Discard the elephant -- The art of managing your boss: The art of managing your boss

Author: Stanley Bing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-05-01
Features: This is a book about what "You can't choose your boss." A former supervisor once told me this highly philosophical statement. The idea is somewhat disheartening, but it's true. However, we can seek some emotional resonance from our different positions within the same company. Since this "unselectable" supervisor disappeared from my view and spent the rest of his life with golf, I have repeatedly reflected on the words he spoke. The more I think about it, the more I believe he was right. If we compare the company we work for to a "tropical rainforest," we can imagine ourselves and our colleagues as various animals living within it. Elephants are the largest land animals in the world, so we can naturally equate our superiors at work with "elephants" in our minds. Elephants are strong and powerful creatures with incredible energy and memory, and they also possess their own earned wisdom and moral authority. We interact with them day in and day out, drawn to, led by, managed by, and driven by them, but we can't help but think: Get rid of the elephant!