How to Run Your Monkey Business

By Tim Vick

Follow the story of Vick Tim, prof. De Dambestis and Klunk the monkey business consultant in the office of the most convoluted start-up business ever.
The fun starts where good business fails.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326144067

Book preview

Epilogue

Prologue

This is the tragicomic story of how a year's work was not meant to be.

This is a story about a start-up business, about a boss and an employee, about a project funding company, and especially about the relationships that occur between them.

It’s a story like so many others and it’s therefore possible that someone would find it familiar if they have been part of a business and, at some point, become victims of its processes.

No matter how big or small the working place, there will always be room for some odd office situations to happen. Those silly moments we recall and laugh about afterwards with our friends, and a glass of wine.

The setting for the story is a fictional start-up business where a stuck-up boss with great entrepreneurial aspirations plays opposite a frustrated and disoriented employee, the two of them surrounded by a disproportionate level of confusion for such a small working environment.

A microcosm, where for one reason or another a professional relationship resembles a cold war, the most elementary of operations becomes a jigsaw puzzle, and communication flow is naturally encrypted.

Our story unfolds through Tim Vick’s eyes and words: he has been recruited to fill a vacancy as sales and marketing manager, but no matter how hard he tries the project he embraces is on the road to failure.

Tim faces a disastrous year, professionally devastating, lacking significant results and marked by a troubled relationship with his boss, a continuous confrontation that progressively shifted into a one-way conflict.

Perhaps this story will offer you food for thought about how an expensive entrepreneurial project can so easily veer towards monkey business, with a good share of funny anecdotes, if managed by the wrong hands.

If you have ever been involved in a project of this kind, then you might find the anecdotes slightly less amusing and the occasional laughter would then be followed by a bitter aftertaste.

At various points, this story deals with the subject of business organisation and in particular human resources and competence management.

In the company Tim Vick works for (hoping you have never worked or will work for it), the internal organisation is convoluted to an unimaginable extent and ruled by improvised and volatile logic, miles away from any correct functional procedures or, even worse, from making any sense.

Head of this rickety wannabe-business is the key character of the story: De Dambestis, a pompous standoffish university professor, clueless about how to run a business.

A total incompetent, someone so evidently lacking the skills necessary to do the job: a fish out of water, with the aggravating circumstance of thinking himself an amphibian.

Hasn’t it happened to all of us at least once in our life, to feel that a friend, a colleague or even our boss was unfit for the job he was trying to tackle?

I, for instance, am completely incompetent as a car mechanic, and that’s sufficient reason for me to seek repairs from someone who can easily distinguish the carburettor from the steering wheel.

Not everyone agrees with my opinion, and refuses to apply the same logic: hence, the company and the story I am writing, my personal contribution on how not to run your business if you don’t want to end up running a monkey business.

On a lesser note, this story aims to portray the competitive software market, where start-up businesses have to overcome a million and one difficulties to emerge in a time of world economic crisis.

A scenario in which it becomes even sadder to think how sometimes a few lucky ones manage to find the funds they need for business, only to misuse them in crooked delirious ways.

My point being: sad to say, but maybe still fun to read.

Note: a project initially started in an academic environment, then developed and promoted with private funding, is often referred to as a spin-off business instead of a start-up business.

I decided to stick to the word start-up as I thought that both start and up were wrong in this case, they ended up being perfect: I liked the contrast between such a dynamic and quick concept of something aiming very high, and with this start-up business that develops in the opposite direction.

Grab your steering wheel now and… Let’s start!

Ahem: that’s the carburettor.

1. Cast

Daughter the start-up business, and protagonist of this story; a spin-off project of Mount University.

Mother a corporate business, major software vendor and parent company of Daughter.

Tim Vick Sales and Marketing Manager with Daughter.

Dr. Prof. Giancarlo De Dambestis, head of the project Daughter and Tim’s boss.

DID (Deep Into Data) the first software solution developed by Daughter: a tool for data analysis.

AnalystOrange the second software solution developed by Daughter: a more evolved tool for data analysis.

Klunk monkey business consultant (a real monkey and also a business consultant).

The story is mainly set between two offices: one located in Mount and the other in Seaside.

During his year with Daughter Tim works most of his hours at Seaside’s branch, quite far from Mount’s headquarters, which serves to amplify his communication problems with De Dambestis even more.

To make up for the physical distance, the two schedule in advance a long series of meetings and this requires Tim to travel very often the long way from Seaside to Mount.

The story, as it came into my possession, is told in Tim’s words and it could therefore be partially biased, painting De Dambestis and his Daughter in a bad light.

In order to compensate for that inconvenience I have decided to ask for an expert second opinion, that of Klunk, the monkey who is also a business consultant.

Upon request, Klunk is going to give us her 'two cents' as an unbiased observer, helping us to shed some light on some of De Dambestis most unorthodox choices and directives, which might otherwise seem incredible in the eye of the untrained and inexperienced business reader.

2. The beginning

My name is Tim Vick, and I have just been sacked.

Of all the working experiences that I could have possibly had, this is by far the weirdest and is populated with an abundance of hilarious situations, apart from the bitter end, and so I have decided it’s worth telling.

It can be summarised in a few simple points:

A hires B to do job X, because he doesn’t know how to do it;

B then starts doing job X;

After a while, and all of a sudden, A is also trying to do job X, despite the fact that B is at it;

A is somehow annoyed that B is at job X as he is now trying to do it differently from how he would do it;

A dislikes B because of that;

A fires B.

The fact that I was given the sack is just a piece of the story, but the simple passages above render a thorough description of the scenario.

The Machiavellian, crooked and nonsensical mismanagement of a company.

This is the story of the year I spent working for Daughter, a start-up business that so very quickly turned out to be just monkey business.

2.1. A promising start

Some time ago, I had remained unemployed because of the economic crisis.

I got in touch with Mother and I landed a job interview with them for a position in sales and marketing.

One of their projects, the brand new start-up business Daughter, was in need of a sales manager with a strong background in data analysis and previous exposure to international markets.

I happened to be a perfect fit for the job.

After a couple of interviews, we got to know each other better, we liked each other and De Dambestis himself, the mind behind Daughter, hired me to manage all the business sales and marketing activities of his new-born business.

It’s just the beginning and I am positively impressed...

The software they intend to sell shows some potential though yet not finished; the position comes with responsibility and Mother, the company that funds the project, has a solid reputation in the software business.

I feel the thrill and challenge even more as I realize that I am going to be given a free hand to reach my targets: set up an international sales network of freelancers and partners, and at the same time build and promote the company’s brand and products.

It is all very promising.

Perhaps busy with University examinations, De Dambestis did very little to interfere with my activity during my first months with Daughter and I was doing quite fine.

The first results came soon: in three months’ time I had activated collaborations with a certain number of sales freelancers (almost half of my annual target) and I started negotiations with several companies to establish both technological and commercial partnerships.

I gave marketing quite a shake: I completed a brand new company profile, created all the supporting material for DID including a promotional video and I set my sights on reinventing the company’s brand (templates, logo, catch phrase, website, and so on).

I entirely reviewed the selling strategies, trying to position not only the software but also all the related services in the market.

I have nice memories of that period, sadly a short one: flashbacks of those initial days, when I was becoming acquainted with Daugther, exploring the new working environment, organising my job and getting to know my new colleagues, particularly De Dambestis.

De Dambestis presented me with very aggressive growth plans according to which in the course of a few years Daughter was to become the new miracle of the web economy.

Possibly because of my chronic ingenuity, that is when I overlooked asking some very simple