Stealing the Corner Office

The Winning Career Strategies They'll Never Teach You in Business School

By: Brendan Reid

Narrated by: Dana Hickox

Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

Stealing the Corner Office is mandatory listening for smart, hardworking managers who always wonder why their seemingly incompetent superiors are so successful. It is a unique collection of controversial but highly effective tactics for middle managers and aspiring executives who want to learn the real secrets for moving up the corporate ladder. Unlike virtually all other business books - which are based on the assumption that corporations are logical and fair - Stealing the Corner Office explores the unconventional tactics people less competent than you use to get ahead and stay ahead. It is your proven playbook to thrive and win in an imperfect corporate world.

Stealing the Corner Office will teach you:

• How incompetent people so often get ahead, and what you can learn from them
• How to make universally flawed corporate policies work in your favor
• Why showing too much passion for your ideas can be career suicide
• Why delivering results should never be your highest priority

These and many more controversial tactics will change the way you look at your career and how you manage projects, people, and priorities. Apply the 10 principles in Stealing the Corner Office and watch your career take off!

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2014 Brendan Reid (P)2014 Gildan Media LLC

Critic Reviews

"Whether you're a corporate newcomer or an entrenched executive, Stealing the Corner Office delivers a no-nonsense playbook that breaks the mold of conventional wisdom. Reid's unique style makes for a thought-provoking and entertaining read." (Yves Dupuis, Vice President of Sales, Jabra)

VILEST BOOK EVER, BUT SO APTLY TITLED!

Do you aspire to be the human equivalent of cancer? Do you lust after power, regardless of the consequences? Can you remain unaffected by the loathing of your coworkers? Are you completely unscrupulous? Well then, this is the book for you!

Why do many good people hate going to work? Perhaps it’s be because too many of their employer’s senior people are useless careerists. You know the type. They scoot up the corporate ladder by ass kissing, jargon spouting, positivity oozing, confidence projecting, fake-project spearheading, overdressing for success, shared interest feigning, phony smiling, blame-shifting, credit-stealing, etc. Good people will never get a fair shake where careerists reign.

These bottom feeders keep workplaces from ever being anything like a meritocracy. No matter how diligently and efficiently ordinary people work, and no matter how valuable their contribution actually is, the careerists will always be paid more than and promoted faster and higher. Careerists beat good people in the rat race as if they were standing still. By the time ordinary folk figure out the race is rigged, it’s too late.

This is the most repugnant garbage I’ve ever read. It will appeal to only to psychopaths/sociopaths and hard-core narcissists.

Read this book only if you want to understand how undeserving and egocentric people get ahead and keep companies and governments eternally corrupt and dysfunctional. But don’t expect to be able to use this advice without abandoning your integrity and selling your soul -- cheaply.

I’m going to spend the next three weeks washing my ears.

Great advice and strategies, but too many examples

Any additional comments?

This audio book was full of great advice and strategies for winning in the work place. It explains to you what works and what doesn't for getting promotions, but does this through the excessive use of example stories instead of just giving up facts and straight up advice. So you need to be able to read between the lines to get the most from the book.

To me it got tiresome listening to story after story, but it was worth it in the end for the immediate work place improvement I acquired.

I wish I read this book 10 years ago.

I work in a big corporation myself and can see so many parralels between the book and the company I work with. I was playing against myself for so many years, pity I haven't read this book before.

Somewhat Cynical, but Realistic

Any additional comments?

Definitely a good book for people who wish to climb the corporate ladder. It has a narrow focus on corporate success, so don't look here if you want to start a business or learn about personal finance. Some of the pieces of advice seem to contradict each other, but if you're smart you can pick out the techniques that will work in your workplace.

If your career hasn't made sense, this book will.

If I'd have read/listened to this right out of college, I think I'd have found it offensive for the dim, cynical view it takes of management culture. However, the ensuing decade was so confusing to me professionally that I started looking for a coherent explanation for my stagnant career. I watched as people who didn't seem competent, or even completely literate, got ahead. The panacea of this came when I had a Shift Manager - whose job supposedly required math and writing tests - who had a fourth grade reading level, and never got past the math classes that were just called 'math'.

Prior to reading this, I thought I'd tried everything. I came into middle management as a passion player, and I was so eager to work my way up that I was willing to master whatever task I was given. I decided that I would do so much work that I would be indispensable, and my boss would have to recognize all of my work and promote me.

Having listened to this book, I now realize that my strategies were exactly wrong. The author has had a strong career, and while I'm still going through this book, much of what I have learned can be grilled down to a few rules:

1. Avoid coaching/conflict as much as possible, no matter how much of an opportunity you see. Try to pawn it off on some other poor sucker.

2. Don't try to make any big changes. Career ambition might be a good thing, but trying to make large scale improvements will just alienate people, and might not alter the course of your career.

3. Accept that your boss might not be able to tell the difference between good work and bad work, even if they have the same definitions as you do.

So, if you want a book that will tell you that meritocracy is real, and that people who work hard will get ahead, this book will disappoint you. However, if you've been suspecting that the old cliches about merit are wildly inaccurate, this book will explain the lunacy to you.

An amazing study in mediocrity.

If you want to do the bare minimum, never stand out and skate by, then this is the book for you! It does a great job of showing someone how to rise in middle management while never truly doing anything great.

Will listen again!

Finished in two days! Easy to listen to and insightful. I learned some new strategies to implement.

Excellent book!

Herein lie the true principles of attaining success in the corporate world. I'll listen again to ensure this material really sinks in.

Brilliant. Must read for young professionals.

There is no room for conventional wisdom in Stealing the Corner Office. Reid delivers an articulate diagnosis of how corporate culture truly operates, crafts laugh-out-loud stories to get his points across, then hands his readers a razor sharp tactical plan that demands immediate action. Will be talking about this one for quite a while.

Relatable!!

The narrator was a bit long winded but gets the point across. The stories hit home on so many level.

Stand-out book on getting ahead at work!

Would you consider the audio edition of Stealing the Corner Office to be better than the print version?

The delivery is quite humorous, so there is a positive from the audio version.

What did you like best about this story?

After listening to this book I realised I was already doing some of the things discussed, now I know why they make a difference. It's a definite thought provoker... I've already recommended it to a few choice colleagues... but not too many! :-)

What does Dana Hickox bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Yes the humour comes thru which makes it stand out more than the other business / self help books I've listened to.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes - and I did pretty much

lifting the veil on career advancement

the book's message is counter intuitive but it points to real situations that many of us can recognise. it is also very practical and rational.