…And the winner of the 1st ever Jeffrey Skilling Award for Self-Destruction is… Eliot Spitzer!

I can feel a cold coming on and I really need to get to sleep, but I’m reading the news headlines here on my computer and I am compelled to honor the Governor of NY today for his fantastical foray into self-destruction.

The notion of an award first crossed my mind when Amy Winehouse went into rehab, but her album is so good and so heartfelt that I didn’t think I could do that to her. Today is a different story.

In order to do this justice, let me first establish the award which Mr. Spitzer is to receive. I’m calling it the Jeffrey Skilling Award for Self-Destruction. Why Skilling? Here’s a little something straight from the book to explain. (Attention plagiarists: I get to do this because I’m the author.) Read to the last line. Oh, the irony!

This award’s namesake is none other than Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who was able to pull off a radical pinstripes-to-prison-stripes conversion between 2002 and 2006. Skilling’s legendary career belly flop soaked thousands of others who had been basking near his personal pool. True students of self-destruction will take note of this man’s extraordinary accomplishments, the obvious lesson being:

 

BIG talent + BIG gall = BIG fall

 

It will likely be years before you’re ready to attempt anything remotely as extreme as a full-fledged Skilling. However, you can begin practicing today for your moment in the sun. The core part of any Skilling-based training routine is resisting attempts by others to give you “opportunities for advancement” in favor of meaningless benefits such as a bigger title, an office with a window, or your own assistant.

 

As you build a tolerance to these trappings, continually negotiate for more and more petty things. Allow your sense of entitlement to swell unabated. Ask for your own parking space, elevator, helicopter, whatever you can fathom; nothing is out of scope. When you have alienated everyone in the company and someone at the top (or on the board) flat-out hates you, get ready for splashdown and a call from the SEC.

And now, it is my great displeasure to give this award to a man who had everything going for him, including money, political power, a nice family, even… a man who personified the very SEC mentioned above, a man who took office on the promise of straightening out NY… and a man who not only couldn’t keep little Spitzer in line, but who must have been such a prick that his indiscretion, rather than being chalked up to a personal foible and ignored as have been so many others’, became instant tabloid fodder.

Eliot, congratulations, you putz, you are the first winner of the Jeffrey Skilling Award for Self-Destruction.

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.