The Agency Game: Inside The Bureaucratic Jungle by William B. Parker

The Agency Game: Inside The Bureaucratic Jungle

The Unofficial Employee Handbook

William B. Parker

BOOK CATEGORY: Government/Political Science (primary); also Self-Help, Philosophy, Sociology, Religion, Narrative, Essay, even Humor.

ABOUT THE BOOK. Once you open it up and just thumb through the rich and extensive list of topics, you will learn THE AGENCY GAME — where the land mines lie…and how to avoid them. Find out how to classify your colleagues and supervisors. Understand what passes for performance so you may know the criteria by which your efforts will truly be judged. Spot the office stoolie. Learn to experience the joy of leaking to the media without being discovered – or fired – and how to control the media. You will feel an exulted thrill as you discover how experts grab power and keep it. As THE AGENCY GAME is played at the highest levels, you will learn how to bend the agency’s statutory mission to your agenda – so that nobody can stop you! In other words, the greatest game of all, played at the micro-level.

The product of years of detailed observation and painstaking effort to research, collate, analyze, describe and transcribe, this masterwork, rooted in clinically observed reality and painstakingly recorded, annotated with real life cases and events, integrates the theoretical with the observed. Not theoretical mumbo-jumbo; no, it’s firmly rooted in the real world — hey, all you have to do is just read it once to know that none of it could be made up. Problem is, once you’ve read through it the first time, you will return to it again and again, reread it over and over, because multiple reading repays the reader exponentially.

Nowhere else, under a single cover, will you encounter all this material – nor will you come across any remotely similar reference guide! Infinitely more useful than a dictionary, this is simply the most comprehensive, practical reference for government work you will ever find; readers of the draft manuscript refer to it constantly. The procedures, lessons and wisdom set forth here are universal, cross-cultural; equally valid in the First, Second and Third worlds: they apply across all areas of government service – military, diplomatic, welfare and social services, even boxing commissions; they apply across all branches of government – executive, judicial and legislative; they apply throughout all levels of government – federal, state, regional, local, and everything in between.

CRITICS call this masterwork… Insightful – Funny – Brilliant -- Disturbing – Outrageous – Offensive -- Appalling – Cynical – Contemptible – Real Politic– In Your Face – Politically Incorrect -- Nothing Remotely Like It! – An Instant Classic!

Guilty on all counts!

If you hold an agency position of any responsibility, this is the one resource you’ll want to have, you’ll have to have – and once you’ve read it, you won’t want it in your subordinates’ hands. So keep it away from the office…or under lock and key!

ORDER your copy NOW!

www.Xlibris.com

ISBN13 (TP) : 978-1-4257-4363-5
ISBN13 (HB) : 978-1-4257-4364-2

WHO CAN BENEFIT FROM THIS MANUAL?

— Students contemplating a public service career. This manual will alert you to what you can truly expect. You will find government agency life may differ significantly from the blather you’ve been fed by political, teaching, professorial and media hacks.

— Entry-Level Professionals. This book should disabuse most of you of ideas about crusading to save the world, and save you from having your nose bloodied by colleagues who benefit from the status quo. Here are the land mines and how to avoid ‘em. What type of person to suck up to. Most important: How to reach retirement with your benefit package intact!!!

— Crusaders Out to Save the World. The tools you can use to get your agenda implemented. If you can stand the wait.

— Career Public Servants. Those who have read the book agree that it sharpens and deepens your understanding of the job, of the agency in which you work. Many little things you noticed and took for granted now take on new meaning. In that sense, it makes your job easier.

— Senior (Appointed) Managers and Agency Heads. This manual sets forth the ploys and procedures you will need to control your destiny, to have your tenure at the top play itself out as smoothly and uneventfully as possible. Control your work force. Project your chosen image inside as well as outside your agency. Keep outside busybodies outside -- where they belong…

— For the Staffer Who has Maxed Out in Pay, Perks, Prestige and Power, this is the manual for how to keep them till retirement…even if you have to hang on for 30 years.

— For the Power-Seeker who craves to get ahead, to build his empire, here are explicit ways to bring it off.

— For the General Public, this book is NOT written for you. You will find it enlightening, infuriating, troubling. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it!

