The Manager as Sociopath: A 12 Step Program

gapingvoid.com

by Hugh MacLeod Your Business Blogger advises a number of very competent business leaders and managers. Each looking to take their organizations to the next level.

But change is required. Brutal. Mean spirited. Humorless. Dark.

To become a spectacular success, there is only one solution:

Become a sociopath.

Or start thinking like one.

One in 25 is a sociopath;

that’s 24 you are not competing against

Need to fire someone?

Think like a sociopath.

Need to hire someone?

Think like a sociopath.

Need to close a manufacturing plant?

Think like a sociopath.

Need to increase sales?

Think like a sociopath.

Need to be on budget?

Think like a sociopath.

Need to step over fellow managers?

Think like a sociopath.

This takes training and practice and sacrifice. A sociopath’s kind of sacrifice. Start with these sacrificial lambs:

Dump your wife or spouse or other. Jack Welsh and Rush Limbaugh and Barney Frank come to mind.

Dump church or synagogue or mosque or coven.

No. Join a mosque.

Dump the kids.

Dump the relations. (Except for your rich Uncle Bingham.)

Dump the non-profit volunteering.

Dump the political parties. (But continue to donate to the Democratic National Convention.)

From the American Society of Sociopaths or AS… well, never mind.

(Twelve steps, modeled after AA, definitely without permission)

1. We admit that we are powerless over our character flaw – that our lives have become unmanageable — we like it that way.

2. We have come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity — but we don’t care.

3. We have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God or Society, as we understand Him/Her/Them — if we trusted them more than we trusted our own judgment and responsibility.

4. We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves — and have found nothing wrong.

5. We have admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being(?) the exact nature of our wrongs — perfection.

6. We are entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character — (assuming he put them there in the first place?)

7. We humbly [sic] ask Him to remove our shortcomings — easy job, since there are few.

8. We have made a list of all persons we have harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all — by getting out of their lives.

9. We will make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others — (see number 8)

10. We will continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it — however, other people will surely take on this responsibility for us.

11. We have sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out — daddy replacement?

12. Having had this spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps, we will carry this message to other Sociopaths, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (see also sex addicts anonymous)

Remember, an effective sociopath has no conscience and can do anything without feeling guilty. Normal people, who can be dismissed as pathetic empathetics, exist only to be ruled and managed.

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Thank you (foot)notes:

Also see Hypocrisy Today.

See Are Managers Sociopaths?

See Business Pundit with a terrific example.

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