Black Narcissus: a guide to management for senior women

Carl doesn't usually trespass into the world of organisational psychology, but we made an exception for Black Narcissus...

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 film about a group of nuns establishing a convent in a remote Himalayan community is remarkable for many things, including its chiefly female cast and focus on women’s relationships in the workplace. Using the leadership of Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) as a model, this article seeks to distill the management approach exemplified by the sisters of the Order of St Faith, to the general edification of women occupying senior positions in the modern corporate world.

• Find a medium gauge bamboo cane. Insert it (anally) until the tip lodges just behind your larynx. This will initially feel uncomfortable but you will get used to it in time; indeed it will come to stand for everything that is distinct about your management style.
  

• If at all possible, establish your business in a disused brothel.

• Selecting your management team is crucial to the success of your enterprise. Appoint one large, butch woman who will do all the work. Ignore her. Appoint also a raging fool, an introverted vegetable gardener and a woman on the verge of psychotic collapse.

• These last two appointees will have complex inner lives. Under no circumstances should you acknowledge this. If you find yourself tempted to offer compassion or insight, focus instead on the feeling of the bamboo cane prodding your voicebox.

• When distributing tasks, ensure that the most unstable woman in your team has the regular task of heaving a heavy object to and fro over a precipitous drop.

• Wearing lipstick is a sign of mental instability. Treat it as such.

• Men are a complicating factor in the workplace and should be avoided if possible, apart from help with plumbing and restless natives. Their behaviour can be sexually confusing: men who wear short shorts, jewellery, perfume and fur coats may nonetheless be heterosexual and commensurately troublesome. Fortunately they will be unable to prevent themselves calling you 'old girl' at which point they become far easier to resist.

• You believe that people from ethnic minorities are like children. By this you mean very, very stupid. If necessary you can distract them with potassium permanganate. Successful men from ethnic minorities will wear a lot of jewellery, fur and loud colours. They are not necessarily gangsters.

• A large man on a tiny pony is not funny. Here again the bamboo cane is a useful way to prevent inappropriate feelings of amusement or warmth.