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he had more free time than the full-time employees and would happily take responsibility for coordinating the day. He proceeded to organize the recruiting logistics, including coordinating travel schedules, developing interview schedules with the partners, and organizing a private dinner where he sat himself at the center of the table. This initiative got Michael at the hub of all the recruiting communications, caused him to be much more in touch with senior partners, including the head of the firm, and built his reputation as someone who was willing to help out even when he didn’t have to (because he was still a student). All of the analysts who were hired knew him as the point person for analyst recruiting, and associated him with their employment success. Thus, even before joining the firm full-time, Michael had burnished his reputation and recruited allies.

When Karen joined a large Internet services company with a number of well-known consumer brands, her background was in investment banking and venture capital. She needed to build a power base in an organization that was much more technology-and marketing-oriented than where she had previously worked. Avoiding her boss’s advice to not waste her time on “small” projects, that’s precisely what she did in an effort to learn about all of the company’s businesses. She organized summits and invited important outside companies that her firm’s businesses wanted to get to know to come and make presentations. She also invited prominent outside people who would be of interest to managers throughout the company. Through these activities, she got to know many outside businesses and the people in them. She also made contacts inside her own organization as she solicited ideas about what would be interesting to the brands inside her company.

Build a Resource Base Inside and Outside Your Organization

When I first met Dan more than 20 years ago, he was the head of labor relations for a private university. But he had big ambitions—he wanted to become a university president. Although he had a PhD and had published some articles on higher education, a position in labor relations or even human resources was clearly not an obvious launching pad for a senior academic administrative post. Dan knew he needed to move out of labor relations into other administrative roles such as provost if he wanted to fulfill his dreams. The question was how to leverage his current role to acquire the resources that would be useful to building his power base.

Like most people with professional jobs, he was a member of a job-related professional association, the College and University Personnel Association (CUPA). That association, like most, had an annual meeting with speakers and exhibitors. Dan volunteered to work on those activities, and over time he rose up the association’s ranks, first becoming vice president of research, responsible for the association’s programs, and later becoming president. In his leadership roles, he met companies selling pension and other human resource products to colleges and universities, invited people whose support he wanted to speak at the meetings (and paid them), and met scores of senior people in academic administration. Eventually he did become provost and is currently a system-wide vice president of research at a large state university. His path to a college presidency now seems assured because he understood how to find and use resources.

Ivan joined a management consulting company as a junior consultant, one of many in this large and prestigious firm. Ivan knew that the firm wanted to get involved in more public-sector and public-policy work. He volunteered to put on a series of seminars for the office, a task that required extra effort since he still had to do his regular consulting. Doing something that the firm valued, he prevailed upon the partners who ran the office to give him a budget to invite people of interest who could help the firm build both contacts and connections in the public sector. Ivan was then in a position to use those resources to cultivate