Evil Mastermind Management Handbook

By Jamais Jochim

Are you tired of reading management books that stick to the politically correct areas, and worry more about the legal ramifications of your actions rather than actual management?

This book is for you!
---The prefect location for your "business" headquarters
---How to market your business, on the big and little scales
---How to find and hire employees
---Non-standard rewards and punishments!
---How to manage Men more effectively
---Hazing and you!
---How to make friends and influence enemies
---Everything you ever wanted to know about men (including why they don't ask for directions!)
---How to manage women more effectively
---The Glass Ceiling Myth
---everything you wanted to know about women
---Fashion tips
---General Tips on Business Leadership
---The SEO Myth
In short, everything it takes to be an evil Mastermind

BONUS: How not to screw up like the bad guys in the movies do!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jamais Jochim
• Release date: May 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736913956

Jamais Jochim

I'm the guy who knows every last fact about Spider-man and if I don't I'll track it down. I love bad movies, enjoy table-top gaming, and probably would drive you crazy if you weren't ready for it. I have ADHD but refer to it as "hyperkinesis" because it sounds like a super-power. It means that I can be disorganized to the naked eye, but in reality, I probably have a reason for the clutter and you may actually like it. I write books that I would like. This means that the characters are those you would want to have a drink with, maybe talk about philosophy, and maybe game with. The plots involve a little humor, some romance, and maybe even some weirdness. In short: If you like 1980s movies you should enjoy them. My books on style and management are how I'd like to do it, so expect some weirdness but it's the kind of weirdness you can get behind. I hope you enjoy my books; I enjoyed writing them!

Book preview

Preface

FIRST AND FOREMOST: This book is not a book on how to become an Evil Mastermind. It is a book on how to be one. This book is not for those who want to be inspired but for those interested in working approaches; there is less you can do it and more here’s how you do it. Go elsewhere if you are looking for inspirational stories; this book is about how to manage people and get things done rather than patting you on the back.

You need to be the kind of person that has no problem kicking puppies and throwing those no-profit snot-nosed orphans out on the street. If it came down to trading your mother for a nickel, you’ll obviously negotiate for a better trade; she’s worth at least sixty-eight cents in materials alone!

If that’s not you, then this book is not for you. Give it to your nephew, the one who thinks flies like having their wings ripped off right before you put it in a spider web. And thanks for helping us reach our target audience!

Most management books concentrate on how the manager can help the employees, as if the manager has to coddle the poor downtrodden things from hire to retirement. They forget that there is more to management than just employees, or even the process involved. A manager isn’t hired to baby-sit employees or even improve the process; the former shows a lack of confidence in your employees, and the second is for your managers to worry about.

An Evil Mastermind should not be worried about the day-to-day business. He needs to worry about setting up the operation, making sure his managers have the tools needed to get the job done, and then be able to step back. He needs to worry about the overall thrust of the business and be able to give those below him a direction that they will follow. His business should be set up so that it runs smoothly, efficiently, and be able to handle anything he can throw at it.

There are too many of those be nice to your employees touchy-feely books; what’s the point of being a manager if you need to nice to your employees? Your employees should serve your business first, their own desires second. You aren’t paying them to go to college or pursue their own goals; you are paying them to do work for you. If they can go to college or otherwise pursue their own goals, great! But they do it by receiving a paycheck from you for doing you a specific service, and that service needs to come first; if it comes second then your business becomes a chaotic mess and that just won’t do. You can worry about the needs of your employees, sure, but those needs need to come second to the business itself.

A manager needs to be unafraid to make decisions based more on his own judgment than the potential political ramifications; if someone is not working out or someone’s nephew is ticking everyone off, then you need to be able to fire that person. You need to do what is important for the business, not the individuals under you. Masterminds so lacking in self-confidence that they need to be told that making decisions and making sure that the job gets done will usually be the ones that go down first. Running a smooth business should take precedent over mere political squabbling, and your word should be the final one in any disagreement.

