Page 137 - Executive Warfare

The Team You Assemble

How important are the people who
report to you? Think of it this way: One’s your liver, one’s your heart, one’s
your stomach, another is your eyes or your ears. No matter how high an
opinion you have of yourself, you cannot survive without your vital organs.
The more you rise, the more you need good people to work for you.
You need them simply to help you achieve your goals and make sure that
your base is covered. But you also need them to be seen as a positive force
in the organization and to advertise your effectiveness. You need them to
say positive things about you, for the most part, and spread the word
about your abilities as a leader.
So, to reach the upper echelons of
NO MATTER HOW
organizational life, you have to be able to
HIGH AN OPINION
attract real talent and then handle that
YOU HAVE OF
talent in such a way that people will do
YOURSELF, YOU
their best for you and speak well of you.
CANNOT SURVIVE
In this chapter, we’ll talk about building
WITHOUT YOUR
a team of people who will help you
VITAL ORGANS.
rise—and in the next chapter, we’ll talk
about motivating those people to give
you their all.
My first piece of advice in assembling a team is to choose wisely because
you are being watched.

NOBODY TOOK THE GABOR SISTERS SERIOUSLY, EITHER
In the middle levels of organizational life, you can hide the mistakes you
make in hiring, firing, and promoting simply by being a terrific performer
yourself. In the upper levels of organizational life, that is no longer possible.
The people who report to you now are relatively senior themselves and
much more visible than your other employees ever were. They are cer-
tainly going to be exposed to other executives in the organization and pos-
sibly to your president or CEO. They may very well have contact with your

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