Rather than travel to Pamplona, Spain, for the annual Running of the Bulls, one need go no further than the parking lots of many U.S. companies. Here people described in many company brochures as “our most important asset" are being herded and unceremoniously told to go home after years of service. The psychic goring of these employees often has already been done by an inept management team, and for some the wounds will last forever. There’s a remarkable, and bizarre, parallel between Pamplona and corporate America: long ago potential buyers of the bulls always ran ahead in order to be well placed for the purchase that followed the event. In corporate settings, management stays behind in the shadows, not wanting to confront the victims as they’re led to their "psychological slaughter."

Bulls bred to fight in the ring possess keen intelligence, uncanny peripheral vision and the ability to turn on a dime. Their goal is to meet the matador, where survival is the only game and the bull rarely wins. Likewise, employees who might have been "bullish" about their company for years now have to face an unsympathetic corporate matador and in this case, too, the employee always seems to lose. Being "bullish" no longer guarantees longevity.

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