Tips from The Art of Office War
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Too lazy to buy The Art of Office War? Or maybe the credit crunch crunched your credit card?
No worry, just read the tips:
Tip 1 – The Office: Impressions and Reality
Tip 2 – The Deal: Offices & Knowledge Warriors
Tip 3 – Understanding the Knowledge Terrain
Tip 4 – Who Are Your Colleagues
Tip 5 – Communication – What’s Going On?
Why The Art of Office War?
Management theories from academics aimed at theoretical managers in free enterprise have been hit and miss: Who can really answer what is Emotional Intelligence? At the other extreme, basic analysis bundled into a cute title like Who Moved My Cheese or the 1-Minute Manager, fail to address the more personal issue of individual employees.
So I wrote a book that might not be condoned by Human Resources, but would be relevant to all office workers. The Art of Office War fuses satire with poignancy to reach beyond the scope of academics into the base reality for knowledge workers, questioning and answering what they really want.
I confess, I am a recovering serial temp who has worked at Goldman Sachs, American Express and the Australian Graduate School of Management. I saw that in practise and in theory, corporate and academic employee protocol is written by people who are not on the ground; they’re usually over educated and smart enough to have avoided the hard work and plainly earn a wage by telling others what to do. From this observation I began to theorise, and I started by looking at office workers (knowledge workers) and the terrain they have to play on; not the abstracts, but the reality; money, respect and ego.
So is The Art of Office War saying what couldn’t have been said before?
I say, “Yes.”
When it comes to work, at the high-brow end are heavy books – yes they’re going to bust your brain and you’d have to get paid to read them. At the low-brow end, the contemptuous bookshelf, are the anecdotes and comedy of office life.
I’ve aimed for the middle, and so as not to bore you, I’ve created something hilarious.
Remember, the office is where you make or break it, it’s a competitive environment and the stakes are high, but conflict is sugar coated in politeness. The defining points in your career will be when you’re in a conflict, and because the product of the office is knowledge, it’ll be your idea verses someone else, and the prize isn’t just a promotion, a pay rise or peer approval, think of confidence, self-respect and that feeling that for one day you actually did something out of the banal normal. And, you have to behave yourself at the same time. The world doesn’t get simpler, it gets more complicated, and in work, you have to evolve to keep up.
