Page 80 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

explain it as well as he could.” It’s important that you be balanced and
fair because chances are good, first, that the CEO placed Joe in his job
and, second, that there is nothing negative you can say about Joe that she
doesn’t already know. Your manner may matter more than the content
of your complaint.
So do not undermine Joe—if he hears about it, he will make you pay
for it dearly—unless you have decided to try to dispose of him entirely.
More about that in a minute.

HITCH YOUR CAREER TO AS MANY HORSES AS YOU CAN
If you help a boss achieve her ambitions—and she rises—you’ll probably
rise with her. But if I’d been able to predict with any accuracy in my own
career who was going to rise, I would have quit business and made my liv-
ing instead in Las Vegas.
I got my first hint that bosses can have surprisingly short life spans in
the first grade. When you’re about to go into first grade, all the older kids
tell you scary stories about the teacher
you’re going to have. By the time I got
BEFORE YOU GO TO there on the first day, though, and she
MEETINGS WITH showed me where the cloakroom was, I
YOUR BOSS AND saw that she wasn’t a monster, and all
THE TOP PEOPLE IN was well.
YOUR Then, during our first art class, my
ORGANIZATION, MY teacher showed us how to use the paper
ADVICE IS STUDY, cutter. She banged on the desks to
STUDY, AND STUDY. emphasize that we should never, ever use
the paper cutter alone.Over the summer,
someone must have greased that paper
cutter because it instantly fell and cut off her finger,which rolled off the desk
onto the floor. So I was all set to have this teacher for the whole year, and in
an instant, she was gone, and I had to get used to somebody new.

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