IL Metodo Antistronzi: A Fast and Fun Trip To Italy

Stronz-busters means asshole busters.

I had a great time promoting "The Anti-Asshole Method" in Italy. One of the highlights was a conference where speeches were given by a well-known journalist, an official from the ministry of labor, a union leader, and an executive, who all spoke out against the problem of assholes in Italian organizations.  It was interesting that the Italian term for asshole, "stronz" or "stronzi," was described by each speaker as the best term for these creeps -- so it appears to translate pretty well.  And although I've had people make this comment to me many times in the United States, I've never have heard it from members of a panel at a formal conference. I also did a whirlwind of about 10 interviews for TV, radio, and newspapers (with help from three different translators), and had about 3,000 visitors to this blog from a story in Corriere Dela Sera, the leading paper in Rome, which talked about it as "Metodo antibastardi," or the anti-bastard method.  We also had great fun on Saturday morning when a producer from a TV show called "Uno Mattina" decided that my hotel lobby was too dull to shoot the interview and just walked into a bookstore a couple doors down and convinced them to let us film it there -- then he decided that his parents should be in on the fun (he was perhaps 40, they were perhaps in their late 70's) and he invited them to watch the interview, and kept putting them in background shots.  That was a lot of fun because he was so full of life.

My hosts  Felice, Loretta, and Patrizia from Elliot Edizoni  took wonderful care of me. Everything was organized well and they took me out to three long and lovely Italian dinners, plus one long lunch, not bad given I was in Italy less than 72 hours. They were charming and extremely entertaining.  It was inspiring to be around them because they aren't cogs in some giant publishing house that is weighed down with arbitrary and silly traditions.  They are running start-up, with everyone working to do what needs to be done.  They have also embraced the web with more sophistication than most U.S. publishers.  Indeed, Patrizia was delighted when their blog on IL Metodo Antistronzi got over 12,000 hits on Friday, the day that the Corriere Dela Sera story came out.   They have printed about 150,000 copies of the book, so the "anti-asshole method" is well-known in Italy.

Felice and his colleagues will also be publishing my other books in Italian, Weird Ideas That Work, The Knowing-Doing Gap, and  Hard Facts. I hope that we can use the publication of those books as an excuse to see each other again, as they are great people.

P.S. I learned some interesting things about workplace assholes and their management in Italy, and I will write about that in a few days. 

Comments

[Bill Roth]

Fascinating word. Italian being a flexible language, there are alot of fun things you could do with it. For example, a plain asshole is a stronzo, but in Italian, nouns have gender, and they also have fun modifiers like diminutives. So you could have the following:

Stronzi: bunch of assholes
Stronza: female asshole (and don't pretend there aren't any)
Stronze: a bunch of stronzas.
Stronzino: a little asshole
Stronzini: a bunch of little assholes
Stronzone: a BIG asshole
Stronzaccio: a big, bad asshole
Stronzaccio: a big, bad, stronza

I am sure there are more.....

[felice]

Dear Robert,Thank you for your kind words. I was honored to be able to invite a wise social observer and an extraordinary writer to Rome. On behalf of myself and the Elliot staff, we really hope to see you again soon. Besides being a great modern thinker, we discovered you are a wonderful human being.
all our best
felice