What Would Machiavelli Do? The
Ends Justify the Meanness by
Stanley Bing
If You Can't Fire Them Make Them Crazy!!!
Machiavelli would feel at home in industry today. You dont need a
birthright to be a modern prince--just an impulsive ruthlessness such as
he described four centuries ago while trying to get back into the good
graces of a Medici nobleman. A clever guy like him could really go places.
Stanley Bing, a columnist for Fortune, is also a clever guy. In real life he
has another name and works for a media company (a very, very clever
person could probably patch together the clues he offers and figure out
the company, if not the actual person), and as such hes been our spy
behind corporate lines since he first started writing for Esquire back in
1984. In What Would Machiavelli Do? Bing gleefully offers hard-boiled
Machiavellian advice about whom to fire in a downsizing (consultants first,
secretaries last), how to make employees love you (Give them perks....
When theyre spending your money, you own them), and why its important

that you also kick ass (one of the ways: cutting them off curtly when they
speak) and take names (so people know youll not only hurt them, youll
also go after their friends). The overriding lesson of this book is always to
love yourself, never apologize for anything you do, and when all else fails,
recognize that the truth is flexible, and so can be bent any way you want.
What makes all this amorality funny is that Bing plays it straight, putting
his ruthless advice into an easily digestible how-to format. Sometimes the
only way you can tell its satire is when he mixes the musings of Adolf
Hitler and Pol Pot in with those of modern business figures such as former
Sunbeam CEO Chainsaw Al Dunlap. Firing people, killing people--same
rules, different game. --Lou Schuler
Personal Review: What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify
the Meanness by Stanley Bing
With this book, businessman and Fortune Magazine columnist Stanley
Bing began a long and continuing career of attacking outrageous bosses
and managerial practices. There is no shortage of material in these
categories, and this book is a good introduction to how rich the field of
managerial abuse is.
This is not a book for true Machiavelli fans. Those who want to savor the
finely nuanced distinctions and advices of Machiavelli's THE PRINCE will
not be able to do so here. Indeed Bing delivers a classic put-down to the
man he calls "the master": "the fact that it's very difficult to understand
anything the master says gets in the way of our ability to walk, straight and
secure, down his path."
What we have dissected here is not Machiavelli the sagacious adviser and
pioneer of the field of Political Science, but Machiavelli as a cultural icon
standing for the extension of personal wealth and power to the exclusion of
all other considerations. "To live true to the vision of the master, we must
be as selfish, narcisstic, manipulative, driven and creative in getting what
we want as we can be, not just in our important business actions, but
where it really counts: in our hearts. You can do it. This book will help."
A true Machiavellian, in the author's sense of the term, would always be
unpredictable, and thus would gain the advantage of keeping everyone
else off balance. In love with his destiny, always at war, for the most part a
paranoid freak, he would think BIG, acquire his neighbor, move like a
shark, eating as he goes, killing people's careers, but only if he could feel
good about himself afterwards.
A true Machiavellian would fire his own mother if necessary, make a virtue
out of his obnoxiousness, be way upbeat, be satisfied with nobody but
himself, embrace his own madness, do what he feels like doing, say what
he feels like saying, delegate all the crummy tasks except the ones that he
enjoys, respond poorly to criticism, perennially carry grudges, lie when
necessary, be proud of his cruelty and see it as strength, permanently
cripple those who disappoint him, torture people until they were only too

happy to destroy themselves, feast on other people's discord, make you
fear for your life, be loyal to people who could put up with him, have no
patience for anybody, never say he's sorry, have no conscience to speak
of, scream at people a lot, establish and maintain a psychotic level of
control, would eat to kill, and would have fun with his career and his life.
The author drifts in and out of satire and sober evaluation. His concluding
paragraph summarizes much of the book: "Good may often be its own--
and only--reward in this competitive, malevolent, and unfair world. This
may be most true in business, where the unsympathetic aspects of human
character are compensated most lavishly. But evil does have its
limitations, ones that even the biggest, baddest Machiavellis around should
keep in mind."
This book would be a great supplement to courses on business ethics and
courses on management. Its tongue in cheek evocations of Saddam
Hussein, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Caligua grab
attention and serve as a warning to the those humor-deprived people who
might view sections of this book as a serious guide.
Its graphs--based on no hard information whatsoever--demonstrate serious
points. The "normal world view" is that the vast majority of people are
friends or potential friends while the "Machiavelli world view" is that the
vast majority of people are enemies or potential enemies. "The bigger you
are" the "less you like" criticism.
"Performance" is greater "with ruthless competition" than without it. The
Machiavelli personality is high on fear, aggression, self, and golf to the
exclusion of conscience and hobbies and to the marginalization of family
and friends. The greater the control a Machiavelli has, the more fun he
has. The joys of retirement--golf and not being bothered by idiots--wear off
after a couple of years.
This book, in short, could be retitled "How to Succeed in Business by
Failing as a Human Being." In the author's words, "only individuals who
are monmaniacal and driven to the exclusion of all else stand a chance of
rising to the top." The price of success, the author says, "is to adjust your
personality to remove as much conscience as is possible." The price of
getting to the top, the author makes clear, is not worth it by the rules of the
modern day Machiavellis.
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