Page 33 - Executive Warfare

Introduction

You’ll need to learn how to acquire the global perspective your peers
lack, when and how to deliver bad news, when to take a shot at your rivals
and when to be gracious, and most important, how to handle the many
new influences on your trajectory.
In Executive Warfare, we’ll take those influences one by one—including
bosses, directors, underlings, peers, and clients—and show you how to
deal with them in a way that will get you
where you want to go.
Intelligence, imagination, and cun- FORTY PERCENT OF
ning are all required here—but not CEOS FAIL WITHIN
underhandedness. You know, thanks to THEIR FIRST YEAR
my earlier books, I’m sometimes OR TWO ON THE
accused of being too manipulative and JOB. THERE ARE
Machiavellian in my view of organiza- SPECIES OF FRUIT
tional life. That was not true of those FLIES WITH
books, nor is it true of this one. I don’t LONGER LIFE
believe that you need to be devious to EXPECTANCIES.
succeed. In fact, I think that being exces-
sively political is a mistake. I also don’t
advise turning yourself into a heartless machine. If you have no human-
ity, you will inspire no one. And no matter how tough the game gets, you
are more likely to win it if you maintain your sense of fun.
That said, you do have to be aware of your surroundings.
Defense at this level is largely about trying to figure out where the ball
is going. And you are certain to run into some very manipulative people.
If you fail to anticipate what the other players are doing, you are not a
player. You are why they invented bleachers.
Learn to play this game, however, and the rewards of reaching the top
of an organization are more than worth the trouble. The difference
between being a vice president and a senior vice president can easily be
hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for many years. It can be the dif-
ference between actually making the kinds of decisions you’ve always

13