By making the zombie your model, you will enjoy the slow, steady, and reliable rise to corporate power and success that only comes with the total dedication of the undead.
Don’t Remember Who You Are (or Were Before You Became a Zombie)
Conventional wisdom says that staying grounded and humble is fundamental to being an effective C.E.O. Most business books will caution against the sins of pride and hubris, and hold that even the most powerful executive must never lose sight of the humble circumstances from which he or she arose.
This advice could not be more misguided.
For a Z.E.O. (as for an actual zombie) losing track of who you used to be before you became a powerful entity is not only recommended, it is compulsory.
You see, it isn’t clear exactly how much of their former lives zombies remember after reanimation, but there are indicators that some of the undead recall at least a little about who they were and what they used to do. Zombies have been known to respond to their former names, recognize faces and places that were once familiar to them, and to salute superior officers in military situations. Sometimes preferences or tastes a zombie had in life will remain after zombification. Zombies also seem to have a way of remembering who their enemies were in life, and have a knack for wreaking some form of revenge upon them.
However, no zombie ever attempted to leverage his status or previous station in the world after becoming a member of the walking dead. No zombie, seeking entrance to a fortified dormitory, ever said: “Hey, I used to be an important tax attorney and a trustee at the college. Based on this, you really ought to take the boards off the door and let me in so I can eat you.” The zombie knows that’s not going to work, and the people inside know that whatever used to be true about this trustee (nice guy, important businessman, local Little League coach), the fact of his now being a zombie pretty much overrides it.
But hey, it swings both ways. No reanimated-soldier zombie believes for a second that his old army buddies won’t shoot him in the head just because he used to fight alongside them. Zombie cops and zombie judges may have once enforced the law, but that counts for nothing the moment they’re zombified—they break every law they can, just like any other zombie. Zombification severs all important ties to who someone once was. Astute is the zombie who realizes this fact instantly (as is the human who would avoid being eaten by zombies). As you climb the corporate ladder and eventually assume the mantle of Z.E.O., you would do well to remember this.
True, you may still have friends and supporters toiling in the lower echelons of the organization who want to convince themselves that, since becoming Z.E.O., “You’re still the same guy/gal” and “You haven’t changed.” Though these beliefs are patently inaccurate, you may still use them to your advantage (just as a zombie allows foolish humans to labor under the misconception that a zombie they knew in life won’t try to eat them).
The fact is, when you become a corporate leader, you have to become a different person. Just as a human’s priorities (spending time with family, saving up something for retirement, not getting eaten) differ starkly from a zombie’s (brains), so must your priorities change when you reach the top of the corporate ladder. No longer will you focus on the Machiavellian mechanics of a rise to power. You will now be required to turn your attention to holding on to the reins, increasing corporate profitability, and ensuring your workers labor with the methodical loyalty of zombies. If you were to “remain the same guy/gal” the results would be disastrous, both for you and for the organization. You owe it to your employees (and the shareholders and yourself) to change for the better when you make it to the top.
Zombie Tip—Preserve Your Top Performers
Maybe in brine and dill or something. That way, they’d taste like pickles.
There isn’t much use in getting sentimental about it, either. Wistfully recalling your early days as a records clerk as you sit behind the big oak desk isn’t going to drive up the price of shares one iota. (And, honestly, the best lesson to be taken from being a records clerk is usually that it sucks to be a records clerk.) Likewise, as a Z.E.O., the benefits of identifying with any group (other than zombielike leaders) should pretty much be off the table.
Teddy Roosevelt once said: “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans.” And while this sentiment would probably qualify as hate speech today, it comes from a genuine attempt to forge a community so great (America) that it would transcend factors of ethnic origin. Teddy liked the idea that when you became an American citizen, you could just say that you were an “American.” You wouldn’t have to qualify it with the continent on which your ancestors evolved.
Teddy’s vision is similar to what happens when you become a zombie. Few people think to note a zombie’s ethnicity, religion, or cultural background when identifying it. A zombie is a zombie is a zombie. (One notable divergence presents itself in the form of the 1932 Bela Lugosi film White Zombie, but that was a movie about the first Caucasian zombie ever, so c’mon, you gotta make an exception.) By and large, zombies don’t need to be “more diverse.” Being a zombie is diversity enough.
“Connect” to Others
Zombie Tip—Find the Right Fit
Just because a corporate recruiter finds you a job with more pay and a bigger title, it doesn’t mean you have to take the gig. It may be a good job, but is it the job for you? Zombies are masters of waiting for the “right fit”—especially when it’s a way to fit into a storm drain or through a small basement window. Approach any new opportunity with a zombie’s careful discretion.
