The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 26 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People.

A kick up the bottom line:

What’s more important than the most important?

There are people who cannot accept that future success can be engi­­­­­­ne­ered. Upon reflection, they cannot remember having engineered their current state of affairs. Ironically, they do believe that future failure can be constructed.

For many people, success is like happiness — it is always somewhere else, but never here. Yet, for those who do know how to engineer their success, the process seems simple — despite the frustrations that come from obstructionists, non-believers, incompetent operators, unreliable hangers-on, and unethical colleagues.

For entrepreneurs, disappointment comes not from the frailty of others, nor from their own shortcomings, but from ignoring their own intuition. Their greatest remorse comes from knowing that their decrease in velocity was their own doing: they hesitated, skipped a beat, or allowed someone or something to distract them against their better judgement. For a genius at work, there is no greater regret than self-inflicted stupidity. My definition of stupidity is ‘knowing something, but not acting on that knowledge’. On the other hand, I describe fools as ‘those who truly desire one thing, but do something that can never get them there’, because their real desire and their real action are in conflict.

This chapter will assist you to engineer your future by answering the question, ‘What is more important than the bottom line?’ Those whose current bottom line seems satisfactory might ignore this question. Alas, this would be history repeating itself, whereby zealots hang on to a sinking ship — smug that they have a ship to hang on to.

The triple somersault

Over the years, experts have touted the need for organisations to pay attention to their ‘triple bottom line’ — referring to traditional economic profitability, plus an organisation’s social contribution, and its environmental impact and responsibility. The measure of these three (profit, society, environment) is called ‘the triple bottom line’, and it is considered to be the future indicator of successful organisations. However, the triple bottom line is not the answer that a futurist would give.

In the networked world, we walk a wobbly tightrope. We are torn between good and evil. We are forced to embrace complexity in the face of uninvited complication. We are challenged to understand speed in the whirlwind of acceleration. We have to grasp the meaning of a linked society amid the push for a connected world. All these demands are taking place within tangible and intangible forces.

By understanding the characteristics of the networked world, you would realise that reverence for the bottom line is futile. Everyone knows that a ‘bottom line’ is sometimes nothing more than a ‘bottom lie’. Managers can manipulate corporate results to the extent that their ethics will stretch.

Smart operators understand that focusing on the end result is nowhere near as powerful as focusing on the inputs. Contrary to traditional methods and beliefs, it is what ‘comes in’ that matters most. Hence, the only thing more important than the bottom line is the ‘top line’.

The funnels that contribute to the top line are staff, quality, and customers. These three aspects construct the ‘triple top line’.

It starts at the top

‘I don’t care, just do it,’ bellowed a senior Vice President (VP) on the other side of the Atlantic. We were engaged in the ritual weekly conference call. Many of my colleagues admired the VP because he had a hands-off style that allowed each country manager to do what had to be done. He did not want to know about the nitty-gritty. He just wanted results.

Most of the managers liked their independence, and they understood what was expected of them. The phrase ‘I don’t care, just do it’ was code for ‘Do whatever you have to do, no matter how dirty it gets, regardless of how many bridges you have to burn, irrespective of how many careers you have to thwart. Just do it even if you are digging a grave for yourself because if we do not make 24 percent growth this quarter, you’re a dead duck.’

That attitude reminded me of how I used to play chess at the age of eight. I played each move with no thought whatsoever to the subsequent move. I just took each turn as a totally isolated and independent challenge. Our VP did not care if we had to spill blood, pluck the heart from the organisation, or take a poison pill. His short-sightedness was only slightly less odious than that of the CEO whose myopia was frightening.

I did not fancy such a style of management. Sure, the hands-off approach was dandy, but what’s the point of having a VP whose only role was to shout at us? I would have preferred a facilitator, a supporter, a mentor, a leader, a teacher, or a visionary. Instead, he was the highest paid paperboy in the company whose only task was to call each country, collect figures, shout, and hang up. No matter where I was in the world, I had to make myself available for that dreary conference call. At one time I was in Singapore after an exhausting trip that had taken me to India, Indonesia, Philippines, and several other time zones. The VP did not hesitate to wake me up at 4:00 am in Singapore to ask me, ‘Are you going to make the numbers?’ In truth, he was not asking me anything. He was reminding me that I had better have my finger on the pulse back home, and that I had better deliver. His only mode of negotiation was via threats and innuendoes. I said, ‘What will be, will be.’ As he hung up, I realised that I had hanged myself. However, the noose around my neck loosened when, two weeks later, the VP was discharged — not for his rudeness and stupidity, but for not being rude enough! In came the next VP, and the merry-go-round continued.