Page 111 - Executive Warfare

Peers

accused of being too far from the people do really stupid things, such as
start serving food in the company cafeteria wearing a chef’s hat. Seeing a
senior vice president in an apron with a chef’s hat on serving you chili
does not necessarily increase your
respect for his or her humanity. Nor
does it make you want to order the chili. YOU DON’T WANT
Everybody recognizes that it’s a public- TO LET A RUMOR
ity stunt. THROW YOU OFF
Instead of overreacting to some YOUR GAME OR
charge against you, recognize that just TURN YOU INTO A
as campaigns against you gather TRANSPARENT
momentum over time, you must diffuse PHONY.
them over time. It’s not unlike tattoo
removal: The laser doesn’t obliterate the
ink; it dissipates it, sending it back into the skin. It’s about diluting the
dark mark, not cutting it out. So simply try to create a more attractive
impression in future.

DISCREDIT THE ENEMY
Finally, how do you deal with the enemies themselves?
First you have to flush them out. I recommended that you take a tip
from the CIA on this point: Use disinformation to trick double agents into
revealing themselves. Narrow your list down to the three most likely sources
for any ugly story—and give each one a different piece of false informa-
tion detrimental to you. Then see which piece of information surfaces.
Get scared if all three do: You are really unpopular!
What do you do when you find out who is trying to do you in? In her
book Tough Choices: A Memoir, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fio-
rina tells the story of a former boss who lied about her in order to bene-
fit one of her peers. He said that she’d regularly taken credit for somebody
else’s work.

91