How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints Are on the Knife?: And Other Meditations on Management

by Jerry B. Harvey

Overview

The role we each play in our own downfalls create the profound—and profoundly entertaining—basis for this series of linked "meditations" as the author of The Abilene Paradox takes another irreverent look at the nature of life on the job. In this work, Harvey explores the ethical, moral, and spiritual dilemmas we all face in the modern world of work. But he does it in a most unconventional way. His is an approach that mixes equal parts humor, philosophy, and insight to make us laugh, think, and examine organizational behavior in a brand new light. The twelve essays themselves carry such spirited titles as "What If I Really Believe this Stuff," "On Tooting Your Own Horn," and "Ode to Waco." Altogether, it's an enthralling collection of wise and witty parables that illustrate the redemptive value of the truth in a voice that is ultimately understanding of human shortcomings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780787947873
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	08/11/1999
Series:	Jossey-Bass Business and Management Series
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.24(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.99(d)

About the Author

JERRY B. HARVEY,well-known author of The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management, is a professor of management science at The George Washington University. He has consulted with business, government, various healthcare services, and the nonprofit sector and has published many articles in the fields of organizational behavior and education.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction:
It's Not My Dog

A number of years ago, our family -- which consisted of me, my wife, and two preschoolers -- rented a condominium adjacent to a pristine, crescent-shaped, sandy beach near Ocean City, Maryland. Because our lease commenced several weeks after the official tourist season had concluded, few outsiders were to be found. In comparison to the hurly-burly one finds during the middle of the summer, the resort area was deserted.

A Walk, a Man, and a Dog

At approximately 6:30 a.m. on the first morning of our foray into the world of surf and sand, I awoke before the remainder of the troops had sprung into action and decided to take a solitary stroll along the beach in preparation for the chaos that inevitably attends having two small children gamboling amidst an onslaught of waves and sharks. I don't know whether you have visited that particular area of Maryland's Eastern Shore during the off-season. If you have, you know that at daybreak, when you step onto the beach from an oceanside condominium and look toward the ocean, about all you are likely to see is the rising sun, a few clouds, several fishing vessels, and an uncluttered horizon. There is a tranquil ambiance born of quietness, vastness, and solitude. It was in that peaceful context that I began my journey.

Meditations at the Beach

Therefore, in Chapter One I begin the process by asking myself the penetrating question, How come every time I get stabbed in the back, my fingerprints are on the knife? That cutting-edge query arose from discovering that no matter how often I have felt betrayed by others in an organizational setting, the truth is that I have always played an active role in my own downfall. In fact, I have reached the conclusion that neither I, nor anyone else I know, nor any organization to which I have belonged, has ever truly been stabbed in the back. We have been frontstabbed, sidestabbed, or even murdered. Believe me, though, each of those experiences is fundamentally different from being stabbed in the back. Furthermore, I am convinced that it is important to know the nature of the difference if we and the organizations we create are to function effectively.

Other Elements of the Landscape

While revolving around life in organizations, the material in this book tends to be very moralistic in places. Being a confessed preacher at heart, I don't apologize for that. I want you to know, though, that I am aware of it and am acutely sensitive to the potential dangers it poses to my efforts to communicate with you. My fondest hope is that whatever moralism I exhibit is a gentle reflection of my lifelong concern with organizational issues that are ethical, moral, and spiritual in nature and is not a misguided expression of narrow-mindedness that is characteristic of a religious zealot. To state this differently, I hope that my moralistic themes are not oppressive or relevant only to individuals from a single religious or spiritual tradition or relevant only to those who have a religious or spiritual tradition.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements.

The Author.

Introduction: It's Not My Dog.

Some Thoughts About Organizational Back Stabbing or How Come EveryTime I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints are on theKnife?

The Spin Doctors: An Invitation to Meditate on the OrganizationalDynamics of the Last Supper and Why Judas was not theTraitor.

On the Ethics of Standing for Something or Sitting on OurDuffs.

Learning to Not*Teach.

Prayers of Communication and Organizational Learning.

This Is a Football: Leadership and the Anaclitic DepressionBlues.

What If I Really Believe This Stuff?

Musing About the Elephant in the Parlor or "Who the Hell Is ElliotJaques?"

On Tooting Your Own Horn or Social Intervention as the Process ofReleasing Flatus in the Confines of Religious Institutions.

Ode to Waco: When Bizarre Organizational Behavior Is Concerned, GodWorks in Strange and Mysterious Ways.

When We Buy a Pig: The Tragedy of the No-Nonsesne Manager.

Afterword: In Memory of Suzanne.

Notes.

References.

Editorial Reviews

"Jerry Harvey has the uncanny ability of observing the ordinary yetseeing the extraordinary. His insights are both provocative anduseful, no common combination. Reading this book, you will learn tosee the world through another lens." (W. Warner Burke)

"Here are real organizational worlds both terrifying and hilarious,where people say and do things that they don't do anywhere else,and feel things that they don't feel anywhere else, and fortunatelyJerry Harvey is there, too, to record it, reflect on it, and helpus learn from it. Bless him!" (Peter Vaill, professor and holder ofthe Distinguished Chair in Management Education, University of St.Thomas, Minnesota)

"A decade ago, Jerry Harvey's Abilene Paradox indelibly entered thelexicon as a metaphor for unproductive group behavior. Now, he'sidentified an equally damaging-and paradoxical-pattern ofindividual self-destruction. And, once again, he offers the sameinvaluable prescription: Tell the truth to everyone-especiallyyourself. Ah, if only this time we will listen." (James O'Toole,author, Leadership A to Z)

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