In 1987, Macmillan published a splendid book called PO PO Principle: Survival Guide to Office Politics. It appeared around the time management literature was replete with such titles as In Search of Excellence, memoirs by Lee Iacocca and many earnest management tomes on leadership and so on, and was the publishing equivalent of passing wind audibly at a formal dinner party.
PO PO stands for Pissed On and Passed Over and the book was about how avoid that fate. It was, in short, a cheeky and politically incorrect book about surviving and excelling at office politics. Succeeding isn’t just about being a diligent goody-goody, it advised; schmoozing with senior management is a vital skill too. It was actually a window into how corporations really function — and Business Standard gleefully published an extensive extract from it in its Sunday section then.
In a sense, Clyde D’Souza’s Kissing Ass: The Art of Office Politics is the modern Indian successor to PO PO Principle. The back-cover blurb describes it as a “no bullshit, jargon-free […] guide that breaks down typical workplace situations and offers you not textbook advice but real sucking-up solutions”.
Unlike PO PO Principle it does not provide an elaborate explanation of why mastering office politics is vital to success; it takes that as a given and dismisses it under a short subhead “Why Kiss Ass?”: “Doing your job is only part of the job. Politics is part of human nature whether it’s in Parliament, the bedroom, or your workstation. Get used to it and get good at it!”
The caveat is that these sucking up solutions are purely for the Indian office situation. Written from a worm’s eye view, the style is Broacha-style irreverence complete with wacky diagrams, cartoons, and liberal doses of Hinglish, not to forget the casual abuse of daily conversation (in both languages).
If D’Souza is unrelentingly cynical, he is also extremely methodical. He (rightly) assumes that most people work for a variety of base reasons that have little to do with a sense of achievement, fulfillment and the stuff the management gurus go banging on about. Since kissing ass is a constant requirement in the workplace, he divides the chapters on the basis of a rookie’s career progression and takes you through the process step by step. It starts with “Getting that job” and provides a handy guide to all the inane questions you are asked at a job interview. Here’s an example:
“Q. Why should we hire you?
WHY THIS STUPID QUESTION: The interviewer wants to know how badly you want this job.
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YOUR ANSWER: I admire the work this company has done in the last few years. The [name specific project] was brilliant. I would love to work in the team and add my [insert specific skill] on future projects. There’s so much good work available in this company.”
Some chapters on, there’s “F***! Your First Day”. (The asterisks are the reviewer’s.) Here’s a “Kissing Ass Tip” called “Reverse Pressure”: “Feed your boss with so much of the stuff you’re doing that he/she actually feels you’re really doing work and they’ll just want to leave you alone.”
There’s much more on how to dress shrewdly, how to maximise email sycophancy, how to behave on offsites, how to decode pay hikes, what “Employee of the Month” really means (a really rude word), how to date a colleague and optimise having sex with the boss and so on. Much of the information is provided in digestible bytes of short prose, tables and blurbs. If the presentation is a little clumsy, the corny humour more than compensates. As an overtly subversive book, Kissing Ass is unlikely to find pride of place on the executive’s office book shelf. But I’m willing to bet he’ll hide it in his desk drawer and read it when the boss is not looking.
KISSING ASS
The Art of Office Politics
Author: Clyde D’Souza
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 264
Price: Rs 150