Does a Ceo Sh*T in the Toilet?

By Robert W. Draeger

Making the transition from student to an ambitious, Im-going-succeed-at-going-to-the-executive-suite manager is difficult because the inherent nature of corporations. Organizations demand we sub-optimize our performance in our race to the top so the company can achieve it goals. The author who has climbed several major and many minor company pyramids shares over 200 coaching topics that explain how to succeed in what can be a crappy environment. More importantly, the mentoring tips put in plain words how to keep your integrity in your climb to the top of a corporate structure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462000258

Robert W. Draeger

Robert W. Draeger has spent his professional life teaching organizations new tools and ways of thinking so they can improve their chances to survive and prosper. Bob has collected organizational insights while working for multiple companies in multiple industries. These have included: a timber company, a public transportation agency, an electronics firm, multiple software companies, engineering & construction companies, an operations & maintenance division of a Fortune 500 company, an industrial manufacturing firm, a government services firm and consulting. Over the years, Bob has collected organizational insights while holding jobs in market research, software licensing, pricing, marketing management, strategic planning, sales management, general management, and consulting. Bob has a BS degree from the University of Oregon and a MBA from Portland State University. Bob has coauthored Managing The Silent Killer Of Businesses: How to Transition A Business Successfully Across Its Lifecycle.

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Contents

Preface

Who Should Read This Book

How This Book Is Organized

Apologia

Dedication

Always Keep Your Humor Dry

Anthropology 302: Surviving In Primitive Cultures

Are You Sure Team Isn’t Spelled With An I?

Arrogance Of High Tech

Balancing $35 And I Will Against Until Death Do Us Part

Because I Need The Cash, That’s Why

Beyond Urinate, To Urinine, To Perhaps, Urinten

Big Deal — Little Deal

Blowfish Defense

Bobbin’ For French Fries

Book A Ticket On The Radical Underground

Business Chemistry

Business Mantra

Campin’ Down By The Ol’ Revenue Stream

Can The Lunatics Run The Asylum?

Cash! Cash! Cash! All I Ever Get To Eat Is Cash!

CEO Is An Ancient Acronym Meaning Please Lie To Me

Cereal Killers

Chicken-Manure Management

Coach, Should I Go Onto The Field Wearing My Helmet?

Coloring Within The Lines

Consensus Is Not A Synonym For Communism

Consultant du Jour

Corporate Traps Can Hurt, So Be Careful About Putting Your Foot In Your Mouth

Creative Cat Skinning

Custard’s Last Stand

Dealing With An Unpleasant Task

Deciding Whether To Make The Decision To Decide

Democracy In Corporations

Depart Mental Humor

Did You Know You Were Spelling Bob Backwards?

Do They Make These Bullets In Gold And Platinum?

Does A CEO Shit In The Toilet?

Don’t Cheetah Your Future: Lose The Fangs

Don’t Choose Jail Bait

Don’t Shed On Me

Don’t Speed Up The Darwinian Selection Process

Drug Testing Your Expectations To Determine If They Are Too High

Engineering Did It In The Accounting Department With A Cost Overrun

‘Ere’s To Plans

Exceeding Expectations And Other Fairy Tales

Files Are Rank

Firin’ The Whole

Fixing The Problem

Four Laws Of Marriage And Most Other Things

Friends Come And Go, But Enemies Accumulate

Frog Walkin’

Get ‘em Drunk And …

Getting Screwed On Your Honeymoon

Go Punch Out A Coke Machine. You’ll Feel Better

Go Ugly Early

Go Where You Want To Go,

Do What You Wanna Do

Great Atomic Balls of Fire

Great Wines And High-Potential People Just Get Better With Age

Guidance From Above

Had A Good Fantasy Lately?

Handicapped By Too Many IQ Points?

Have You Ever Had A Pet That Died Violently?

Having Your Assertion Sorely Tested

Headhunters: Would You Buy A Used Executive From This Man?

Home On The Emotional Range

Honesty As A Best Policy

How Low Can Your Standards Go?

How Many Letters Are In The Word Jail?

How To Repair A Meeting

How Would You Know If A Cat Has Alzheimer?

I Always Use The Right Tool For The Right Job

I Don’t Mean To Pry, But …

I Felt The Wool Being Pulled Over My …

I Got A Problem. Can You Relate?

I Want To Be In Sales Because I Like People!

I Wonder What The Poor People Are Doing?

I’ll Do It, If You Let Me Get Away With It

I’m Sorry, But It Was Your Rash

Imagine: Selling Into The Sunset

Imagine: You’re Too Drunk

In This Corner, Fighting For Market Research

Individual Policy

Innocents Abroad Or Maybe Innocents A Guy

Is It Time To Change The Time?

