The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer

How Executives Fail: Tasting Surefire Recipe #8

Recipe #8: How to Get Addicted

Get addicted to your comfort zone, to the fact that you’re always right, and to those who can’t, or won’t.

Such addictions will carry you through to the failure you seek ... and deserve.

How Executives Fail: Tasting Surefire Recipe #7

Recipe #7: How to Be Tolerant of Those Who Can't ... Or Won't

There are lots of folks who can’t do what needs doing. There are lots of others who simply won’t. These are your allies.

Reward them and you’ve made a mighty contribution to your cause:
failing with style.

How Executives Fail: Tasting Surefire Recipe #6

Recipe #6: "How to Maintain Your Gullibility"

Be gullible.

Assume that others’ praise of you is deserved, even if it has less fervor behind it than seems justified. Soak up the bullshit, especially if it’s about you.

The sheer weight will help you fail.

How Executives Fail: Tasting Surefire Recipe #5

Recipe #5: "How to Be the Measure of All Things"

A lot of people think they are the measure of all things, but the trick is to be the measure of all things.

Know-it-alls abound. Be superior to those amateurs, and you’re on your way to failure.

How Executives Fail: Tasting Surefire Recipe #4

Recipe #4: "How to Nourish Incompetence in Others"

You can’t fail, any more than you can succeed, without the help of other people.

Surround yourself with incompetents, and be their model for becoming more so. Then you can’t help but fail.

How Executives Fail: Tasting Surefire Recipe #3

Recipe #3: "How to Develop Your Own Incompetence"

How people manage to become incompetent is the only real secret left. Many of your colleagues have been promoted into roles they are not competent to perform, for various reasons ... or none that can be discerned. So if you are to fail with flair and dispatch, you'll need to uncover this secret and expand your existing incompentencies. One of the tips: practice failing when times are good.

How Executives Fail: Tasting Surefire Recipe #2

Recipe #2: "How to 'Achieve' Mediocrity"

Most people (executives barely included) are on the slippery slope to mediocrity.

Do what most everybody else is doing, and you can easily fail in that way.

[Note: the full text of Recipe #2 is available in the "Look Inside this Book" link at WMEBooks.com.]

How Executives Fail: Tasting Surefire Recipe #1

In the final editing of my new book, How Executives Fail: 25 Surefire Recipes for Sabotaging Your Career, my publishers convinced me to omit a review section I had called the CODA. Not wishing to waste my time and toil in writing those terse snippets, I've decided to share them here in a weekly feature called:

Recipe #1: "How to Breed Failure from Success"

If you imagine any success you may have had in the past was solely your doing, apply that explanation in every situation from now on.

If you do that, eventually, but inevitably, you will fail.

[Note: the full text of Recipe #1 is available in the "Look Inside this Book" link at WMEBooks.com.]