Critical Praise for David F. D’Alessandro “With its engaging voice and pull-no-punches tone, Brand Warfare book stands out from the marketing crowd.” —Harvard Business Review “In this short, concise work, D’Alessandro, CEO of the John Hancock insurance group, entertainingly hammers home the importance of creating and maintaining a brand. In his view, a brand is what- ever image a customer conjures up upon hearing a company’s name, so everything from the firm’s labor practices to its product and advertising must be taken into account. To make his points, D’Alessandro draws heavily on his former career in advertising and public relations. On having Orville Redenbacher as a client: ‘We literally thought he was insane.’ But in the end, he says, ‘Orville taught me…the power of a good brand to trump all rhyme or reason in the marketplace.’ … He succeeds at reminding everyone from the CEO to the people on the assembly line that their company’s brand is its most crucial asset. Practical, psychologically astute and clearly written, this book has much to offer businessfolk of all stripes.” —Publishers Weekly “Ready to hit the trenches to defend your brand? David F. D’Alessandro, CEO of John Hancock Financial Services, arms readers with a battle plan in Brand Warfare. Drawing on years of experience, D’Alessandro offers 10 tips for nurturing a good brand—that is, one that ‘offers comfort, trust, con- venience, and identity.’ Some basic concepts, includ- ing how to manage scandal, will already be familiar to marketing professionals. But D’Alessandro amuses and instructs with his bluntness. For instance, he says that ‘survival in the advertising game demands that the agencies learn how to flat- ter and milk their clients.’ Of greatest value to the brand warrior are his discussions of the successes and failures of such well-known outfits as Amazon, Coca-Cola, Nike, and his own John Hancock. And he says branding should aim not only at consumers but also at a company’s employees. After all, ‘the best people want to work for the best brands.’” —BusinessWeek “D’Alessandro is that refreshing rarity: a business- man who tells it like it is. And he does just that in his gripping new page-turner, Brand Warfare.” —Chicago Sun-Times “In Career Warfare, David D’Alessandro, chairman and CEO of John Hancock Financial Services, offers the unwritten rules of organizational life, the real truths you need to know in order to build the kind of personal brand that shouts ‘headed for the top.’” —Soundview Speed Review “It seems that Mr. D’Alessandro has written this book [Career Warfare] mostly for the reason he offers: he has spent more than 30 years at different companies and wants to share his insight to help others develop their career.… ‘At the risk of appalling all the humanists out there, I can tell you that it's smart for you to try to think of yourself as a product—an expensive one—because at the end of the day, that's exactly what you are to your organ- ization, to your boss, and to your customers,’ he writes. That’s a very unchief-executive thing to write. Some advice may seem obvious to people who have already climbed the professional ladder, but the author presents his analysis in such a refreshing way that the reader keeps turning the pages.… All in all, the book offers a refreshing mes- sage of humanity from someone who has fought many corporate wars.” —The New York Times “This time [with Career Warfare] he narrows the focus, honing in on executives and interpersonal dynamics. With advice and examples of how to dif- ferentiate one’s personal brand—clearly his area of expertise—D’Alessandro warmly and wittily conveys practical experience, along with his self- effacing skepticism of touchy-feely corporate platitudes.” —The Miami Herald “…It turns out that all of us have personal brands, and we need to manage them with the same care and energy Fortune 500 firms bring to the task. This is the message of Career Warfare, the latest how-to book by David D’Alessandro. D’Alessandro’s books are short, with plenty of attitude. His last book was called Brand Warfare. The repetition of the word ‘warfare’ is not an accident. For D’Alessandro, the business world is a dangerous place. At any time you can step on a land mine and blow up your career.” —Knight Ridder News Service “D’Alessandro is far and away the most unusual top executive in town. In a world where you are sup- posed to tend to the bottom line and stick to the safe center, D’Alessandro was not afraid to be as loud as the loud ties he wears. When Boston janitors went on strike, he was the first to speak up for them. Very early on he wrote an opinion piece calling on Car- dinal Bernard Law to quit. The fact that he helped bail out the Boston Marathon