Page 23 - Executive Warfare

Introduction

Let me first say that if you are
perfectly content in your current job, more interested in scrapbooking or
drinking games than in getting ahead at the office, or contemplating life
as a cloistered monk, do not buy this book. If, however, you are
harboring any thoughts of rising into senior management, read on.
In the early 1970s, when I was in my early twenties, I thought that if I
could only reach a point in my career where I would be managing a few
people and making the astounding amount of $100,000 a year, I would be
as content as if I were lying under a Tuscan olive tree, being hand-fed
peeled and seeded grapes.
But that is not what happens, is it? In a few short years, when I actually
was managing a few people and making $100,000 a year, my definition of
success had changed. Instead of basking under the olive trees, I was try-
ing to figure out how to jump the next hurdle.
This is a cycle that all ambitious people understand, whether they work
for a university, a nonprofit, a newspaper, a partnership, or a Fortune 500
company. Wherever they are, they want to reach the next level, and it’s all
they want. Then they get the big promotion that’s everything they ever
wanted. They grow into the job and start doing well at it, and pretty soon
they are looking around saying, “Is that all there is?”
It doesn’t matter that they have
already outstripped their own early def-
inition of success, their families’ and ONCE YOU REACH A
neighbors’ definitions, too. They are CERTAIN LEVEL,
addicted to climbing the ladder. They THE ODDS ARE
just can’t help it. And the worst thing AGAINST YOUR
that can happen to them in a career is to RISING HIGHER,
get stuck. AND THERE ARE
Yet the truth is, once you reach a cer- MORE AND MORE
tain level, the odds are against your ris- PEOPLE STANDING
ing higher, and there are more and IN YOUR WAY.
more people standing in your way.

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