These days office life is all about rallying the troops and motivating the workers. Platitudinous posters, parable-filled management books, increasingly complicated incentive programs - the list is endless. Unfortunately all this pointless backslapping only succeeds in giving employees false confidence. Worse still it gives them delusions of grandeur when all they really need is to be taken down a peg or three.

This is why you really must read 'The Art of Demotivation'. This brilliantly cynical, myth-exploding management book has been written by subversive business guru and founder of Despair Inc., Dr. E.L. Kersten. The good doctor believes that true success in the workplace can only be achieved when the workforce knows its place (its place being below you!).

To this end this thoroughly sarcastic book is filled with tips and techniques to help you totally demotivate fellow coworkers and employees. It's like a David Brent seminar without the Tina Turner music and back-to-front baseball cap.

Like a literary chainsaw to the legs of the proverbial career ladder, The Art of Demotivation is guaranteed to equip you with the power to deflate egos and create a genuinely amusing divide between worker and boss. For example, on the subject of indifference, Dr Kersten recommends that you ignore employees in passing, get their names wrong, take credit for their ideas, talk over them, disregard their contributions and even cleanse your hands after greeting them! Yes it's harsh, but successful executives sometimes have to be cruel to be kind.

With drawings by Wall St Journal illustrator Kevin Sprouls and a phony dust jacket to fool nosy underlings, The Art of Demotivation is an ideal gift for anyone who has to deal with strutting egocentrics on a daily basis and it's guaranteed to de-humanize the workplace in no time. Because remember, the secret to successful teamwork is when everyone does what you say.