Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [103]
Will these activities make Matt a partner some day? Unlikely just by themselves. But coupled with hard and effective work, they will provide Matt with the reputation and visibility that gives an advantage. And the personal relationships can be further deepened and maintained to provide even more influence in the system.
SURVIVING AND SUCCEEDING IN ORGANIZATIONS
I hope I have convinced you that power and political processes in organizations are ubiquitous—not just in certain industries, or in the private sector, or only in the United States. Organizational politics is everywhere. You may wish it weren’t so, but it is. And because of fundamental human psychology, there isn’t much prospect of power and politics disappearing from organizational life.
Not only can you survive, but you can even succeed if you learn the principles and the rules and are willing to implement them in your daily organizational life. That’s what this book has been about—exposing you to the ideas, the research, and the numerous examples of how to create a path to power for yourself.
So don’t complain about how life isn’t fair, or that your organizational culture isn’t healthy, or that your boss is a jerk.5 You have both the responsibility and the potential to change your situation, either in your present job or in some new place. Stop waiting for things to get better or for other people to acquire power and use it in a benevolent fashion to improve the situation. It’s up to you to find—or create—a better place for yourself. And it’s up to you to build your own path to power. As former Bay Area radio personality Scoop Nisker used to say, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.”
If you wonder if this power seeking is worth the aggravation and effort, remember the research I described in the introduction on the relationship between having power over and in your work environment and sickness and mortality. Michael Marmot’s study of 18,000 British civil servants—all people working in office jobs in the same society—uncovered that people at the bottom of the hierarchy had four times the risk of death from heart disease as did those at the top.6 Controlling for risk factors such as smoking or obesity did not make the social gradient in health disappear, nor did statistically controlling for the longevity of one’s parents. As Marmot concludes, “Social circumstances in adult life predict health.”7
So seek power as if your life depends on it. Because it does.
FOR FURTHER READING AND LEARNING
If you are interested in learning and reading more about power and influence in organizations, here are some suggestions.
Each year during the winter quarter I teach a class titled “The Paths to Power.” The course outline is publicly available. Go to my personal home page, http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/pfeffer/. There is a link on the left-hand side of the page that will take you directly to the most recent version of the course.
Cases
Over the years I have written a number of cases for the power class. These are available either through the Stanford Graduate School of Business or through Harvard Business School Case Services, which distributes Stanford’s cases. They are short biographies of interesting people doing interesting things entailing the use of power and influence.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (A): The Fall from Grace, Case no. OB-34 (A), September 2000.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (B): The Road to Redemption, Case no. OB-34 (B), September 2000.
Dr. Laura Esserman (A) and (B): Case no. OB-42, September 2003.
Keith Ferrazzi: Case no. OB-44, October 2003.
Gary Loveman and Harrah’s Entertainment: Case no. OB-45, November 2003.
Nuria Chinchilla: The Power to Change Workplaces, Case no. OB-67, January 2008.
Zia Yusuf at