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Thursday, July 27

Book review: Hello Laziness 

Hello Laziness by Corinne Maier. Book review by Harvey Chan.

(Bonjour Paresse)
If you are someone who has corporate aspirations, really motivated and loyal do well for your firm, then this is not the book for you.

This international bestseller really took Europe by storm. Its a witty, intelligent, irreverent wake up call about whats going on under the covers in a big corporation. Its not even 'work smarter, not harder', more like 'Work harder at not working at all'!

Corinne Maier is a part time economist for Electricite de France(EdF), her book sets about tearing away at the idealistic view of the machinations of a company, its management, and their loyalty to their people, and replacing it with a much darker, more cynical view of the motives behind corporate activities.

She starts rather gently, telling you flat out that corporations don't care about you. She touches on some lighter topics like the 'language of business' and how
to decode it, to warnings to individualists to get out while they can, identifying types of managers and fellow workers, then dives deeper and deeper in the subtleties of corporate culture like 'corporate strategy' or 'ethics'. Even the IT department doesn't escape her acid analysis - she has a whole section set aside for them.

But don't think that this book is whimsical and shallow. The author has reinforced her analysis with facts and figures to structure and defend her argued conclusions. And she doesn't just tell you how bad things are, she often provides (subversive) views about everything, and methods to avoid or fight them. She's not afraid of drawing inspiration from a range of eclectic sources to describe things, using quotes and analogies from the likes of other significant books in this anti-establishment genre, such as No Logo: No Space, No Choice, to Globalization and its
Discontents, to of course, The Dilbert Principle. The author is French, so there is an intriguing list of French material cited in the book.

In conclusion, The book reads like Harvard Business Review version of Dilbert, and is worth a look for an offbeat intelligent read, perhaps to be offered an alternative perspective on business, and perhaps to compare notes with what you have already learnt - just don't let your manager catch you reading it.

posted 10:56 PM  

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