Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [0]
Why Some People Have It—and Others Don’t
Jeffrey Pfeffer
To the Amazing Kathleen
Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction: Be Prepared for Power
1 It Takes More Than Performance
2 The Personal Qualities That Bring Influence
3 Choosing Where to Start
4 Getting In: Standing Out and Breaking Some Rules
5 Making Something out of Nothing: Creating Resources
6 Building Efficient and Effective Social Networks
7 Acting and Speaking with Power
8 Building a Reputation: Perception Is Reality
9 Overcoming Opposition and Setbacks
10 The Price of Power
11 How—and Why—People Lose Power
12 Power Dynamics: Good for Organizations, Good for You?
13 It’s Easier Than You Think
For Further Reading and Learning
Searchable Terms
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is about real people who have been kind enough to share their stories with me over the years. In most instances, I have used their real names—in some instances they are public figures and some of the material comes from public sources. However, in a few cases, at the request of my sources, I have changed the names of people and, less frequently, other identifying information to protect their anonymity.
Introduction: Be Prepared for Power
ALMOST ANYTHING is possible in attaining positions of power. You can get yourself into a high-power position even under the most unlikely circumstances if you have the requisite skill. Consider the case of a real person we’ll call Anne. Coming out of business school, Anne wanted to lead a high technology start-up. But Anne had no technology background. She was an accountant and had neither studied nor worked in the high-tech sector. Not only that, prior to her business education she had practiced public-sector accounting—she had been a senior accountant working in an important agency in a small foreign country and she was now focusing her aspirations on Silicon Valley in California. Nonetheless, Anne was able to accomplish her goal by making some very smart power plays.
Success began with preparation. While most of her compatriots took the entrepreneurial classes offered in the business school, Anne took a class in the engineering school on starting new ventures. With that one move she altered the power dynamics and her bargaining leverage. In the business school class, there were about three MBAs for every engineer, while in the engineering school course, there was only about one MBA for every four engineers. She explained that MBAs were unwilling to walk all the way over to the engineering building. Not only did she want to improve her bargaining position, Anne wanted to take a class closer to the laboratories, where technology was being developed and where she was more likely to run into interesting opportunities. Because of the pressure from the professor and the venture capitalists who judged the business plans that were the central part of the course to get MBA skills reflected in that work, Anne had bargaining leverage in her chosen environment.
After interviewing a number of project teams, Anne joined a group that was working on a software product that improved existing software performance without requiring lots of capital investment in new hardware. She had not developed the technology, of course, and joined the team notwithstanding some disdain for her skills on the part of her engineering colleagues.
Having found a spot, Anne was then very patient and let the others on her team come to recognize her value to them. The team—she was the only woman—initially wanted to target the product at a relatively small market that already had three dominant players. Anne showed them data indicating this was not a good idea, but went along with the group’s wishes to focus on this first market in their class presentation. The presentation got creamed by the venture capitalists. As a result, the engineers began to think that Anne might know something