Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [71]
Consider the nonexecutive chairman of a publicly traded company making point-of-care ultrasound equipment. A former Marine, the chairman set meeting dates not by consulting with board members on their schedules but by fiat—and woe to anyone who missed meetings, even if they were set at times impossible to attend. He also ran the meetings in an authoritarian fashion. But no harm to him. As one board member commented after agreeing with this characterization, “That’s just how he is.”
You probably aren’t—and don’t want to appear in any case—perfect. As long as the quirks you display are irrelevant to the core of your reputation and why people select you—in the case of Summers, for his brilliance in the field of economics—the flaws and foibles can actually strengthen people’s commitment to you.
REMEMBER: IMAGE CREATES REALITY
People benefit, or suffer, from the self-reinforcing aspect of reputations. As one analysis of Mike Volpi, former head of business development at Cisco, the network equipment maker, noted:
He gained a reputation with Chambers [the CEO] and other senior managers for being able to get things done…. Volpi began to get a reputation outside of Cisco as well. Favorable press coverage helped to increase his influence within Cisco and with important constituencies outside of the company; reports of his influence became a self-fulfilling prophecy.25
You don’t have to trade reputation for reality. Volpi was a very successful business development executive. A great reputation can help you achieve great performance and vice versa. The trick is to be sure you do the things to build your reputation, have others tout you, and attract the kind of media coverage and image that can help build your power base.
9
Overcoming Opposition and Setbacks
NO MATTER how worthy your goals, how hard you work, and how talented you are, virtually everyone encounters opposition and setbacks along the path to power. Sandy Weill, who built up several financial services companies before becoming the all-powerful CEO of Citigroup, was turned down by Merrill Lynch, Bache, and Harris Upham when he applied for a job as a stockbroker in the 1950s,1 and resigned from American Express when he lost a power struggle in 1985—Weill had come to American Express when he sold the company the securities firm, Shearson, he had built.2 The important question is how you respond to the inevitable opposition and reversals of fortune you will face.
When Laura Esserman, a breast cancer surgeon with an MBA, became head of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at UCSF in 1997, she had a vision for what needed to happen. First, she wanted to get the relevant specialties together in one attractive, patient-friendly setting so women did not have to go from place to place, in some instances carrying their own medical tests and records. Women frequently confronted delays and inconvenience in the diagnostic process along with uncertainty and fear as they went from having a mammogram to a biopsy to consulting with a surgical oncologist, often in different offices and with days between steps. Esserman wanted to create a facility where women could arrive in the morning referred by their primary care physician with a suspicious lump or another symptom and leave at the end of the day with a treatment plan, having had the necessary tests and evaluation during one day in one nicely designed and decorated place.
Second, Esserman was aware that the cycle time for