Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [30]
PHYSICAL LOCATION AND FACILITIES
Being physically close to those in power both signals power and provides power through increased access. Some years ago, a student group obtained floor plans for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s headquarters building over many years. The company provides electricity and natural gas to much of northern California and portions of Nevada. Over time, the engineering department moved down in the building as the lawyers and finance folks moved up. Finally, engineering went to a satellite facility miles away from headquarters in San Francisco. This was occurring as the proportion of lawyers and finance types in senior management was increasing.
The importance of office location leads to an often-expensive shifting and redoing of offices as political fortunes wax and wane. This is particularly true in highly politicized places such as the White House. As John Dean, counsel to President Nixon, commented, “Success and failure could be seen in the size, décor, and location of offices. Anyone who moved to a smaller office was on the way down. If a carpenter, cabinetmaker or wallpaper hanger was busy in someone’s office, this was a sure sign he was on the rise.”16 I once visited the office of a friend who had taken over as head of training for a large bank. His office looked out on some air-conditioning units in a run-down building several blocks from corporate headquarters. When I arrived he said, “Let me tell you about the role of training in this bank.” He didn’t have to. The office, unfortunately, told it all. He soon left for other opportunities as he discovered that training really didn’t matter at that time at that bank.
POSITIONS—ON COMMITTEES AND IN SENIOR MANAGEMENT
One way of seeing the power of finance is to look at the salary of the head of that function. But another would be to look at who, besides the CEO, is the insider most likely to serve on a company’s board of directors. In many instances, particularly as boards have replaced insiders with outsiders, finance is the only internal management function represented on the board. That signals its relative power.
So, too, does the background of the senior-level team, particularly the CEO and the COO. One way to sense the shift in power going on at SAP would be to look at Zia Yusuf’s success. But another would be to note that the most recent appointee as CEO, Leo Apotheker, came out of a sales background—the first nontechnologist to lead the company. The changing environment of health care has produced a shift in the power structure of hospitals: they used to be run by doctors; now they are more likely to be part of a large chain run by people with business and administrative experience. Neil Fligstein’s study of CEO backgrounds, discussed earlier in this chapter, is interesting and important because it reflects the shifting power positions of different business functions over time. And it is not just positions, but also the composition of powerful committees—such as the executive committee—that can tell you the power of various departments. Paying attention to what departments are represented in powerful positions provides an important clue as to where the power lies.
THE TRADE-OFF: A STRONG POWER BASE VERSUS LESS COMPETITION
You face a dilemma. Being in a powerful department provides advantages for your income and your career. But for that very reason, lots of talented people want to go to the most powerful units. The Ford finance department in the 1960s, clearly the road to senior positions not only at Ford but at other companies that recruited from that department, could take the best of the best graduates of the leading business