Page 72 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

It’s okay to be a bad boy sometimes, if you do the third essential thing,
which is help the boss move the ball from here to there.
Whether your boss is a bishop running a diocese who wants to build a
new parish or the creative head of an advertising agency who wants to win
a big new client, all bosses are trying to
reach some goal. Make sure that you

THE BOSS IS NOT understand what your boss’s goal is.
STUPID, SO DON’T It also is helpful to understand some-
PUT A SHINE ON thing beyond the immediate goal. I
THE BALL. always wanted to know what my boss’s
next move was going to be. Did she
want to keep rising within this com-
pany? Go someplace else? This is worth a conversation: “By the way, if we
do these things successfully, where are you trying to go?”
If the boss said,“Look, I’m here just to help the organization do what’s
necessary,” I always took that with an enormous grain of salt.
However, if you are working for a boss who is truly not ambitious—
and hasn’t yet set a nearby retirement date—that is a problem. This means
that he is trying to play it safe. Playing it safe means you won’t get noticed.
Get behind a slow-moving train like this, and you are his caboose. There’s
a good chance you’re going to get hit by a train behind you.
Bosses without ambition will reward the safe players over you, too. I
mean, who plays it safe and surrounds himself with ambitious people?
Nobody thinks, “You know what? I’m a giraffe. And I just want to mosey
along here and eat from the trees. So what I’m going to do is herd a series
of tigers and panthers to help me do that.” Never happens.
A boss who has goals, a boss who will look you in the eye and tell you
what those goals are and you can believe her—a boss like that is as good
as gold.
The fourth thing you have to do is to assure the boss that you are both
loyal and discreet. No matter how incompetent or unpleasant he may be,

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