Page 44 - The Voice of Authority

A CEO who recently sold his company has this story to
tell about one of his acquisitions: “We acquired a company
from a different industry. The sales manager there had
been with the company for many, many years and could
have helped us a lot by giving us information such as high-
lighting top customers to go after and the right products
to pitch. We thought it was
that kind of information we
were buying when we ac-
People withhold details quired his company. But the
to gain power. They lose sales manager thought if he
it for the same reason.
‘doled it out slowly’ to us
that we’d need him more,
that his job would be more
secure. It was just the reverse. We finally gave up and went
around him.”
People withhold details to gain power. They lose it for
the same reason.

Behind-the-Scenes Stuff and Fluff
Some people sail through the day or week unaware of what
others need to know to do their job. Their thinking: “What
does my X information have to do with their Y process?”
Long before the movie or TV show, “six degrees of sep-
aration” was a hypothesis set forth in 1929 by Hungarian
writer Karinthy Frigyes. The theory holds that anybody on
earth can be connected to any other person on the planet
through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five
intermediaries. That is, you know somebody, who knows
somebody else, who knows somebody else. . . . Well, you
get the picture. With six introductions, you could be con-
nected to anybody you’d like to meet.
Although the theory has been tested through the years

32 The Voice of Authority