Culture & Behavior

Find someone who tells you exactly what to do. Then it's their responsibility to follow up on how you're progressing. As long as they don’t ask, you don’t have to lift a finger. And if it turns out to be the wrong thing, well, that’s not your problem, is it?

When someone makes a suggestion, don’t hold back with comments or criticism. But whatever you do, don’t make a concrete counterproposal—otherwise, you’ll be stuck in the mess too.

Always remain positive and optimistic, even when the numbers and data clearly indicate otherwise. This way, you’ll keep your employees motivated until the very last moment and deliver the maximum surprise to your stakeholders.

Make yourself indispensable by leveraging your experience and relying on tried-and-true strategies you’re familiar with, regardless of whether they’re the best fit for the specific situation. This way, you ensure you never have to bother with new approaches.

Prefer hiring people who already know everything—and make sure they have that "know-it-all" attitude, too. This saves you the hassle of investing in their development. Performance reviews become completely unnecessary, freeing up your valuable time.

If you're looking to cut costs, make the organizational purchasing process as complex as possible. This encourages employees to just pay smaller amounts out of their own pockets—after all, it's faster than navigating the system. A true win-win: less budget spent, and more initiative shown.

Only learn when explicitly asked to—and strictly during working hours, to protect your work-life balance. If you do need to learn something new, avoid practical experience or asking colleagues at all costs. Stick to passive consumption of learning content—that’s the most efficient way to stay safely uninvolved.

To demonstrate your commitment to cost consciousness, never book flexible tickets when traveling. It also signals just how much confidence you have in your own planning—after all, what could possibly go wrong?

Always have yourself picked up from the airport by a private taxi service with a driver. This ensures you won’t get lost in the maze of public transportation and risk being late to your meeting. After all, the car is cheaper than having three managers wait around. Plus, it’s a great way to demonstrate—or subtly obscure—your hierarchical status and reinforce your position of power.

If you change existing rules, publish the new version in a different location without deleting the old one. That way, no matter what goes wrong later, you can always refer to some version of the “current” rules—and you’ll never be wrong.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression—so make sure your colleagues know exactly what to expect from you right from the start. Avoid standing out through excessive friendliness, enthusiasm, or proactive questions. If you don’t understand something, just do nothing. After all, it’s the responsibility of the more experienced colleagues to provide you with all the necessary information—and to notice when you’re stuck.

From day one, retreat to your workspace and keep interactions with others to a minimum—you wouldn’t want to distract anyone from their work or disrupt their train of thought.

If you have a workspace with a door, always keep it closed. This protects you from unexpected visits or pesky requests for help from colleagues. And if someone does manage to enter, make sure to stare intensely at your screen and keep typing without pause—clearly signaling that you're not available and don’t wish to be disturbed. It’s a crucial tactic for demonstrating busyness and keeping extra work at bay.

If you’re assigned as a buddy for a new employee, make sure you’re unavailable on their first day—and then conveniently leave for a business trip or vacation. The first few weeks are crucial for teaching the newcomer that no one will be there to help them find their way in this new environment. A valuable lesson in independence right from the start.

You won’t understand everything right away or use every tool correctly—and that’s perfectly fine. Your colleagues don’t either. There’s no point trying, since shortcuts, processes, and tools all change every 6–12 months anyway. Just use everything the way you think makes sense—no need to Google or read help pages; after all, you have a degree, and only losers read manuals. If someone points out a mistake, just say it was a test and ask them to demonstrate the correct way. That way, you won’t be exposed—and better yet, they’ll end up doing the task for you.

During meetings, keep your eyes glued to your phone or type constantly—after all, multitasking is one of the most vital management skills. If you want to climb the career ladder, you need to show that you can handle everything at once. Chime in occasionally, regardless of the topic. Prepare a few go-to phrases like: “Sorry, customer escalation—where are we right now?” “That still feels too vague to me. What exactly are we talking about here?” This keeps you looking attentive, engaged, and strategically important—without the burden of actually following the discussion.

No meeting without PowerPoint. If you’re short on ideas, just borrow from the archive—anything you find in the intranet or scattered across the various storage systems will do. All you need is a fitting title, delete any source references, and add plenty of animations to sufficiently distract from the actual content. Since you can’t assume colleagues are really paying attention, repetition is not only acceptable—it’s encouraged. It’s always helpful to begin each meeting by repeating everything that was already covered in the last one.

To support your career ambitions, feel free to shamelessly reuse the content and ideas of others—just rephrase them slightly and present them under a flashy new name as your own groundbreaking innovation. Using bold buzzwords, catchy acronyms, arbitrary statistics, and lots of visuals will help your presentation gain maximum traction with management.

When someone comes to you with a problem, just solve it yourself—preferably with a sigh and a visibly annoyed expression. Avoid giving any helpful explanations. This way, your colleague learns nothing new and won’t develop beyond you. Plus, it’s quicker, earns you respect, and ensures you remain indispensable—not just to that one person, but to the whole team. Your legendary status as the office hero will spread in no time.

A company’s success is, of course, measured by its numbers. And if those numbers don’t quite look the way they should, don’t waste time digging into root causes like poor quality, customer dissatisfaction, or lack of efficiency. Instead, reach for the trusted tool of financial engineering: twist, shift, and massage the figures until they shine—at least for now—regardless of what’s actually going on. The real problems? Simply push them into the next fiscal year, where they’ll either become someone else’s issue or, with a bit of luck, can be creatively rebranded once again.

To avoid being disturbed by colleagues, make strategic use of the status function in Outlook and Teams. Set yourself as “out of office” to subtly suggest that no one should expect a response. Important: your OOO message should always reference a conference or workshop—never imply actual time off. On the flip side, show extra dedication by answering emails even while on vacation or sick leave. And for maximum effect? Delay sending your replies so they land in inboxes in the middle of the night. Nothing says commitment like a 2:47 AM timestamp.