Is My Glass A Third Full Or Two-Thirds Empty?

Is My Manager Half Smart Or Half Stupid?

It’s Not Polite To Ask Someone To Commit Suicide

It’s The Company, Stupid!

It’s Your Asphalt

I’ve Never Seen Him Hit A Vice President While Drunk

Keep It Wrinkled

Keeping The Fleas After You Get Rid Of The Dog

Let’s Go Hawg Racin’!

Let’s Play Insurance Company

Let’s Play Pin the Accountability On The Executive

Let’s Redesign The Big Red Button And See What Happens

Life Is Shitake, Then You …

Looking Up A Dead Dog’s Ass

Management — Doggy-Style

Management — Doggy-Style — Too

Management Ideas On Trampolines

Managing Idiots

Managing Indus Mess

Maybe Some Salty Pretzels Will Work

Maybe We’ll Settle For A Managerial Collection

Meetings — It’s What We Do — Then We Go And Wash Our Hands

Middle Management Vice

Monkeying With The Reward System

Motivating A Piñata By Beating It With A Stick Until It Produces

Mushroom School Of Management

Napoleon Jerked His …

Never Go To Bed With Anyone Crazier Than Yourself

Never Tell van Gogh How To Paint

Never Try To Send The Mules To The Glue Factory

Never Try To Work A Miracle Backwards

Nietzsche Is Pietzsche

No Joke. Just Speak The Unspeakable

No Management

Now That You Have Had Great Thoughts, Go Empty The Garbage

Of Course It’s Personal, It’s Business

Oh, To Be Bisexual!

OK, Atlas: Shrug This One Off

OK: I’ll Predict That Something Will Happen

OK: Pay Me Today And Pay Me Again Tomorrow

One Word: Consultants

Organizational Charts Are Like Bellybuttons

Ownership Continuum

Ownership — Own, Be Owned Or Die

Park It!

Paying The Executive, But Only If They Can Pipe

Penobscot, You Say?

Period, Paragraph

Pick What You Want To Be: A Mountain-man, A Pioneer Or A Settler

Please, Not More Of The Same

Plus Or Minus The Square Root Of A Brick

Price Of Divergent Thinking

Perfect Company

Profiting From A Misunderstanding

Psychic Income

Pull The Plug, I’m Done

Pushing A Dead Buick With Four Flat Tires

Put That In Your Pearl Harbor File

Results, Not Excuses

Right-Hand-Man, Lefty

Rumors Other Than Those By Fleetwood Mac

Scaling The Strawberry Shortcake

Selling Your Way To The Top

Send In The Managers: Performing In A Three-Ring Company

Sequence Is Important

Sign Of The Times

Six Stigma

Size Matters

Smokin’ Out The Profits

Soaring Salespeople

Souper Frog!

Speaking Glocally

Speaking Of The Elevator In The Sears Tower

Stall, Spin, Crash, Burn

Step Into My Conversation Pit

Stoved-Up But With A Fire In The Old Potbelly

Stump ‘em, Don’t Tree ‘em

Stupid Strategy Tricks

Success Is Subtle

Take A Stab At It

Take This Offer And … Return To Sender

Take Two Brownies And Call Me In The Morning

Technology Gone Bad

Telling The Tale

Terminal Stupidity Starts By Breaking The Rules Unnecessarily

Testing Your Alignment

Thank You, Sir! May I Have Another?

That’s Not What I Said

The Bad News Is That It’s The Dog’s Dinner

The Bad News Too

The Blind Leading The Nude

The Causal Manager

The Day Stealth Marketing Bombed

The Golden Boot

The Ultimate Hot Flash

There Ain’t No Bail Money In The Budget

There Are No Bells

Think Small, Grow Big

This Ain’t What I Was Taught In School

Three-D Vision

Throw ‘em In The Pool!

Time Out! Go To Your Cubicle!

To All The Jobs I’ve Left Behind

Too Much Understanding

Turning A Misdemeanor Into A Felony

Ug-Lee

Understanding Business Compared To The Business

Up The River Styx Without A Paddle

Vacillating Between Child-Like And Childish Behavior

Voted Off

Walkabout

We All Can’t Be Superstars, But We Can All Be Prosperous

What Happened To My Hole?

Whatever Happened To Motherhood?

What’s The Probability Of An Employee Becoming An Existentialist?

When A Frog And A Princess Kiss, Do They French Kiss?

When A Superstar Fades

When Are They Going To Get Theirs?

