The Case of the Saboteur Colleague
Harvard Business Review is well know for its home-brewed case studies invoking sticky business situations, which are then "solved" by invited business leaders and consultants. HBR also offers cases for readers to noodle over and comment upon.
What do you do when your important presentation has just been sabotaged by an aggressive colleague? That's the issue is HBR's highly entertaining When Your Colleague Is a Saboteur.
Interestingly, the "experts" think the protagonist, Mark, is at fault for letting himself be trapped by co-worker Nicole, and then making the situation worse. Many readers, however, also saw a larger issue -- that of an organization in crisis. Can this fictional company really allow such juvenile and destructive behavior, especially around an important client?
But that's so grown up! Jesse Nichols 67 offers a much more vindictive solution that appeals to our sense of the immature:
"Next big presentation meeting, go by Nicole's place about 4:00 AM and put super glue in her car's door locks. Causally, erase her hard drive with a powerful magnet. Hope she gets to the meeting late with her powerpoints on her non-functioning laptop. Total War. Meanwhile. Do your job right."What do you think?
(Sabotage image by jblyberg, CC 2.0)