(FORTUNE Magazine) – In the real world, the highly successful corporate executives we love usually share certain characteristics. All are hard driving, often at others' expense. All maintain their personal instrument with obsessive zeal, arriving at work and leaving at the end of the day with an almost inhuman level of burnish, torque, and sheen. Pleasant? Virtually always, except when they're angry. At such moments they inspire the kind of fear that makes your nostrils flair and your stomach rise to seize your heart, even when they aren't in the room. All, in short, are truly offensive on a magnificent scale.

Can we help but feel two ways about such individuals? On the one hand, I like their shoes. On the other, I don't like to think of myself as capable of operating the way they do. And yet it's hard not to notice that, in most companies, the more offensive a man or woman is willing to be, the more...executive...in some way, that person seems--and the higher he tends to rise.

Want to be offensive enough to make it into the big leagues? You'll have to put your nose to the grindstone. Offensiveness is not a walk in the park. It's a way of life. The very quirks, foibles, and obnoxious characteristics that make these people intolerable as human beings are also what make them highly effective managers. But if you're ready to make that tradeoff--and make some serious money--let 'er rip.

Habit No. 1: Empower your inner child. Start by finding and mastering that famous beast. The irascible and lovable kid inside you contains the greatest potential for true offensiveness--and power. This doesn't mean you have to be petulant and grabby all the time. Kids are often perfectly jolly, whistling, singing, telling insipid jokes. But you have no idea how obnoxious resolute jolliness can be in the wrong circumstances. It sends the message that you live in a little bubble of self-regard impenetrable by mortal men. That's a good thing.

Other times, you may need to get a little rough to get what you want. Feel free to do so. Does the little fellow inside you want his muffin infinitesimally better done at that Hotel Regency power breakfast? Send it back! Does she get all cranky when her have to do her numbers instead of go outside and play? Make 'em sorry they wrecked your day!

Habit No. 2: Weirdness is strength. Howard Hughes liked to grow his fingernails long and demanded that his fruit cocktail cans be opened with surgical cleanliness. Si Newhouse, the communications giant, reportedly likes to conduct much of his business between the hours of four in the morning and noon. My old boss Chet, when he didn't have a business luncheon, liked to eat a tuna fish sandwich from the Tasmanian deli downstairs, which was served to him on a white china plate, on a lace place mat, with a Diet Coke in a crystal goblet at its side. Somewhat lower down, my friend Rafferty fills a small paper coffee cup with instant oatmeal every morning at 8:40, pours in hot water, then goes around stirring it for about an hour, standing in people's doorways with the horrible stuff steaming away, stirring it, eating a little of the gelatinous goop, talking about business. Gross! We let him do it because he controls compensation.

My point is, the higher they get, the weirder they are. This is no coincidence. With the breaking of the logjam of appropriate behavior come a rush of ideas and irrational determination to get them done. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to Windex my blotter.

Habit No. 3: Embrace compensation. Everyone likes money, but truly offensive people can talk about it like Congressmen filibustering legislation they don't understand. A few years ago, I was the most junior member in a meeting at which a variety of extremely important matters were to be discussed. It was the late 1980s, and business was not good. The smell of cutbacks was in the air, and not all the numbers were going to be made. Discussion of a range of operating issues took up the entire morning. After lunch, at precisely 1:12, we sat down to what I presumed would be a full afternoon of work. There was still plenty on the agenda. The floor was at that point ceded to the vice president of human resources, who gently launched into an explanation of the new grid upon which performance awards would be measured. Two o'clock rolled around. Then two-thirty. Then three-thirty. I couldn't believe it. Scientists at Los Alamos spent less time on the mass of the neutrino than these guys devoted to the point at which increased revenue produced the maximum bonus payout. It was grotesque! Since then I've come up six or seven grade levels, and am now eligible for such consideration. Last week we had an executive staff meeting where the same subject came up, and I assure you that I found it very interesting. That's offensive, even to me.

Habit No. 4: Focus! Focus! Focus! Normal people have a couple of things on their minds. Truly offensive people don't have that problem. The higher the executive, the more intense is his ability to filter out extraneous material. Sometimes this can produce a creepy, almost supernatural zone of concentration around the executive. Our former chairman was like that. One time he was in Philadelphia with our general counsel, Morgenstern. Morgenstern was late for the limo ride to the airport with Don, and you were never, ever, to be more than 30 seconds late for a mutual incident involving Don. Time was money to Don. Not his time, yours. Your time was his money, that was it. So Morgenstern was waiting at the checkout counter, hoping to sleaze out of the hotel, when he began to feel strange. "I felt a warm spot in my back, as if someone was sticking a hot poker into me at that spot," he recalls. "And I turned around and there was Don, staring at me from across the lobby, boring a hole into me with his eyes." At that point, Morgenstern basically climbed over the people in front of him on line, weeping and chattering to the manager to let him out of there. Focus works, that's the point.

Habit No. 5: Say whatever the heck is on your mind. All of us have been in meetings where very successful people nerbled on for hours about nothing anybody understood. Conversely, guys who are supposed to talk seriously about extremely important subjects at times express exactly what's on their minds--which is nothing. So they sit there saying nothing for a real long time, until other, less offensive people pick up the ball and carry it into the end zone. Either method can soon have you running big-deal stuff.

Habit No. 6: Don't get even--get mad. Only small and insignificant people contain their rage, mostly because they have to. Real hitters have good, working contact with their anger and use it to get what they want without shame, regret, or constraint. The great practitioners of the angry arts, of course, don't just spew eight hours a day. No, they keep a lid on their displeasure and modulate it, so that students can perceive when the great mountain is about to blow--and act accordingly. Walt, our leader, utilizes skin color to send off warning signals. A slow change from white to pink moves us from Defcon 6 to Defcon 5. When pink turns to red, the area is cleared by all sentient life forms. The trick is moving beyond peevishness, which I happen to think I have down pat, to genuine wrath that can inspire others to improve operating profit by double digits in a slow-growth environment. The great ones can make that happen.

Habit No. 7: Keep your jargon fresh! Buy a business book every six months. Good news on that front! This was just a brief rundown of the seven habits of truly offensive people. We didn't even have a chance to roll out our matrix graphs, charts containing concentric circles each with a different insightful label, or dynamic pyramids linked with vector arrows that make you feel stupid if you look at them for too long. All those and more are available in my upcoming book, The Seven Habits of Highly Offensive People. Anyone who doesn't have it on his or her desk next year will immediately be subject to reorganization with extreme prejudice. Just kidding!

By the way, it's not available right now because I haven't written it yet, but contact FORTUNE immediately and tell my editors you'd really like to see this particular concept worked out at great length for, say, $24.95 a copy. As you may know, this magazine has a sister division that runs a gigantic book publishing company that, if they promote it right, could make my potential project a big success and earn me a lot of money. Thanks!

Oh, and anybody who thinks it's inappropriate for me to use this space to promote my own crass self-interest just hasn't been reading very carefully.

By day, STANLEY BING is a real executive at a real FORTUNE 500 company he'd rather not name.