Page 271 - Executive Warfare

The New Bosses

That’s because the information age has brought power to so many new
constituencies who never had much before. The executives best able to
manage relationships with these different constituencies are the ones who
will wind up running the organizations—and reaping the benefits, includ-
ing high-end compensation.
If you want to rise, you have to demonstrate leadership to many dif-
ferent audiences. These include the people above and below you in the
organizational hierarchy, the people who are competing with you for the
next job and those resentful because they cannot compete for it, the out-
siders and insiders and shareholders and donors and disinterested
observers only looking for a juicy story to alleviate the tedium.
You will never convince all these different audiences to trust you if you
don’t have a very strong sense of yourself and a good idea of what integrity
is. But you also have to listen to all these bosses, think about them, and
try to understand their agendas.
In today’s world, you have to be alert to win.

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