by underwriting it with Hancock dollars, so remarkable at the time, is now just one line in an extraordinary résumé chock- ablock with leadership roles at places like Partners Healthcare, the Wang Center and Boston University. Everything he touched he made better.” —The Boston Globe This page intentionally left blank EXECUTIVE WARFARE This page intentionally left blank EXECUTIVE WARFARE 10 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT FOR WINNING YOUR WAR FOR SUCCESS DAVID F. D’ALESSANDRO AUTHOR OF BRAND WARFARE AND CAREER WARFARE WITH MICHELE OWENS New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto Copyright © 2008 by DFD Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-154424-0 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-154423-2. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. 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For Michael, Andrew, and Robert This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..............................................................xv INTRODUCTION If You Are Not Interested in Success, Put Down This Book and Buy a Latte................................................................1 1 ATTITUDE, RISK, AND LUCK They Are the Most Influential Bosses ............................................15 2 BOSSES You Need a License to Cut Hair, but Not to Manage and Control Thousands of People ..................................45 3 PEERS Understand That They Are Your Most Valuable Allies . . . or Your Most Dangerous Enemies ..................69 4 RIVALS Defeat Them with a Siege, Not a Coup..........................................95 5 THE TEAM YOU ASSEMBLE You Risk Your Reputation with Every Hire and Fire ..................115 xiii For more information about this title, click here 6 THE PEOPLE YOU HAVE TO MOTIVATE You Are a Fool if You Think They Love You................................137 7 OUTSIDERS WITH INFLUENCE Be Wary, Be Right, and Be Prepared to Prove It..........................165 8 POSITION Get into Place, Whether You Are a Hunter, Skinner, or Diner ..........................................................................189 9 CULTURE Before You Sign on, Make Sure It’s a Culture, Not a Cult ..............................................................205 10 THE NEW BOSSES It’s Not the Same Old Twentieth-Century Game ........................225 AFTERWORD Bring Heat and Light to the Room ..............................................253 Index ................................................................................................259 Contents xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Legendary bluesman B.B. King begins one of his many famous songs with the lyric: Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin’ too. The song was not written about career development, but nonetheless con- tains a valuable lesson for people seeking success in organizational life. Nobody you work with loves you. If you think they do, you are “jivin’” yourself. I wrote this book to help people avoid mistakes, think with a clear head, and not get lulled into believing accomplishments are all they really need to get ahead. The higher one goes in any organization, the stiffer the com- petition. There is little room for “love”. But this is the page where an author thanks the many people who con- tribute to his work which follows, and I have plenty of affection for all those great folks. Michele Owens, my coauthor, is brilliant, hilarious, incredibly talented, and I am proud to have worked by her side on three books. She makes the process of book writing a joy. My old friend and sage advisor Steve Bur- gay always encourages me to press on and convert my history and obser- vations into lessons. Becky Collet, a real star who has worked with me for xv Copyright © 2008 by DFD Enterprises, LLC. Click here for terms of use. years, somehow finds the patience to deal with my idiosyncrasies. My assistant, Antoniette Ricci, somehow perseveres through the hectic pace of my life. Amy Hinson is a rare person. She read and reread every word and helped make this book fresher and more contemporary. And where would any author be without a great lawyer like Ike Williams? Mary Glenn, my editor, continues to have faith in Michele and me. She chal- lenges us to keep on point and rise above our previous works. I also need to thank some of the people I have worked with who taught me by allowing me to watch them in action. I don’t believe they would all agree with every one of my interpretations and lessons learned, but with- out them, I would still be working in my family’s delicatessen. Among the most notable are Bob Kleinert, Jack Connors, Jack McElwee, Jim Morton, Steve Brown, Bill Boyan, Mike Bell, Alan Einersen, Bob