Nick's Blog

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace was recommended in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.  Author Gordon MacKenzie was a 30-year veteran of Hallmark, and offers up a unique perspective on navigating the corporate landscape and climbing the proverbial ladder.

It’s clear from the very beginning this is not another one of your “standard” business books.  There are doodles in the margin on nearly every page, and sometimes the doodles are in fact part of the text.  Entire chapters are told through sketches and scrawling handwriting.  No bullet-points, no lecturing, no advice.  Just a new way to look at some common truths about organizations.  For example, the entire text of Chapter 19 reads: “Orville Wright did not have a pilot’s license.”

MacKenzie describes traditional corporations as Hairballs, with each rule, regulation, procedure, layer of management, and bureaucracy as hairs adding to the entangled mess of the Hairball.  To thrive, he argues, you can’t allow yourself to be caught up in the Hairball; instead, you must orbit.  There’s a fine line between orbiting and launching yourself off into deep space, which usually ends up getting you fired.  While orbiting, you afford yourself the creativity to perform at your best and still be responsible to the overall goals of the organization.

The book is really a series of kooky stories from MacKenzie’s Hallmark experience and from his creativity workshops.  I liked the stories, and they always seemed to have a pertinent business metaphor.   In one example, MacKenzie tells a story about going to see a championship pool match, in which the professional player sinks all the balls with amazing ease.  Having expected to witness a much more challenging feat of skill, the author was disappointed.  Later, he came to the conclusion that the work was easy because the man was incredibly good at his job.  The unwritten assumption was that if you’re constantly working really hard, maybe you’re not that good at your job.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball is definitely recommended reading for anyone working within a large organization, and there are even some takeaways for entrepreneurs too.