Page 39 - Executive Warfare

Attitude, Risk, and Luck

Even incredibly smart people end up merely doing well, but never get-
ting to play in a bigger arena, because their personal lives have locked them
into place, and they become unwilling to risk any change.
When I was young and working in New York, for example, I knew a guy
who was Jackie Gleason’s personal publicist. He wanted to move into net-
work television. He was brilliant and creative, and I’m sure that he would
have been terrific there. However, when I asked him why he didn’t get into
television, he shrugged. “The TV networks don’t look in the public rela-
tions direction when they’re looking for executives. And I can’t afford the
pay cut I’d have to take for an entry-
level job.” He was only in his mid-30s,
but as far as he was concerned, it was HAVING A NATURAL
already too late. APTITUDE FOR AN
Meanwhile, all the people like him, INSTRUMENT IS
trapped in the wrong jobs, are quickly SUCH AN
surpassed by the lucky few who are in ENORMOUS
the right jobs, those people with a nat- ADVANTAGE THAT IF
ural aptitude for the profession in YOU DON’T HAVE IT,
which they find themselves. YOU HAVE TO
Having a natural aptitude for an WORK THREE
instrument is such an enormous advan- TIMES HARDER
tage that if you don’t have it, you have THAN THE PEOPLE
to work three times harder than the WHO DO, EVEN TO
people who do, even to be credible. And BE CREDIBLE.
you may never be more than mediocre.
The shrewdest thing you can possibly
do is to spend your 20s questioning whether you have the right instru-
ment in the right orchestra and making your way there. If, however, like
most people, you reach midcareer without even having explored a change
of instruments—and you find that you are not rising—you don’t have to
do what most people do, which is resign themselves to their own frus-
trated ambitions.

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