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Last Word: Deeper and Deeper
July 07, 2008
Disaster hunters populate the precincts of power. Think of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, think of Enron's Kenneth Lay. This month Stanley Bing explains why you should watch out for this species of crazy boss.
By Stanley Bing
What could be more exciting than actually falling off the edge? Possibly nothing, especially when you've been crazy for so long. When the thrills get harder and harder to find, and the anxiety gets tougher and tougher to take ... enter the disaster hunter.
The collective weight of the crazy boss's psyche on his fragile self cannot be supported forever. In current parlance, his existence is not sustainable. After a while, it crushes in on him, pressing from within while the pressure of daily business assaults him from without. For as long as he can stand it (which may be longer than you can), he is in critical condition, terminal, because he's addicted to something that will eventually kill him. It could be power, or adrenaline, or the taste of his own gall, or booze or pills or ... He needs the hit that gets him off and can't do without it.
He's in trouble and he's going to fall. He knows it, somewhere in his crazy heart. And, deep down, he doesn't mind the prospect of his eventual demise, not really, because in addition to all his other obnoxious pathologies, he is also a wounded beast seeking an end to his pain and torment. Part of him, in fact, is going about the task of actively creating the final solution, hunting his own disaster with all the energy that his madness imparts. And that's a lot.
He's a man or a woman on the road to his or her own particular destiny, and his determination to reach that dark end will not be denied.
Those who seek examples of the disaster hunter in our larger culture need look no farther than their daily newspaper. In politics, the arts, business, we see the specter of crazy mothers melting down, parboiling in their own craziness, stalking the destruction that will put them out of their misery, being hoisted on their own petards, whatever those are.
I have worked for dozens of people. Ninety-two percent of them were in one way or another crazy bosses. Of that number, all destroyed themselves, some quickly, some over time. Ironically, perhaps, the least crazy are often the first to go. As we have seen, the power that comes from true insanity often provides excellent body armor.
Excerpted from CRAZY BOSSES by Stanley Bing. Copyright © 2007 by Stanley Bing. Reprinted by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers. Readers interested in bulk purchases of Crazy Bosses may contact the HarperCollins special markets department at (212) 207-7528, or by e-mail at spsales@harpercollins.com.
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