For the first time, a book that seeks to explain not merely the pitfalls of government agency service, but to codify and systematize all phenomena that take place under a simple, easily understood format. In the words of one staffer, “I keep it in my office, and I REFER TO IT EVERY FRIGGING DAY.”

WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT:

—It’s NOT about “Better Government” -- eliminating waste and corruption, best practices, that nonsense.

—It’s NOT about “the Public Good” or “the Public Benefit.”

—It’s NOT about “making a difference” or “giving back.” Hell no, this is about taking!

—It’s NOT about Getting Elected or Getting Appointed (that’s up to you). This book’s for the grunts, the payrollers, the wonks and staffers who carry out all those policies, not for the preening elected politicians who deliver them their marching orders.

—It’s NOT about partisan politics, doesn’t favor one party over another.

—It’s NOT for the General Public . Besides, who cares what they think? Or want?

In short, this manual is NOT written Scouts. It’s about governing an ignorant, suspicious, ungrateful public who believe themselves entitled to all the bennies and goodies your agency hands out, who constantly expect something for nothing, who don’t give a hoot either about you or what goes on at your agency.

But…if you do want to save the world, or exercise power as you see fit, it tells you how to go about doing so. Because this manual is about power and how to keep it. How to manipulate elected politicians, how to leash a suspicious media. How to project your desired image to a suspicious, uncaring electorate. How, even, to impose your agenda on an ignorant, uncaring, unsuspecting electorate when YOU KNOW YOU’RE RIGHT!

TOPICS COVERED include:

—Forestalling Budget Cutbacks

—Bringing the Media Under Your Control

—Building the Power Team that Keeps You On Top

—Saying Yes and No

—Avoiding Blame

—Garnering Credit

—Leadership

—Patronage

—Ethics

—Understanding your Colleagues, and how they are motivated

And much, much more.

But this book is more than a manual. That rarest publication, it merges the theoretical with the practical into easy to understand behavioral models without a lot of accompanying techno-gobbledegook or political slogans or similar drivel. Important points are annotated by easy-to-read, often humorous real-life case studies, all of them true, some of them classics. This manual classifies and codifies not only the behavior that takes place inside agencies — all of them at all levels — but, recognizing that agencies are living entities, actors that each day must exist and interact in an environment with other actors (legislative bodies, the media, other agencies, even the public), this manual also explores behavior imposed by external forces. Where possible, it benchmarks the practices of leading practitioners of THE AGENCY GAME -- proven techniques for amassing, retaining, exercising and projecting power. Not just a shopping list of ploys and dodges, but goes deeply into the whys-and-wherefores. Groundbreaking insights, ALL UNDER ONE COVER! The result: an understanding of agency behavior that is rarely achieved by career staffers.

WHAT CAN I LEARN FROM THIS EXTRAORDINARY BOOK? From this manual, you can learn…

—How to bring the media to heel, to have them eat from your hand like so many squirrels in the park.

—More about the media than most of them even know about themselves or their own business.

—How to leak to the media without getting fired.

—How to spot and handle disloyal employees.

—The day-to-day tools of statecraft and governance, and how to use them to your advantage.

—Ways to trump rivals and neutralize enemies.

—exercise and project power, and impose YOUR agenda...so(your agenda) so that it gets implemented below the radar of elected officials, the media and the public.

—How to produce the required paperwork that substitutes for real, substantive output so no one can blame you.

—How your agency really ticks. The public neither know nor care about what goes on inside government agencies. Neither do the media, nor elected officials nor, even, many appointed ones.

—A portfolio of behaviors that will land your butt jobless in the street or get it transferred to Juneau — and how to avoid them.

—Numerous ploys for keeping yourself on top. The levers to pull and the buttons to push, to project your chosen image, to implement YOUR agenda, regardless of what the politicians, the media or an unknowing or uncaring public either think or want.

If after reading all this, you are a staff professional and naturally you want to learn more, then all you have to do is just order the book. That's right! One of the easiest and least expensive ways to add to your stock of knowledge, to increase the net value of the human capital you bring to the table. At worst, an amusing, informative read. At best, one of the wisest, most valuable investments you will ever make!

So Why Wait?

ORDER your copy RIGHT NOW!

www.Xlibris.com

ISBN13 (TP) : 978-1-4257-4363-5
ISBN13 (HB) : 978-1-4257-4364-2