A leg up for nice guys

Nice story here in Globe North about a book written by two Port dudes on "How to succeed in business (without being a jerk)."

"They don't want to confront a situation and . . . things go further and manifest through the rest of the organization, and ultimately I think you start to run into problems such as we're experiencing now," Russ Edelman said.

"Maybe as a country we've been overly nice in terms of not setting good boundaries around our spending, about confronting reality on a personal and a national level, and you just kind of inch down this road and before you know it you're stuck in this huge morass," said Timothy Hiltabiddle.

Now the two Newburyport men have penned a book, "Nice Guys Can Get the Corner Office," written with University of Massachusetts at Amherst management professor Charles Manz. It's intended to help overly nice guys - of either gender - stick up for themselves and stop dodging the confrontations that are a natural part of the work day.

Hmmmmm ... not sure how that works. Guess I'll have to read the book.

Anyway, congrats to Tim Hiltabiddle, who was at our last writers group meeting - and who seems to be a nice guy!

(I believe the reporter, Joel Brown, lives here as well.)