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into business intelligence and solutions to specific business problems. Consequently, SAP needed application developers who, much like companies did with Apple’s iPhone, would build and sell tailored applications that would use SAP’s platform—hence, the importance of the ecosystems unit that Yusuf developed and ran. And as the ERP marketplace became more competitive, pricing and marketing strategy and user-centered design were all becoming much more critical. All of these changes made Yusuf’s skills and the departments and connections he built more important. Describing his interactions with some of his SAP colleagues about his group’s and his own role and their importance to the company, Yusuf said, “You know about software design and development—good, two points for you. How are we going to sell and make money off this software? All right, two points for me.” Indeed, Hasso Plattner had recognized the changing skill sets needed inside SAP, which is why he had encouraged the company to bring in people with different, broader backgrounds.

Similarly, when the Whiz Kids arrived at Ford, they found a young CEO and a company that was out of control. The most critical problem was imposing financial discipline on this sprawling enterprise. Although it is hard to remember now, in the 1940s, after World War II, people would buy any car that was built; even into the 1950s and 1960s, the big three U.S. automakers owned the market. Design and engineering weren’t that critical when innovation was mostly about the size of tail fins, and although the industry was always cyclical, sales skills were not that critical, either. As the Whiz Kids arrived, finance and business education were both about to take off on a sustained period of expansion, and to be an analytically skilled, highly educated person in finance at Ford was to be almost in the center of this emerging universe. Without for a moment denying the considerable skills of Yusuf and the finance folks at Ford, both also benefited mightily from being at the right place at the right time. In Yusuf’s case, this entailed an element of luck, but Halberstam’s description of the move of the Whiz Kids to Ford Motor shows a good amount of strategic thinking about which company would provide the group the best opportunity.12

DIAGNOSING DEPARTMENTAL POWER

It is always useful to be able to diagnose the political landscape, whether for plotting your next career move or for understanding who you need to influence to get something done. UK professor Andrew Pettigrew, studying power dynamics in a decision to purchase a computer, noted the importance of understanding power distributions for influencing the decision process.13 Carnegie-Mellon professor David Krackhardt’s analysis of power in a small entrepreneurial company found that the people within the firm with the most accurate perception of the power distribution and networks of influence had more power.14 Skill at diagnosing power distributions is useful.

A single measure or a single indicator of anything invariably has measurement error. That’s why a good doctor will take more than one reading of your blood pressure and, in diagnosing an illness, typically uses multiple tests and considers many symptoms. The same is true for diagnosing departmental power. Any single indicator may be misleading—but if many such indicators provide a consistent answer, then your confidence should be greater. Over the years, I have found the following to be reasonably good clues to which departments have the most power.

RELATIVE PAY

Both starting salaries and the pay of more senior positions in departments connote relative power. In the public utility study mentioned earlier, the starting salary was about 6 percent higher for people beginning their careers in the departments with higher power. Although that appears to be a small difference, this was a company that hired new managers into a relatively standardized training and initial career rotation program, so any difference would be unexpected. Some years ago, a study of salaries of the most senior