Personality tests and stupid questions that have no application in reality for when you interview people are too much a part of management. Personality tests show the applicants ability to suck up to you more than they do their ability to the job. Anyone can study for a test; if I know which responses get the best results, I can always study and find out how to get those results. Ergo, a personality test doesn’t necessarily tell you how good  I am for the job but how well I can read you and tell you what you want to hear. A successful business should be based on people that can do the job, not how well they suck up to you. After all, the best player of office politics is just that: A player. When you need to get the work done, they are pretty  much anywhere but the work is.

And then there are those books where the manager is supposed to be some Ward Cleaver type. If the employee comes in, having destroyed the factory, the manager is supposed to calm him down, not blame him, and deal calmly with the inferno. Personally, I prefer the call 9-1-1, there’s going to be a murder approach. The employee screwed up, needs to know it, and needs to accept the blame and punishment for it, not be rewarded for costing you time, repairs, and customer service problems. The nice guy approach doesn’t always work.

This is not to say that I think the Ward Cleaver approach is totally bad; I just think that it is an extreme position, and extreme positions are never good. There needs to be a more moderate position between Ward Cleaver and Dictator For Life. However, until there is, and as there is too much of the former, we need more of the latter. And this book will show you how to be an Evil Manager, and how to build your career, as well as your business. After all, a manager is about the business, not the people in it. So enjoy!

Oh, and be advised. That this is not going to some politically correct management book; we will be discussing some interesting topics, and I’m not interested in mincing words. Be advised that that some interesting topics will be discussed; the squeamish should run now. I am going with the assumption that you are an adult, and that things will be said that are not nice or that are not popular; nonetheless, they will be said. It’s been said that a house built on sand cannot stand; the same applies to someone who has built their life on little more than compliments and pleasantries, and that shall be avoided at all costs. We’ll have some fun, sure, but I’ll try to dispose with all of the usual hedging.

ONE LAST THING: THIS book is presented as if you are looking to become an Evil Mastermind. Be aware that it is more of a framing convention; don’t let the cover get to you! Besides: It can be sort of fun to see people’s reaction to the book! But realize that the framing convention is more for fun and to keep the book together; this book is a lot more serious than it may appear.

Ultimately, you can choose to take this book seriously or treat it as satire; the book is yours, so you can even use it to prop up that table that’s always leaning. But at least listen first.....

OBLIGATORY NOTE ON Gender Usage

Throughout this book, I will consistency use the masculine pronoun and words like guys and men. You should not presume that I believe that women cannot be as evil or ambitious as their male counterparts; nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, I am using those in the generic sense in an attempt to avoid awkward constructions or creating new pronouns, and to encourage clarity over obfuscation. If anyone feels slighted by my use of the masculine to imply a neutral gender, so be it.

ARE YOU AN EVIL MASTERMIND?

Before you continue reading, ask yourself if you actually are ready to be an evil mastermind. There are five questions you need to ask yourself:

1) If you were asked to adjudicate between your best friend and your worst enemy, could you judge in favor of your worst enemy? That is, against your best friend, even though it may burn a bridge? You need to be able to judge things fairly, and that can create problems; after all, your friend may have counted on your support. By not supporting your friend when he needs you most, you may burn that bridge depending on how bad the support was needed. However, it may be necessary in order to save the business. You may need to decide between a toxic friendship that is ruining the business and the business itself, and that is never an easy decision. Nonetheless, it is one that needs to be made.

Nonetheless, a good manager needs to able to put friendship aside when it gets in the way of the job, an evil mastermind even more so. A friendship can represent years, if not decades, of building a relationship that has proven useful; however, your friend’s needs should never be more important than yours. A good friendship needs to be built on some level of equality; most friendships are based on a mutual give-and-take, with a number of understandings. Even though a friend may occasionally take more than they give, things eventually balance it out. If it doesn’t, then it is a poisonous relationship and needs to be stopped anyway. Fairness is a good quality, no matter which team you bat for.