When Superstars Nova

Why Not? We’re Probably Dead Anyhow

Winning DNA

Work Hard And You Will Have Worked Hard

Wrap A Few More Words Around It

Write Quickly, Edit Slowly

Write Stuff

You Deserve A Brick Today

You Gotta Know When To Show Up And When To Leave

You’ll Never Find A Luggage Rack On A Hearse

Preface

This book is not for those who merely want to survive in the crappy environment of Corporate America, but to for those who want to climb the slippery slope to the top of the pile in their company. If you have chosen to climb the corporate structure and as the hill continues to grow higher as the muck rains down, you will find yourself asking the question, Does a CEO Sh*t in the Toilet?

No one likes being told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. That’s right! No one. Yet as we transition from being a student into the job world, we encounter an environment where our efforts are usually sub-optimized as our company attempts to achieve it goals by telling us what to do, when to do it and how to get the project done. Does a CEO Sh*t in the Toilet? contains insights on how to succeed as the crap continues to rain down upon us as managers up—and—down the organization determine our priorities, timelines, resources and the methodologies for getting the tasks completed.

In the good old days this book wouldn’t have been needed. People commonly worked for only one company, in one industry, for their entire career. Companies had stable, proven processes for integrating people into the firm and assisting them throughout their careers. Companies with these processes and cultures are now as rare as doctors who make house calls.

Coaching and mentoring of employees in the traditional sense of building a long-term relationship where junior employees are taught the tricks to succeed died over a decade ago. Now, companies brag about their mentoring programs. What this usually means, is that an over-worked senior manager is told, You are accountable for Joe Bagofdonuts. Now, go make him successful. These modern mentoring programs have all the warmth of a one-night-stand compared to a long-term successful marriage. With employee turnover approaching 25 percent per year, building long-term relationships in a stable environment where high potential people can get the coaching and mentoring they need is a thing of the past.

Does a CEO Sh*t in the Toilet? shares the insights and lessons taught to the author by people who have been successful in the turbulent world of Corporate America.

Think of Does a CEO Sh*t in the Toilet? as hundreds of coaching and mentoring tips that will minimize the probabilities that you will step in organizational manure or have unnecessary crap land on you from on high.

And for those of you that haven’t already guessed the answer posed by the title of the book, Yes CEOs do shit in the toilet.

Who Should Read This Book

Anyone who is early in his or her career and is serious about moving into middle and senior management in mid-sized to large companies

Anyone who wants to know what it is like to live and work inside public and private companies.

Anyone who takes their job very seriously, but finds it difficult to take themselves very seriously.

Senior executives who want to enjoy the trials and tribulations of a fellow traveler.

Professors and government officials who have never known what it is like to climb the corporate structure in the private sector.

Really, anyone with the purchase price should buy this book.

How This Book Is Organized

The hundreds of topics in this book are presented in alphabetical order.

Besides giving me an opportunity to sing The Alphabet Song, alphabetizing is a great way to organize complex nuggets of information where the relationships between the topics are extremely complex.

The alphabetical approach also has the added benefit of presenting the thoughts and observations in the same way I usually present them, that is, in random order.

Apologia

It has been said to copy from one is plagiarism, but to copy from many is research.

Most of the thoughts contained in this book are lessons I have learned from my many mentors, coaches, friends, colleagues and political enemies. In their sharing, they frequently did not cite chapter and verse where they learned the lesson that they were imparting to me. The information or concept was new to me and I have incorporated them into my belief set and management style. I have attempted to share these nuggets in my own words with my own wit and charm.

If I have inadvertently taken without giving credit and offended anyone, please accept my humble apology.

Dedication

To my wife, Sue;

To my parents, Walt and Prudy; and

To everyone else who has helped make me what I am today.

Always Keep Your Humor Dry

While it’s not a prerequisite for success, I have found the overwhelming majority of successful people have a wonderful sense of humor. They rarely take themselves seriously, but they always take their job very seriously.

There are two reasons why successful people have a sense of humor. First, it helps them relieve the pressure and think more clearly during stressful situations. Top performers, when under stress, flip from an intense focus on the problem at hand to a humorous remark or observation then flop back to focusing on the problem. The ability to interweave humor with intense focusing during times of stress allows them to survive and find optimal solutions.

Second, most humor is based on divergent thinking or at least thinking, outside-of-the-box. The ability to look at the world from a ridiculous perspective helps in solving tough and complex problems by playing with potential solutions from unique perspectives.

I personally would like to excel at out-of-the-box thinking, if I could just figure out what a box is. Okay, I’m trying to keep my humor dry, but all I can manage is to get it up to the juvenile level.

Anthropology 302: Surviving In Primitive Cultures

Taking a new job in a new company, and especially if it’s in an industry that is new to you, requires all the survival skills of an anthropologist going into the wilds of Borneo. The first step is to develop a friendship with someone who has been with the company and in the industry for a long time. They will be able to explain the curious behavior