Jamie Gerdsen, an EO Cincinnati member, isn’t preparing his readers for a zombie apocalypse; rather, in his upcoming book, Zombies Ate My Business: How to Keep Your Traditional Business from Becoming One of the Undead, Gerdsen identifies unproductive employees (zombies) and their effect on company growth and the bottom line. Traditional businesses are especially at risk of plateauing or declining after a time of sustained success.

The question becomes how to stay on a course of progress, identifying those employees who are likely to become stagnate before it happens. Through case studies and self-reflection questions, as well as illustrating business and personal life cycles, Gerdsen allows the reader to identify their own situation and gives suggestions to optimize company growth and mesh different generations of employees.

Read an excerpt from the book below. To learn more, visit Jamie Gersden’s site.

Bet you never thought ‘zombie hunter’ would be one of your most important executive tasks. Get used to it; we are living in a strange new world. The old days, when workers showed up on time and gave everything they had, have now gone the way of Nehru jackets and parachute pants. Having a strong work ethic means different things to different people. For me, a strong work ethic is nothing short of giving a job your all—or as an athlete might say: ‘leaving it all on the field.’

But for too many employees, it means simply showing up for work, socializing over coffee, and then settling in to the important stuff: Facebook, Twitter feeds, YouTube. Whew! I’m ready to go home already. Yes, I’m being harsh. Everyone wants to work in an office environment where the individual isn’t a slave to the job and has plenty of freedom to interact with the world outside the office. I get that. I even agree with it.

But the issue is productivity. While the new, more enlightened work environment was designed to make employees happier and more productive, it has also become an ideal hiding place for zombies. They blend in.

While the new, more enlightened work environment was designed to make employees happier and more productive, it has also become an ideal hiding place for zombies. 

Your job as owner/CEO/CZH (chief zombie hunter) is to prevent your business from joining the ranks of the undead.

It takes smart mojo to make that happen. But I’m going to teach you the secrets.

This content was reproduced with the permission of Jamie Gerdsen, and was originally posted to Octane in 2015.