Part of the issue here is that a friend that puts your reputation on the line is not a friend. Your ability to help him, ironically, depends on your reputation to make fair judgments; if you can’t make those kind of judgments, then you are useless to anyone. A friendship should be based on symbiosis, not parasitism; if he constantly makes demands that you make decisions in his favor, then it may be time to end that friendship.

2) Let’s pick on our trusty friend some more. Could you fire him? Context is not the issue; the ability to remove him is. It’s not just a variation of the fairness issue; there is also the question of what is more important: your company or your friendship. It may sound cruel, but you need to be able to fire your friend if the situation warrants it. Without that detachment, your friend may be able to take advantage of your friendship in ways that are against your company, and that’s not fair to you. If you can fire him, then he can’t use that friendship against you, and it’s actually able to better further both of your careers. It may sound weird, but establishing limits can be a good thing.

More to the point, people need to know where they stand with you, and that you take your job seriously. That alone is worth a lot of cred, and it helps you out in a lot of ways. Anything that brings respect is worth it, and if people know you are willing to fire your best friend in the right situation, then they know that they will have a fair shake with you.

3) Can you take a week-long vacation and not worry too much about the company? Can you trust that a company will be around when you come back? Can you limit your worries to If those suckers could see me now!? Note that I’m not just talking going to a convention; I’m talking about no one within miles, and the phone turned off or off the hook, and work is a million miles away.

You need to be able to separate yourself from your job. A great manager knows that; they need to be able to recharge their batteries, and you can’t do that if work is your only priority. Put another way, you need to realize that work is important, but if you don’t take care of yourself, then you are virtually useless to your company, which depends on you being at your best. If you aren’t, then you will make bad decisions that may cost your company a lot more than you pay back. Ever.

But, by recharging your batteries, which takes the ability to not worry about work while on vacation, you can always give it your best. In essence, by making your needs a priority, you serve your company better than if you make their needs a priority. It sounds weird, but think about it and it makes sense; even your ambition serves the company if you apply it correctly.

Another issue is that you need to avoid micro-management. If you are too involved with your company then you will worry about every little facet of the company, and that leads to managing every little detail. That means that you will be spending too much time worrying about details you shouldn’t be worrying about, and that worry will take focus from bigger worries, such as making the company bigger, other companies, or your personal projects (you know, the reason you created a company in the first place). So, a little detachment is a good thing.

4) Speaking of ambition, is yours the good kind or the bad kind? The good kind pushes you forward, making you take the classes you need, read the books to help you get ahead, and puts you into contact with all the right people. You get noticed, and in a good way; after all, you are becoming an asset to the company and that’s a good thing. Even if you intend to own your own company, it allows you to make friends with your current company, and that helps later on; your current company will actually help you in a lot ways, as weird as that sounds. By looking to your own rise and following the right path, you also help your company; by becoming a better manager, you give your company a better tool for success.

However, the bad ambition is when you use any means to climb the ladder. Good ambition doesn’t mean you need to be an angel, but your climb isn’t based on ruining other people just because you think it is the only way to rise. Eventually, your need to backstab, assassinate the character of others, and do whatever it takes will come back on you. There is a reason that every religion has some warning about reaping what you sow; it’s a good warning. Ignore it at your own risk. With good ambition you create luck; with bad ambition you use it up.

Look at it this way: Good ambition enables you to become a better person, while honing your skills and giving you a support structure. Bad ambition makes you a solo act dependent on you keeping all the strings in motion, but not allowing you rest; if you do, the strings you pull may whip back at you. Ironically, good ambition serves the evil mastermind best, as he learns more and has more followers actually watching his back. It may sound weird, but it is the best path.

Which ambition do you have? If you have good ambition, then continue; otherwise, get therapy. You’re going to need it!

