Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [86]
While I was visiting the London Business School in 2005, Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, came to give a talk and promote his newest book. As Welch lapped up the adulation of the LBS students, I thought to myself, “Why is he doing this at this stage in his life?” One can reasonably conjecture, not just for Welch but for many other people who have left positions of great power and status and continue to serve on multiple boards and maintain an intense pace, that, accustomed as they were during their work life to days filled with frenetic activity, once out of the job they seek to re-create the same peripatetic life, the same adrenaline high, and if possible, the same level of adulation they once received routinely.
People have a heightened risk of death in the period immediately after they lose their job—and not just because of greater financial stress or the absence of medical insurance. As Michael Marmot, a British researcher on the effects of social standing on health, has written, one reason there is a connection between not working and health is because being out of work “represents loss of a social role and all the things that go with it.”17
Power is addictive, in both a psychological and physical sense. The rush and excitement from being involved in important discussions with senior figures and the ego boost from having people at your beck and call are tough to lose, even if you voluntarily choose to retire or leave and even if you have more money than you could ever spend. In a power-and celebrity-obsessed culture, to be “out of power” is to be out of the limelight, away from the action, and almost invisible. It is a tough transition to make. And because it is, some executives seek to avoid switching to a less powerful role—Sandy Weill of Citigroup and Hank Greenberg of AIG worked long past normal retirement age and finally were forced out by boards of directors of these large public companies when they refused to anoint successors. Bill Paley of CBS asked his biographer Sally Bedell Smith why he had to die as he maintained control of the media company into his eighties. These examples and numerous others illustrate yet another price of power—the addictive quality that makes it tough to leave powerful positions. But everyone eventually has to step down, and the druglike nature of power makes leaving a powerful position a truly wrenching experience for some.
In the introduction, we saw some of the benefits of achieving power and status—longer life and better health, the potential for monetizing power and fame to create wealth, and the ability to accomplish important organizational and social change. In this chapter, we see the other side of the equation—the costs of achieving and holding powerful positions. You should not necessarily eschew power, but it is important to recognize the potential downsides. The balance between the advantages and the costs is something each individual must weigh in deciding his or her own particular relationship with power.
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How—and Why—People Lose Power
EVEN AFTER achieving a powerful, top-level position, staying on top is scarcely guaranteed. The CEO position, particularly in the United States, has become extremely powerful. Incumbent CEOs control enormous financial resources, have carte blanche to bring in supporters and dismiss underlings who challenge their authority, and can influence the selection of boards of directors, ostensibly their bosses. Nonetheless, as consulting firm Booz Allen reported, the annual turnover rate of corporate CEOs increased 59 percent between 1995 and 2006. This increase occurred worldwide, not just in the United States. During that same period, instances where CEOs were fired or pushed out rose by 318 percent.1
Things aren’t different for leaders in other domains. One study of business school deans noted that among the 100 members of the Association of Business Schools in the United Kingdom, there had been 41 changes of incumbent in the preceding two years.2 The average tenure of school superintendents