Office Cowboys

You’ve seen the movies. You know the tropes. The rugged, stubborn, and iconic American cowboy is too tough to die, too mean to quit, and too proud to live by anyone else’s rules. Larger-than-life cowboy characters are heroes on the silver screen, where the stories are made up and the consequences don’t truly matter.

In the modern office, however, these aggressive individualists can be a massive pain in everyone’s neck. The stubborn, oppositional, uncooperative, and all-around unreliable office cowboy, on the other hand, is tremendously corrosive to discipline, productivity, and team morale. The all-too-common "I do what I want" non-conformist won’t listen to reason. They push social boundaries, break all the rules, and seem determined to make the boss’s life a living hell.

If you’ve ever wondered how to handle your own office cowboy, then this book is for you. In this collection of 20 new and expanded columns, Business Reporter’s resident American correspondent Keil Hubert studies the personality types, culture, and social forces that allow these disruptive characters to thrive in the modern white-collar business setting…and recommends some pragmatic tactics for reining your varmints in when they inevitably challenge your authority.