Rishi Piparaiya - Job Be Damned: Work Less. Career Success.

JOB
BE
DAMNED

Work less. Career Success.

RISHI
PIPARAIYA

This is for you, Dad

CONTENTS

Y ou are an exceptional professional; something tells me that you are. The sharpest knife in the organizational toolbox, you are smarter than others and much more hardworking. The strongest rung of the corporate ladder, you are conscientious and focus on business priorities. As the fizziest can in the company canteen, you care deeply about self-development, which explains your intent stare at this wordy page in an age of listicles, slideshows and thirty-second videos.

But somethings not quite right. Despite all your skills and capabilities, you somehow seem to be trailing behind all the losers around you. You painstakingly did all the hard work, but your boss swooped in and took the credit. No one deserved that promotion more than you, but the politician in the next cubicle somehow swung it in his favour. You were about to get that coveted posting, but it was mercilessly snatched away purely because of bad luck. However, you still maintain your faith that the universe recognizes your potential and its only a matter of time before your organization acknowledges your talent.

Let me step in here with my sharp stylus and burst your bubble: Its not going to happen. You are, what I term, an amateur professional. You are merely one amongst hundreds of millions of people, festering in a corporate world that is filled with average professionals. Take a walk around your office, peer into all the cubicles and observe those robots, mindlessly staring at computer screens oblivious to your presence. Grab a morning coffee, stand at any bus stop, taxi stand or train station and witness the suited rats scurrying with their laptop bags. Look everywhere around youeveryone is average. Average professionals in average jobs with average companies in average industries doing average work for average pay leading to average bonuses that will be spent on average holidays. And by swimming in the same salty sea of mediocrity, you are automatically average as well.

In the true spirit of capitalism, self-styled management gurus, theoretical business school professors and inept consultants have sprung up to exploit your delusions. They state that you are inherently exceptional but simply need to refocus your brilliance by following some suspect success principles. You read their books to learn the habits of extremely effective people, how to make friends and sway people, how to destroy all the rules, survive the first ninety days, wear a bunch of thinking hats, work few-hour workweeks and become a single minute manager. You try to understand how corporations are re-engineered, how companies go from good to great, are built to last, how blue ocean strategies are developed, how to compete for the future and cross the chasm. You marvel at case studies and biographies of high achievers and convince yourself that you are also just one good idea away from fame and fortune.

And you keep the faith that one day you will make a difference.

But millions of people are absorbing that hogwash and still running in circles. Despite all the reading that is done globally, the top ten individuals have more wealth than the bottom half of the worlds population. The Fortune 500 companies employ over twenty-five million people, but only 500 make it as CEOs. And that stack of books in your library notwithstanding, you still report to a dunderhead of a boss, whose idea of compelling non-fiction is his daily horoscope.

Reading all that gobbledygook will get you nowhere. On the other hand, Job Be Damned is just the page-turner to turn the page on your career. It recognizes that the path to excellence is crowded, imaginary and pointless. Its goal is far more achievableit appreciates that you are amongst average people and focuses on making you the best average professional that you can be. There is no aim for the moon, and youll at least land among the stars bullshit happening herewe are aiming squarely for the treetop, and we will get there. And we will do this without any management jargon or mumbo-jumbojust practical instruction on how to sparkle through the indefinite dull existence that all professionals live through.

Starting from exaggerating your CV, fluffing your interview, elbowing through group discussions, lowballing performance expectations and brown-nosing your boss, we will ensure that the foundations of your career are rock solid. Work is a perpetual cycle of attending meetings, procrastinating and covering your ass, and by the end of this section, you will master this holy trinity. We will then work on the critical corporate skills of making confusing conversation, writing befuddling emails, delivering perplexing presentations and navigating the toughest of business reviews. Your perception is the most important thing that you will manage in your career, and we will develop strategies to make you look awesome, your colleagues seem bad, and everything else appear opaque.

By now, you will have a renewed energy towards your spectacularly unexciting job, and we will navigate the innocuous pitfalls that befall most peoplebirthday celebrations, off-sites, group photographs, town halls and other career minefields. Next, senior leaders will learn how to manipulate employees, employees will learn how to manipulate appraisals, and aspiring consultants will learn how to manipulate everyone. Finally, well understand how you can maximize the unlikely event of transitioning to a better job or the more probable eventuality of getting unceremoniously sacked.

Whether you are an apprehensive fresher considering your first job, a valiant middle manager staving off the wolves around you or a burned out senior leader who wakes up each morning wishing that he were doing anything else, you will find relevance in this book. Because all this while you have been receiving mediocre advice on how to be really good, but for the first time heres practical wisdom on how to be really good at being mediocre. This is what professional professionals like your bosses and colleagues have known and implemented all along. And now you can also be a member of the corporate illuminati.

Happy reading and may your job be damned.

S tarting from the job search and ending at ones invariable termination, I have attempted to cover all the important aspects of corporate life that a typical professional might encounter. The ideas in this book, while written primarily in the backdrop of large multinational work environments, are fairly universal and applicable to all kinds of organizations.

Some of the notions only apply to some employees, depending on their career stage. These sections have been identified, basis the group of employees they are most relevant to, with the below icons.

Early Careers

Middle Management

Senior Leadership

I have occasionally included real-world examples of other average companies, professionals and events so that you can revel in the mediocrity of others. Titled Feel Good Anecdotes, I hope youll find the failures of others motivating.