Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [90]
First, we had to get rid of the British…. To do that, you had to mobilize support from the widest possible group and get as big a majority of the population as you could…. First, you’ve got to get power. Then, having got power, you say, “What’s the problem? Have I said these things? If so, let’s forget it.”14
Lee and his political party have maintained power for decades in Singapore by never forgetting his own behavior and, therefore, never becoming complacent about their potential enemies and opposition and excessively trusting the good words of others. Stan Sesser’s portrait of Singapore called it a city of fear, and his reporting detailed numerous examples of opposition leaders and others concerned about staying on the good side of Lee and his colleagues.15
One way to figure out how much to trust people is to look at what they do. As the saying goes, “Actions speak louder than words.” In the BankAmerica-NationsBank merger, McColl prevailed on Coulter to modify the original deal for a board evenly split between members from the two banks’ boards and got the headquarters for the combined institution moved to Charlotte. That should have been a signal that he was interested in control, not just shareholder well-being. The 13-to-12 split on the board in favor of NationsBank doomed Coulter in the resulting power struggle.
PEOPLE LOSE PATIENCE
Dr. Modesto Alex “Mitch” Maidique voluntarily stepped down as president of Florida International University in Miami in 2009, having served for 23 years. That term of service made Maidique, a Cuban American, the longest-serving university president in Florida and the second-longest-serving research university president in the United States. Maidique, a prominent member of the Miami community, was involved in the hiring of Rudy Crew—the same Rudy Crew who was fired after being named the best superintendent in the United States. How could Maidique stay in an extremely political position for such a long time while Crew could not? There are many answers to this question, and the jobs each held are clearly different, but part of it has to do with patience.
As Mitch explained to me, being in a powerful position in a large, visible institution is difficult. You have to attend functions for people you don’t necessarily like—weddings, bar mitzvahs, fund-raisers, funerals—sometimes when you would rather be doing something else. But you have to be at these events to fulfill social obligations and expectations and also to solidify your relationships with people who are important to your ability to do and keep your job. Moreover, in a visible position such as university president, everybody—students, faculty, alumni, citizens, staff—has an opinion about what you could be doing to do your job better, and many feel free to share their views with you and with the public. Many of these people don’t know what they are talking about and all of them take time away from the difficult task of, in this case, running a university of some 38,000 students with rapidly expanding research funding. After a while, it is easy to lose patience and lash out at the sorry fools who are making your job more difficult than it should be—except, as Maidique thoughtfully noted, some of these “sorry fools” can cost you your position. After decades in public education, Rudy Crew had lost patience with the patronage, the pettiness, and the fact that tens of thousands of children were getting left behind. He was simply unwilling to choose his words carefully. Maidique, in all the decades at the helm of FIU, somehow managed to keep his composure and outward demeanor of charm, regardless of what he actually felt.
It’s easier to lose your patience when you are in power—power leads to disinhibition, to not watching what you say and do, to being more concerned about yourself than about the feelings of