Untouchable

Getting read differently by the people who decide about you: your manager, your manager’s boss, a new owner, a hiring manager somewhere else. Not by working harder, but by leaving a record of work that somebody else can repeat in a room you’re not in.

It’s built for the next review, the next raise cycle and the week the owners change, and it starts the Monday you pick.

Anyone with a manager. The book was written from the chair that reads the files, so the moves work the same for a night-shift lead, a claims analyst, a mortgage processor working from home, a pricing analyst three years in, and the person who manages all of them. The Standing Rules at the back cover hourly and union shops, the public sector, remote work, small companies with no HR and companies in the middle of a deal.

Anyone looking for a way to get ahead of a colleague. Part V is called Clean Hands for a reason: nothing in the book goes around your manager, takes anyone’s credit or reads a coworker instead of a number. If you want a book on office politics, this isn’t it.

It also isn’t legal advice. For a firing, severance papers, discrimination, retaliation or harassment, an employment lawyer comes before this book.

Part I shows you how your file gets read and has you write three lines before you change anything. Part II is thirty days: a week reading the business, a week hunting leaks, two weeks fixing one, and a close on Day 30. Part III grows the skill behind it. Part IV takes the record into review season, the raise, a new boss and a deal. Part V is how to do all of it without knifing anyone.

Every protocol comes with a time box, the steps, the scripts, what to do if you slip, and what done looks like.

Preface: The First Hundred Days. Part I, The Buyer’s Eye: Every Seat Pays Twice; The Good Soldier; The Three Tests. Part II, The Moves: The Buyer’s Read; Find the Slack; The Proof Project; The Proof Log; The Data Room; The Sponsor Map; The First 48. Part III, The Edge: The One-Sentence Test; The Room; Moving Without Permission; Write Yourself Into the Plan; Stretch, Move, Learn; Built to Last. Part IV, The Plays: Review Season; The Raise and the Promotion; The New Boss; Take It With You; Outgrowing the Building; When the Owners Change. Part V, Clean Hands: Winning Without Knifing; When You’re the One Deciding. Part VI, The Field Guide: Signals, Moves and What They Mean; The Scripts and Your Hundred Days. Then the Standing Rules, Part VII, the Glossary, and Part VIII, Frequently Asked Questions.

Read the business, never the people. The Buyer’s Read is about numbers, seats and work; it is never a guess at what a colleague is thinking or a ranking of who’s safe. Every pitch opens on your manager’s goal and says nothing about who caused the leak. Every brief names who helped. Before anything about a peer goes upward, the clean-hands check runs: have they heard it from me, does it include what they did well, would I say it to their face.

For about fourteen years, Morgan Keene ran the people side for a private equity firm, in the companies it bought, and sat across from hundreds of people. The census, the key-role list and the talent-review pre-read were the pages on that desk.

Morgan writes under a pen name, with no photo. The method is the authority, and your own record is the proof.

Ninety days from purchase, on every edition. Complete the 30-Day Proof Log, Days 1 to 30 with an entry for every working day, and if the book hasn’t paid off for you, email with your order number and photos of your log pages, from the journal or a notebook, and you get a full refund of the price. Before you send the photos, black out company names and anything confidential. The full terms are on the guarantee page.

The Ebook ($97) is the whole book, to read in your browser or on your phone, with The Untouchable Journal as a printable PDF. The Hardcover Bundle ($197) adds the cloth hardcover with its dust jacket and The Untouchable Journal printed and bound, with the ebook included, and it’s the only edition that ships. An Ebook + Audiobook edition is coming; it isn’t on sale yet.

Upgrading later costs the difference.

Every time the book says “In your notebook,” the page for it is in The Untouchable Journal, in reading order, with the chapter’s words at the top and the space under them. The pages the book asks you to head, the Buyer’s Read, the Slack List, the Proof Project, the Sponsor Map, are drawn the way the chapter describes them. Softcover, 6 by 9 inches. The Hardcover Bundle comes with it printed and bound. The ebook editions come with it as a printable PDF, so you can print the pages you need.

You can also buy the printed journal on its own, $39 plus shipping, from the line under the edition cards. On its own it comes without the ebook.

Buy any edition and the welcome email can go to the person you’re giving it to, with your name on it. For the Hardcover Bundle, put their address in at checkout and the book ships to them. Everything digital in their edition is theirs from the first sign-in.

The Hardcover Bundle is printed to order and ships from the United States. US orders: Standard $6, about 10 to 15 business days including printing; Faster $24, about 5 to 8 business days, street addresses only. Canada: Standard $15, about 14 to 20 business days; Faster $30, about 8 to 12 business days, street addresses only. Hardcover orders to Canada ship from the US. Books are duty free, but Canada may collect GST/HST and a courier fee on delivery. Your ebook is ready the moment you pay, so you can start while the hardcover prints. The printed journal on its own ships separately: US Standard $6, about 10 to 15 business days, Faster $21, about 5 to 8 business days; Canada Standard $11, about 6 to 12 business days, Faster $23, about 5 to 9 business days. Canadian journal orders are printed in Canada.