, sleeping through the keynotes, and selling the conference lunches to the homeless. So I'll just focus on one aspect of conferences here, albeit the most important one for a soldier of the bureaucracy:

Speaking at a Conference

Attending a conference is important; the opportunity to schmooze while eating a box lunch with strangers in a cavernous, damp hall is invaluable. But if at all possible, you should be a speaker at conferences. This is where the Big Importance is. Not only can you blow it out of proportion on your resume and make it sound like you presented "I Have a Dream 2," but you get an entire hour on stage to pontificate to others, an opportunity that you haven't had since your ex-wife took off.

Applying as a speaker for conferences turns out to be a simple task; you just need to lie. Acceptance of speakers is based on their session proposal. Whatever the conference is about, think about one of the hard, unsolved problems in the space that the conference is about and submit a talk abstract that claims a new and complete solution for that problem. Submit an outline for the presentation like this:

1. Title: "At Last, a Solution to (some important problem)"
2. Introduction
3. Background: a history of the problem
4. Context: where we are now with respect to the problem
5. Solution: how I've solved it and you can too
6. Future work
7. Conclusion

Once you are accepted, write your slides about whatever you want. The people that accepted your talk won't look at your slides and probably won't even be at the conference, so contents of your slides are irrelevant.

Speaking Style

You want to be a speaker they remember, not one of the nameless throng of presenters at the conference. Wars are won by generals, not by committees, and the Corporate Battlefield is taken by the individual, not by the mob.

Most regular speakers speak authoritatively and articulately, handily balancing dense content with an easy speaking style. There are so many of these 'good speakers' out there that audiences are bored of this approach and will tune you out if you go this route. You want to stand out in their minds, to capture their imagination as well as their attention. To do this, you need to be different.

It doesn't matter how you do this, but pick particular mannerisms that will distinguish you from the rabble. Some possibilities include a pronounced limp or even an amputation, a strong stutter, a very slow drawl, or constant shouting. Any of these will make the audience sit up and pay attention. Using all of them would astonish them. But don't stop there; think about what you could do to personalize the experience. Can you dribble a basketball during the whole presentation? Or just dribble without the ball. What about firing off a shotgun to emphasize particular bullet points? Or whispering quietly without the microphone, so that the audience must listen closely. Use your imagination - and capture that of your audience.

Start with a Joke

A good presentation imparts information. A great one entertains. Strive for greatness and begin your presentations with a joke:

"Good afternoon. Or is it? We wouldn't know because we've been inside here all day! Ha, ha!" [smile]

This bit of levity does two things. First, it makes you one of them, with the important distinction that you're the one on stage with the microphone. It also adds a fantastic bit of humor to break the ice and make everyone look forward to the rest of your presentation. It is the last joke you will make, of course; you don't want to distract from the important material coming up. But your audience will hold out hope that you will crack another one as funny as the first, and will stick around through a lot of tedious slides just in case.

Presentation Contents

The most important part of your presentation is what's in your slides. This is what the conference attendees will take home with them on that CD that they never take out of the sleeve. This is what you'll be speaking to when you're on stage. And this is what you can tell your boss that you're working on feverishly for several weeks prior to the conference while you're actually just watching YouTube videos.

The most important slide is, of course, the title slide. It is the slide that must capture the attention of the people trying to sleep in the room, or that are walking by the room in an attempt to ditch the conference and hit a bar. But most importantly, it has your name on it. You must ensure that your name is huge on the slide. It might even be worth learning some of the fancy animation tricks in the presentation program to make your name blink and glow.

The second most important slide is one that is in the template that the conference organizers supplied to you: "Speaker's Qualifications." This is the slide where you are supposed to tell the audience why you're more qualified to be up there on stage than they are.

This is your moment, your opportunity to shine. When was the last time that someone other than the person in the mirror asked you to tell them how important you are?

Some of the best presentations I have seen have spent the entire time on this single slide. It is where you give the audience a good idea of Who You Are, potentially covering a difficult but significant birth, prestigious schooling, awards received in little league and debate teams, and tragic tales of the injustices of college rejection letters. But all of this is just the foundation for the real meat of the issue: your career. You should go over the details of the jobs you've held, the positions of responsibility you've held (or wanted to hold; the crowd does not know you and won't be able to spot the lies), the problems you've solved, the committees you've been on, the important meetings that you were almost invited to, and the executives you've glimpsed in the lunchroom. You should go over your goals and aspirations, talk about the people you'd like to meet some day, the types of meetings you'd like to chair, and the dress code you would enforce if you owned a company.

Ideally, you will continue this tirade until the end of your session. If you run out of things to say about yourself (note: if this is the case, you need more practice), say that you would have liked to finish the slides and have time for Q&A, but that you must vacate the stage so that the next speaker can get ready for their session. Then pack up and run out of the room before anyone can catch you and ask about your presentation.

And So, in Conclusion

Remember, in corporate war, as in life, presentation is everything. And conference presentation is even more.