Page 44 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

opponent, the polite thing to do, Charlie was using his best serve on the
CEO’s wife, and she simply could not return it.
He was just vicious, to a point where a ball bounced up and ended the
game by injuring her eye.
That night, I was at the CEO’s table for dinner. Charlie came by to apol-
ogize to the wife, who had more than her usual amount of makeup on. She
was quite good about it. She laughed and said,“Oh, don’t worry about it.”
The CEO only said coolly to him, “I hear you have quite the serve,
Charlie.” The rest of us at the table knew what that meant. That meant,
“Your life in this company is over.”
It takes a lot of discipline to make it
YOU CAN’T ALLOW to the senior levels of any organization
YOUR OWN and a tremendous amount of discre-
AGGRESSIVE tion, not just in your professional
TENDENCIES TO behavior but also in your personal
MAKE YOU behavior.
IRRESPONSIBLE. I highly recommend that you keep
your personal life private. Take the risk
of people not knowing you. Anything
you do reveal, trust me, will eventually come back to haunt you.
For example, high on the list of life’s unfairnesses is contracting a seri-
ous illness. Even more unfair is the fact that if you contract a serious ill-
ness, you have to hide it if you possibly can. I know very few people
who’ve ever been promoted after a heart attack. Never mind that bypass
surgery is a miracle. A heart attack is a showstopper, particularly if the
job you want to be promoted into is considered “stressful.” And it’s a
question of odds.
The decision makers, who have choices, tend to think, “Why take a
chance on somebody who has had a heart attack? Because if he or she dies
within a couple of years, I’ll look stupid. Why should I look stupid?”
For precisely the same reason, nobody who admits to being an alco-
holic gets to be CEO. You may get big bucks in your career, but you don’t

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