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Corporate ladder’s good, bad and ugly
The Corner Office IT is no longer enough to be competent, and hard–working to rise to the top. Any one who nurtures such an ambition must be able to show the expected results with the abilities listed here. What sets you apart from others is the relationship that you build over the years with people who matter. The book traces the story of five men and women who are ambitious and are ultimately consumed by the power and the greed to occupy ‘The Corner Office,’that is, the Chairman’s office. They race with each other and are sucked in by the ongoing executive warfare, even when they know clearly that the road to success they are looking for is neither straight nor predictable. Each one has to pay a heavy cost for ruthless ambition. The author has beautifully portrayed how four of the five fall on the way and how the one who succeeds wonders whether what he has achieved was really worth it. The author has named the company in which these young starry-eyed entrants worked as Trust Corporation, joining which was the dream of every bright professional. One of the five had the IIT and IIM to prove himself and was assigned to the marketing function, whereas another was picked up as management trainee in campus interview of a university and was assigned to the power division of the company after 12 months of training. Of the two girls, one had been selected to undergo MBA in Harvard Business School on a full scholarship, after she had finished studies at the IIT, she was assigned to the new software division of the company, the other, an MBA from XLRI, was placed in the human resources department. The fifth management trainee was appointed as assistant manager in the corporate finance department. All of them put in their heart and soul during the training and proved themselves as the best for the job assigned. They all got married and appeared to have settled in life but started getting affected by the evils of success. One led a reckless life of drinking and cheated the company and his wife and circumstances led to his resignation. A girl who had sacrificed family life to pursue her dream, let casual sex exploits propel her to suicide. The other woman resigned as she was being side-stepped to head the software division as its MD. The man who rose to become the finance director was overtaken by greed and had to be fired. The one who ultimately makes it to The Corner Office was whose family life was perceived as good and had net-worked with the Chairman.
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The story is woven over three decades, it takes the reader back to the 1980s, when young men and women had very limited career choices but were determined to leave their mark on the world because, in most of the cases, their parents expected them to do so. Three men and two women, with different educational qualifications, cultural and financial backgrounds join a multinational corporation doing a roaring alcohol business in India. Of the same batch, all five of them are fired by the ambition to occupy the Corner Office. Like most ambitious people, all of them are not team players and are competitive individuals, leaving no opportunity to ensure that the other does not move ahead of him/her. The story is very convincing as the author has seen it all for more than 25 years before turning an entrepreneur.