Do You Work with Sharks?

If you watch any television at all, you know that evil exists in the world. That nice-looking older woman on Law & Order murdered her neighbor after cooking him a nice dinner just the week before.

As a kind-hearted person, you know this in theory, but you remain kind-hearted and generous... until one day you wake up and realize you work with a bunch of sharks.

In other words, your survival - and that of your family - depends on staying alive long enough to find safer waters.

I wish I could share "10 ways to tame the sharks" or some other pithy survival tactics, but in my experience, once a shark, always a shark. You're not going to tame a person who was taught to go into a feeding frenzy when he or she smells blood.

In fact, my advice is the opposite. When surrounded by vicious sharks, do what divers do: get the hell out of there as soon as possible, unless you have a steel cage around you.

I get a lot of emails asking me for shrewd ways to navigate treacherous waters at work, and still I return to: get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

You are no competition for evil incarnate. Do not fight a deadly predator armed only with a flower. You are not Mahatma Gandhi, and besides I am pretty certain he never worked in an office.

All your instincts are wrong. You want to reason with the sharks. You want to clear the air, bring things into the open. To them, you are wounded fish that smells like a nice appetizer.

You can't compete in this sort of environment. You have no idea how to be sly, cunning and cruel. 

If you are a kind person surrounded by sharks, move to dry land.

When I was earning my MBA at Wharton, I had an entrepreneurship professor, Miles Bass, who told our class about the time he had a few pizza shops - four or five - operating in Philadelphia. Being an analytical guy, he decided to save some money by making his own pizza sauce.

One day, three big ugly guys came to see Miles. "We don't think it's a good idea for you to make your own sauce," they said, implying that someone they knew had a stake in the sales of pizza sauce in the Philadelphia area.

"What did I do?" Miles asked the class.

Hands shot up. Eager young MBAs shouted out all sorts of creative ways to out-think the pizza sauce skeptics.

"Are you crazy?" said Miles. "I stopped making my own sauce."

He knew how to recognize a shark.

If you liked this article, you might enjoy my Kindle book, How to Self-Promote without Being a Jerk. The book describes the philosophy I use to power my own career and life, which is based around this sentence:

Be generous and kind, trustworthy and clear, open-minded and adaptable, persistent and present.

I ghostwrite articles for entrepreneurs. Learn more at Kasanoff.com.