A practical guide to professional and personal failure
A series of short books on how not to run a business, a service, an organization - and your own personal life.For readers who have ever thought: “This can’t possibly be intentional.”And for those who, up until now, have been blissfully unaware of how NOT to do what seemed like a good idea in a meeting.
How NOT to… is a satirical non-fiction series that documents the most reliable ways to frustrate customers, demotivate employees, sabotage otherwise functional operations, or make everyday life unnecessarily complicated.Each book is structured as a professional or personal guide — except it focuses exclusively on worst practices.Think of it as literature written from the opposite side, whether for business, politics, or life in general.
How NOT to do Customer Service
The art of exhausting customers with generic apologies and ensuring no actual problem is ever solved. Featuring endless chatbots, unreachable support, and processes designed to go in circles. Guaranteed to make every client feel lost in a maze — and eventually stop contacting you (problem solved).
Status: In progress
How NOT to Run a Hotel
Learn how to optimize for inconvenience, poor sleep, miscommunication, and unforgettable mediocrity — all while charging premium prices.
Status: In progress
How NOT to Run a Restaurant
From inconsistent opening hours to menus designed for maximum disappointment. A practical manual for operational chaos - and, in some cases, food poisoning.
Status: Planned
How NOT to Run a Beauty Business
The definitive handbook for maximizing nonsense and turning your salon or spa into a sensory assault: loud music, invasive chatter, aggressive filler, dubious hygiene, treatments that fail, and products that work only in the imagination of your marketing team.
Status: Planned
How NOT to Run a Government
The art of professional failure at the highest level: Lavish spending on consultants, endless reports, broken promises and policies that never work. Guaranteed to frustrate citizens everywhere.
Status: In progress
How NOT to Run Public Services
A masterclass in running public services with maximum paperwork, endless workshops, and initiatives that impress on paper but deliver nothing — all at the expense of common sense and decisive action. ROS analyses, KPIs, stakeholder mapping, strategic alignment exercises, make-work jobs, layered management, and employment measures, all carefully designed to generate reports instead of results.
Status: In progress
How NOT to Design Customer Communication
A step-by-step guide to how banks, insurers, telecoms, and other "helpful" service providers can turn simple questions into endless loops, automated messages, painfully slow phone menus that make every call feel eternal, and mild existential crises.
Status: In progress
How NOT to Start a Business
A guide to false advertising, products nobody needs, and entrepreneurial disasters waiting to happen. Learn how to turn ambition into noise and cheap polyester. Because why create value when you can fill the world with junk instead?
Status: In progress
How NOT to Sell
A guide to sales gone wrong: Over-the-top flattery, pushy sales lines, and “look how much I love this” tactics — manipulative, obvious, and entirely counterproductive.
Status: In progress
How NOT to Get a Partner
Master the art of awkward texts, disappearing acts, and giving all the wrong signals. Guaranteed to repel love.
Status: In progress
How NOT to Interfere With New Parents
A masterclass in overstepping: bringing unwanted and poentially harmful gifts, sneaking sweets to the baby, and offering advice no one asked for - all while thinking they are helping. Perfect reading for anyone who wants to witness polite chaos at its finest.
Status: Planned
How NOT to Manage Your Life
A masterclass in chaos: overspending, missing morning routines, ignoring self-care, neglecting loved ones, and failing spectacularly at relationships. Might inspire both laughter and horror.
Status: Planned
How NOT to React Rationally
A guide to turning neutral feedback into drama, overthinking every word, and inventing slights where none exist.
Status: Planned
How NOT to Influence People
A guide to chasing clout, hashtagging everything, oversharing every thought, and turning a personality into a full-time performance with zero real-world value. Because why solve real world problems when you can craft content about yourself?
Status: Planned
Many books describe what should be done, whether in business or in life.
This series documents what is actually done — repeatedly — across industries, workplaces, families, relationships, and everyday life.
By examining failure in a systematic way, the patterns become obvious. And occasionally, useful.
Written by someone who has spent years observing people and organizations do the wrong thing with absolute confidence.No companies are named. No individuals are targeted. The systems and actions speak for themselves.
Because being clueless shouldn’t be a solo sport.