Author: Vijay Nair
Format: Paperback
Language: English
ISBN: 9789350090596
Pages: 210
Price: Rs. 295.00
‘The Boss is not your friend’ by Vijay Nair is the self-help book gone right in every way possible. It’s too rare that way, acting as an eye-opener to an otherwise too-reluctant-to-share corporate workhouse culture.
In this book, the author shares his experience of working in the Indian corporate scenario for a long time. Designated as ‘A handbook for Indian managers to survive al things organizational’, this book carries one through the nuances of an organization from different points of view – as a normal employee, as a team leader, as a HR manager et al. The author makes it a point to take digs at the CEOs and bosses of the companies, who often ends up thinking of themselves as a person more powerful than the President Obama, for reasons unknown and illogically unfathomable to the other individuals. This mentality of these ‘species’ have been described in way never done before.
The author has quite aptly divided the bunch of bosses into six different types, namely:
1. The Oily Oyster
2. The Vicious Viper
3. The Flattering Fraud
4. The Crafty Con-Man/Woman
5. The Burly Bastion
6. The Horny Harry
With this divisions done in a section titled ‘Banging the Boss’, you don’t even need to be too deep in the book to realize that it may be the exact organizational read you have been searching for quite some time. The author also includes interesting case studies to strengthen his points in most of the places in the book, and this at times makes it a worthy read as well, coming from the horse’s mouth.
The most interesting point about ‘The Boss is not your friend’ is its interactivity with the readers. Just when you will be bored of going through the unending pages of corporate nuances, the writer comes up with questionnaires and quizzes to make the reader proactive with its causes. When you are done with the questionnaires named instruments to find out ‘what kind of boss you have’ or ‘your emotional quotient when it comes to your boss’, you find yourself marking your replies to find out the kind of boss you really have. And when you’re done with it too, you find yourself digging in the corporate/business related quizzes. And the last two chapters, named ‘Beating them All!’ and ‘Who are you kidding?’ are simply superb in their own ways.
Writing: The author Vijay Nair, with his exceptional writing abilities to turn a boring management sort book into a worthy read, is the clear winner with ‘The Boss is not your friend’. Unlike other novels of popular genres, this book does not have a regular character whose stories of experiencing different aspects of life are portrayed by the author. This book is the perfect self-help book for the ones who search for them in the train-station bookstalls, in the lonely book-seller’s stores.
‘The Boss is not your friend’ has a unique appeal that attracts even the we-hate-self-help-books types of readers to it. The intelligent point of views, the real life case studies, the captioning of situations, the unquestionably humorous and witty lines are what makes the book stand out to a different level from the otherwise boring-lecture-filled management books.
Overall Rating: 7/10
More Details:
The author on Facebook: Vijay Nair
Website: http://www.vijaynair.net/
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3 comments
Deboshree says:
Jun 9, 2011
Interesting review Bastab. I especially liked the part about reader interactivity.
ssomz says:
Jun 10, 2011
Good review :)
sayan sen says:
Jun 11, 2011
seems to be 1 filled with common shared experiences in a corporate scenario,with a notable & distinguishable feature of having the credibility of drawing the reader’s attention at unimportant instances which is but significantly impressive……..is that what you wish to convey…..?