This book would not be the first to point out that it’s important for a manager to establish connections with his or her employees. However, in the vast majority of cases, modern business books err by advocating a C.E.O. create false or forced connections. The idea that a leader would actually want to be, in any real and meaningful way, connected to the working stiffs that labor in his or her factories and offices is left off the table entirely. Rather, the advice typically given in business books seems to implicitly argue for the forging of fake, forced connections between employee and employer. These books do a great job of advising C.E.O.s how to appear to be connected to employees, but not how to actually connect with them. These books presuppose contempt for the worker—and seem to assume that a natural, organic connection would not be appropriate or possible. Based upon this, they suggest that leaders create situations that will give employees the “feeling” of connectedness, while not actually linking you to them (or them to you).
Following such advice has been the downfall of many a C.E.O.
How many times have we seen suit-wearing corporate leaders awkwardly attempting to have a beer with the warehouse workers, pretending to care about employees’ families at the company holiday party, or gently spoofing themselves and other Microsoft executives in a widely circulated company-produced video? Hurts just to think about, doesn’t it? Well, it hurts the executives even more.
More than just the temporary awkwardness of interacting on false pretenses is involved.
These ill-advised corporate leaders (believing the errant and misguided business books they have read) will falsely assume that their efforts to achieve a connection with employees have been effective. And, as long as nothing rocks the corporate boat, this does not present any real peril. Nothing will contradict the executives’ incorrect assessment that they are beloved. However, as soon as times get tight or a crisis arises (see earlier chapter), a C.E.O. will need to rely on a connection with his or her employees, and it will become devastatingly apparent that no such connection exists. Just when the mistaken C.E.O. starts counting on the workers to “suck it up” and “roll up their sleeves” (because you’re all, you know, buds), they will instead start “doing the bare minimum” as they “look for other jobs on the Internet all day.”
Zombie Tip—Have Undaunted Curiosity
Staying curious throughout your working life is a trait that great leaders and great zombies have in common.
Whether you’re wondering how customer satisfaction levels could be raised, or how villages could be razed (and their inhabitants eaten) cultivate your natural curiosity and it will take you to the top of your field.
The error here, really, is with neither the workers nor the C.E.O., but with the business manuals that continue to insist that a holding company sack race means your employees love you and will work unpaid overtime.
But if sack races are off the table, then what can provide meaningful connections between employees and an employer?
The answer: Zombies.
Zombies are masters of connection. The most important connection, for a zombie, is connecting its teeth with your brain. But that isn’t the only connection a zombie understands. Zombies, you see, are connected to other zombies. This is because zombies are like other zombies.
No matter if a zombie is fat or thin, short or tall, was reanimated five minutes ago or has been shambling across the earth for a thousand years, zombies have deep and meaningful commonalities. Zombies are undead. Zombies want to bite and eat people. Zombies like brains. Zombies don’t bite other zombies. Zombies don’t make chitchat.
Elegantly simple, the common code shared by zombies runs deep and remains constant. Zombies act as a cohesive, connected unit because they are actually connected.
As noted above, a typical misguided C.E.O. will try to find connections with employees where they don’t exist. This will seem forced, and it will be awkward for everybody.
A Z.E.O., in sharp contrast, will find the real commonalities that already exist between himself and employees, and, in pointing them out, demonstrate that they have always been connected.
In summary, if you respect your employees’ intelligence, and don’t feed them a bunch of bullshit about how you “care” about them as a part of your “family,” they will come to esteem you as an honest, plainspoken, and fair executive—which, really, is the best you can hope for. After all, you never heard of a zombie who tried to inspire other zombies by saying they were a family that deeply loved one another.
Zombies are just a bunch of decaying guys and gals who want to eat brains.
Sometimes, that’s enough.
It’s safe to say if you’re reading how-to-succeed-in-business books, you’re not starting at the top. This is good. If you were already at the top, it would probably mean that you got there using (ugh) traditional business tactics. Or maybe you inherited a family business or married the right person. The point is, to become a Z.E.O. (instead of a dime-a-dozen C.E.O.) you need to climb the corporate ladder like a zombie, starting with the very first rung.
As it stands, you probably answer phones at a desk, work a press at a factory, or complete ream after ream of mindless paperwork. Don’t be disheartened. Zombies also start in modest or less-than-glamorous places—like shabby country graveyards or crumbling, vine-encrusted family crypts. This is no impediment to their eventual success.
They’re getting out. And so are you.
The first step to transforming yourself into a Z.E.O. is beginning to think like a Z.E.O. From day one, this means a new focus on priorities. A zombie knows exactly what it wants and goes after it. A zombie ignores everything inessential to its desires and devices.