5) You have to buy pizza for a company lunch. Assuming 30 people, 2 slices per person, and 12 slices per large pizza, which pizzas do you order?

Here’s the answer: You need sixty slices, which comes to five pizzas. Start with two combination pizzas. You need at least one vegetarian pizza for the health nuts and vegetarians. A plain double-cheese pizza is needed for those that like it plain, as well to provide the vegetarians with some variety. For the last pizza, have fun; I’d probably default to a Hawaiian (ham and pineapple, a lot of people do like it) or a beef and green pepper. Oh, and I’d probably throw in two more pizzas, with at least one more vegetarian pizza, just to make sure there was plenty to eat; few people eat just two slices.

Basically, you need to aware that when you order for the group, you need to allow for the needs of the group. If you do that, then you have a happy group, and a happy group will back you up in a lot of ways that a not-happy group won’t. Part of being a leader is recognizing that you are responsible for the group you lead; they look to you to make sure that their needs are met. This should not be seen as an inability to take care of themselves, but rather that they are willing to follow you anywhere and do what you require of them as long as there is a reason to follow you. If you treat them well, they will support you to the best of their ability. Abuse them, and you will find yourself dealing with a number of desertions and other issues that will cost you far more than the cost of treating them with respect.

It comes down to a form of fealty; there is an unwritten contract between leader and follower that the follower does what the leader wants in exchange for the leader making sure that they are taken care of. If you are serious about being a leader, then you need to realize that such a relationship exists. You can only stretch it so much until it breaks; once it does, it will come back and hurt you. Keep that in mind in any business relationship and you should do well.

At any rate, keep in mind that management is not an easy task to master, and that you need to keep in mind a wide variety of different issues and detail. Learning how to manage is not an easy task, and do not treat it as such....

What does it take to be an Evil Mastermind?

WHAT IS AN EVIL MASTERMIND?

What does it take to be considered an Evil Mastermind? And what differentiates an Evil Mastermind from someone who is merely evil? It is a viable question, given that this is a book about how to be one. And we need to remember that we are not just discussing evil characterized by some silly, insipid Snidely Whiplash version, either, where the villain is evil just for the sake of being evil, either; we are talking true villainy here.

It should be noted that there is some irony involved here as we’re discussing evil in the societal sense, not the legal one. Society always deems one evil that works outside its defined boundaries; artists have been described as evil almost since the beginning of history as they must work outside the usual societal constraints in order to actually do art; they do best by looking into society and you need to be somewhat outside in order to look in.

An Evil Mastermind is much the same: He is trying to do something in ways that most people would find reprehensible. Everyone wants to be a success, but a good businessperson is trying to go one step beyond that; he’s not interested in just becoming a success, but an actual leader of his community. The problem is that he needs to make harder decisions than most people do, and then apply those decisions. The problem is that applying those decisions requires him to work outside of regular society, especially when Society dictates that leaders must treat everyone nicely.

Ultimately, that’s what makes some masterminds evil. A mastermind cannot always treat everyone nicely; sometimes a situation comes up that requires the person to act hard, to make decisions that not will not make everyone happy, and sometimes those decisions are either the only ones possible or will work in favor of the most people involved. In that regard a mastermind must be unafraid to ignore the crowd and forge his own path in order to accomplish his goals. In that regard he is likely to be seen as evil by someone, and he needs to embrace that, at least partially, rather than run from it. 

In that regard, an evil mastermind is defined by the choices he makes, not the decisions he makes. A decision is merely checking off a box because ultimately any box will do; there are many paths to the same result and it is merely deciding which path to take. In essence, the person is merely deciding which option to follow to its logical conclusion assured that any decision he makes has plusses and minuses compared to the others, but it’s just a decision.

