Page 206 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

My friend begged to differ.“Let me tell you something. You should see
him at his son’s Little League games. He is a maniac, screaming at the kids
to the point where the umpires threw him off the field a few weeks ago.”
Was I really going to promote somebody who screamed at little kids at
a Little League game? It gave me pause.
You have to be aware that six degrees of separation is often three or four
too many when it comes to organizational life. Random strangers to you
are not always strangers to the people
who hold your career in their hands. So
THE TRICK IS it is smart to conduct yourself, in pub-
FINDING A WAY TO lic at least, as if there is always some-
INTERACT WITH body in the audience who matters.
OUTSIDE BOARD Let me tell you about a moment
MEMBERS when I was grateful for my own discre-
WITHOUT tion—the moment I learned that my
OBVIOUSLY boss and I had shared the same hair-
CAMPAIGNING FOR cutter for years. I’d never even suspected
A PROMOTION AND it, although that’s understandable, given
WITHOUT how much less hair this boss had than
THREATENING YOUR me.
BOSS. Now hair stylists are the great ama-
teur psychologists of the service world.
I’d bet they hear more secrets even than
bartenders. Fortunately, I had never said anything derogatory about my
boss, but one day the hair stylist told me he’d heard that I was a difficult
person.
“How is that?” I asked.
He wouldn’t name names, but he indicated that he also cut the hair of
one of my employees.
It wasn’t hard to figure out who. I started the next staff meeting by look-
ing around to see who’d recently had a trim. Ted, one of my finance guys,
was looking particularly neat that day.

186