Begin, then, by identifying the essential. If you work an office job, make a list of your essential daily tasks. Then, make a list of the inessential things that actually take up your time. If you need to, take a whole day and write these things down as you go. Be patient and detailed. It’s important that you do a thorough job. Also, note how long your tasks take. Some essential tasks can be time consuming, but others can be accomplished relatively quickly. Likewise, many inessential things can take up a deceptively large amount of your time.
At the end of the day, stop for five minutes and read over your list. If you’re like most people, the results will surprise you.
You may find that you spend two hours a day (or less) actually writing memos, responding to e-mails, and taking phone calls that are “essential to business,” and six hours or more on other tasks. This wasted time can include obviously nonwork activities—spacing out on the Internet or engaging in e-mail flame wars about the latest superhero movie, sure—but it can also be spent politely chatting with colleagues who drop by your cube, e-mailing or talking on the phone with coworkers about nonessential aspects of work, helping your colleagues with their nonessential projects, and working to temporarily correct or compensate for situations and inefficiencies that other people have caused.
Be brutally honest in your assessment and documentation of these nonessential things that take up your valuable time. Did a coworker stop you at the water cooler for five minutes to chat about the game last night? Put it on there. Did you stop and flirt with the new intern from Wellesley for a good half-hour? This is the place to ’fess up, old boy. I promise not to tell.
The first step on the road to becoming a Z.E.O. is to discourage these distractions from happening to you.
I word the above advice most carefully. Many so-called “motivational experts” are apt to tell you that the first step to success is to adopt an internal (as opposed to external) “locus of control.” What that means, simply put, is that you must think of the world as a place in which you make things happen, instead of a place where things happen to you.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Sure, if you really wanted to have to steel yourself every damn moment of the day, you could actively try resisting all of the distractions and temptations that crop up in the workplace. And yes, it’s possible that you might have the fortitude to succeed at such an incredible challenge. But why not take an easier (and more effective) route to the same place by discouraging these temptations to inefficiency from ever occurring to begin with?
Let’s go back to zombies for a moment. Have you ever heard of a zombie being asked if he saw the big game last night, or how her kids are? Do people have the urge to walk up to a zombie and see if it can help out on a new project? Do sugar-free-gum-snapping secretaries ask zombies if they could “find the time” during their day to provide feedback on a report?
No, no, and no.
Rather than asking them for input, help, or advice, most people tend to run away screaming when they see a zombie. While there are advantages for everyone in avoiding unnecessary work, the first and foremost advantage for a zombie is that it remains free to do what’s really important (i.e., methodically stalking humans to consume their living flesh).
Now, the question is, how do you enjoy these kind of zombie benefits? How can you comport yourself in such a manner as to make the notion of walking up to you and handing you a memorandum a laughably idiotic act?
The answer is: Start small. Start with your cubicle (which probably is very small).
Is your cube a friendly place? Are there photographs of cute, smiling children or relatives? Is there a jar of your coworkers’ favorite candies? Perhaps some clever Dilbert cartoons about various absurd aspects of the corporate environment?
Zombie Tip—Avoid Office Dalliances
Having no sex drive at all gives zombies one less distraction from their all-consuming greater lust for the flesh of the living. Z.E.O.s lack this advantage, but should still try to keep things reasonable. (If the only way you can pick up a chick is because she’s your secretary, then dude, you’re just being a giant douche.)
. . . because, if there are, then—amusing as they may be—these things are working against you.
A friendly workspace, where humans are not afraid to go (and perhaps even feel invited to go) sends the wrong message. Where do zombies, the pinnacle of efficiency and focus, get their “work” done? A cursory answer might include misty midnight graveyards, shafts buried deep inside forgotten nuclear testing facilities, and rotting ghost ships of the undead. None of these places invites humans (at least not sensible ones).
Starting on Day One, go ahead and remove everything from your workspace that might make it attractive to other people. Candy jar on
your desk? Get rid of it. Pictures of your family? In the trash. “Certificates of Completion” from those Quark and InDesign classes you took? Into the recycling bin. (You don’t want people asking for help with “page layout” when they could instead be imploring “Please, please for the love of God, don’t eat me!”)
Am I advising, then, that your cubicle walls should be entirely bare? Not by any means. Fill your cubicle as you see fit . . . with things that will make people think twice before bothering you.
Your first impulse might be to put up a sign that says “Go Away!!!” or even “Fuck off.” Besides being uncreative, this would probably also get you fired (which is not your goal). Your decorations should say “Go away” the way a zombie’s appearance says “I’m about to fucking eat you.” A zombie doesn’t carry a sign or wear a T-shirt announcing this—instead, a zombie “announces it” via the gore dripping from its incisors and the murderous, inhuman look in its eye. You’ve got to be subtle in advertising the fact that you are not someone to pester. Subtle like a zombie.
The Ultimate Book of Zombie Warfare and Survival Page 9