A choice, however, requires an actual decision. Sometimes you need to ignore the decisions placed before you and take a different path, to forsake the standard options and go for one of your own. Society is scared of people like that as those people upset the rhythm that has been carefully created by Society and create an entirely new way of doing things. Society wants people to follow a strict, proscribed path and anyone that deviates from that creates an unknown factor, and that person must be evil, something that ignores the common good in order to create his own path. Ergo, the first requirement is that a person make choices not decisions.

Organization is another requirement; Satan has his devils, after all. This is not because an Evil Mastermind requires fellowship; he realizes that he can’t be everywhere at once and that he lacks abilities that others may have. A good Evil Mastermind accepts the lack of omnipresence with a certain glee; imagining the looks of his enemies as they uncover his plans is definitely part of the fun. Lacking a specific ability is an annoyance, but allows the Evil Mastermind to concentrate on what is important to him; planning is, after all, the main challenge. Building the rocket is mere drudgery, even though the physics may be intriguing. An Evil Mastermind ultimately prefers supervising to getting his hands dirty.

Lastly, and most importantly, is the dark nobility that is present in all Evil Masterminds. Most Evil Masterminds are interesting persons, those that you would love to share a glass of wine with or be seduced by. This is because they are intrinsically persons that, except for one event or a certain point of reference, would have been heroes. Consider Count Dracula: Not the gothic, whiny blood-sucker so often presented in current movies, but of the novel and the Hammer Films movies, the planning sadist who wants to be admired, but is undone by his very aspirations. If not for his pride, he would have been the consummate noble: always defending his country, polite to a fault, and understanding of the bonds of friends and family.

However, this pride is the potential downfall of any evil mastermind. He must be Number One; no one else may be the leader. He must be the best, and he must get what he wants, regardless of the cost to others. Although his other traits would ensure his status, his pride constantly calls that status into question. Men who will not bow before him must fall; women who will not let him seduce them become part of his harem. It is because of this extreme pride that he has become an Evil Mastermind, and not just merely evil; it is this flame that constantly burns in him.

Thus, qualifications for an Evil Mastermind are therefore: some kind of deviancy; the intelligence to recognize the deviancy; the willpower to engage in it; an organization; and dark nobility. Once these factors are present, you may have an Evil Mastermind.

I GUESS I SHOULD PROVIDE some examples of great evil masterminds. For this, I’m using the following examples from fact and fiction. It should be noted that although some may not seem like Evil Masterminds, as an Evil Mastermind is not necessarily an Evil Mastermind by choice; sometimes history makes that decision for them. Nonetheless, these are the people we use as our role models.

DID IT HURT WHEN YOU fell from Heaven?

No list of Evil Masterminds would be complete without mentioning Satan. Satan has several strong points as an Evil Mastermind: Good marketing; ambiguous status; and appreciation of a rewards system. Everyone knows who the devil is, what his stance is, and has a stance on that stance. Note: Everyone. Not just a big crowd of people, not a majority, not just 99.99%. Everyone. He has reached 100% saturation of his chosen market (The World); can be there be a better marketing campaign?

His ambiguous status (real or fictional) is also a major plus. Think about that for a moment: Although there a lot of people that believe he is real, no one in authority can act on that belief without some very definite proof. As long as that proof is not supplied, he can do anything! And given that a number of people across the globe have a vested interest in maintaining that status (including a number of people on his opposition), it is doubtful that he will lose that status.

Lastly, there is his appreciation for a rewards system. He is willing to trade anything that he has access to (and he access to a lot) for a soul. Any soul. It doesn’t even need to be the one of the person asking; it’s not like he’s going to be asking where it came from, and may compliment you if you were clever enough in acquiring one.  This, of course, means that anyone who does what The Devil wants will usually be rewarded well, outrageously well. He can afford it.

And he is known to punish those who fail him in very painful, usually interesting ways. The Chinese proverb about living in interesting time applies triple to any punishment the devil gives you. Consider dealing with this ultimate Monty Hall: You do well, you do outrageously well;