I know that if I had a business and I was looking for a new worker there, I would want someone exactly like him! I mean, business is not a social club, it is for working and making the business better. It is great to have someone with good ideas and initiative. I do not understand how a company can be happy to just have the whole place full of people that are mediocre and still pretend that they are heading for something better? How does that happen?

I think you should write here a list of companies that have great leaders and who would really appreciate a worker like him. It is certainly time to move on, but where do you go when it seems like the it is the same everywhere?

I can’t avoid thinking of the Peter Principle. Check out this Wikipedia article if you don’t know it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

And definitely get yourself the book! I consider this book as one of the must-reads for any leader.

I also think that if you have a sufficient number of worker bees and aspirants, there will be no place for politicians. Although politicians might not be kicked from top-down, by the leader, they will have no support from the base (bottom-up) and starve anyway.

Also, “Observer from the UK” says that ‘… they have to get out of bed every day and ask themselves how good they feel about like.’

I don’t think politicians or survivors ask themselves these kinds of questions when they wake up, but rather : how can I earn more money today, how can I b*llshit with my co-workers more today, whom do I have to bribe today, …

Finally, you can create very dangerous mutations of the above styles. Let me introduce the:

Worker-Bee-Politician : someone who THINKS he’s a good worker-bee and actually believes that his career success is due to his good work, whereas it’s only due to his real politician-style way of doing things. This guy is a shizo, most commonly, and every company’s nightmare.

His body would actually show real signs of overwork and his brain would think they come from actual work done for the company, whereas nothing of it is true. He lives in a completely imaginary world, believing his co-workers admire him for the tough job he does, whereas everyone sees his real face, except himself. But he doesn’t care, because in the leader position he thinks he is, he just kicks everyone else out of this bubble some obscure portion of his brain created.

He cannot understand at all why top management seems to be unhappy with him, because he’s so confident in what he does that he would even accuse top management to be unaware of the real challenges. The Worker-Bee-Politician is often a true one-man-show who magically avoids most control and supervision, and is able to create a parallel world in a real company. That is where the true danger comes from.

P.S. If someone wants to make a horror movie about a worker-bee-politician creating a parallel universe in a real company, I know someone for the main role

Whenever there is a leadership vacuum, it will be filled: filled by new leadership or by politicians.

If it is let be filled by politicians, most firms can kiss goodbye an open, honest, collaborative culture and are condemned to mediocrity.

Career politicians will win few friends and while they might measure their own success by how many people they can “shaft” or outplay (survivor style )they have to get out of bed every day and ask themselves how good they feel about life.

As the old saying goes, “bad things happen when good people fail to act”.