Marston, and Bob Muir. Then there are the unnamed ones I never liked but learned from anyway. There are two men, coincidentally both named Dominic D’Alessandro, who deserve my gratitude. My father showed me that the path to success is never straight or predictable—but perseverance has its own reward. The other Dominic, CEO of Manulife Financial, who I am not related to, gave new meaning to the creed “be a man of your word.” Now, no person in their right mind thanks his father and not his mother. Rosemary taught me the value of listening carefully and being direct when necessary—even if it caused confrontation. Lastly, I am grateful to the thousands of characters I have met who, through their brilliance, stupidity, selflessness, greed, honesty, or deceit, wove the fabric of this book. Acknowledgments xvi EXECUTIVE WARFARE This page intentionally left blank WAR INTRODUCTION If You Are Not Interested in Success, Put Down This Book and Buy a Latte Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. Elbert Hubbard Copyright © 2008 by DFD Enterprises, LLC. Click here for terms of use. This page intentionally left blank Let me first say that if you are perfectly content in your current job, more interested in scrapbooking or drinking games than in getting ahead at the office, or contemplating life as a cloistered monk, do not buy this book. If, however, you are harboring any thoughts of rising into senior management, read on. In the early 1970s, when I was in my early twenties, I thought that if I could only reach a point in my career where I would be managing a few people and making the astounding amount of $100,000 a year, I would be as content as if I were lying under a Tuscan olive tree, being hand-fed peeled and seeded grapes. But that is not what happens, is it? In a few short years, when I actually was managing a few people and making $100,000 a year, my definition of success had changed. Instead of basking under the olive trees, I was try- ing to figure out how to jump the next hurdle. This is a cycle that all ambitious people understand, whether they work for a university, a nonprofit, a newspaper, a partnership, or a Fortune 500 company. Wherever they are, they want to reach the next level, and it’s all they want. Then they get the big promotion that’s everything they ever wanted. They grow into the job and start doing well at it, and pretty soon they are looking around saying, “Is that all there is?” It doesn’t matter that they have already outstripped their own early def- inition of success, their families’ and neighbors’ definitions, too. They are addicted to climbing the ladder. They just can’t help it. And the worst thing that can happen to them in a career is to get stuck. Yet the truth is, once you reach a cer- tain level, the odds are against your ris- ing higher, and there are more and more people standing in your way. Introduction 3 ONCE YOU REACH A CERTAIN LEVEL, THE ODDS ARE AGAINST YOUR RISING HIGHER, AND THERE ARE MORE AND MORE PEOPLE STANDING IN YOUR WAY. While I have read hundreds of so-called management, success, and lead- ership books—some philosophical, some pious, and some just self- aggrandizing—I have not read one that gives any really practical advice for beating those odds and continuing to rise. Well, I happen to have a lot to say on this subject. In my career, I’ve had the chance to observe the struggles of smart, talented people trying to break into senior management in dozens of different corporate cultures, as well as at universities, nonprofits, and in government. I began my career in the 1970s in advertising and public relations, and my clients included many of the big forces of the day, such as Gillette, Mobil Oil, and Owens Corning. My employers have also included Citibank and the one-time computer giant Control Data, as well as John Hancock Financial Services, where I became CEO in 2000. In addition, I have served on the boards of many nonprofits. Along the way, I’ve seen a lot of people who failed to catch the wind, some who crashed painfully, and others who skillfully gathered the momentum to rise—enough of each to codify a few thoughts about the nature of flight when it comes to careers. While my last book offered advice about getting on the road to suc- cess, I wrote Executive Warfare for those already successful men and women who are nonetheless intent on moving upward—the ones with the courage, stomach, and desire to break out of the middle of the pack and get to the top. The problem is, it’s relatively easy to be successful in the middle. You just have to do the things that were drummed into all of us as children: be smart, hard-working, able to show results. Once you reach a certain point, however, it’s no longer enough to be smart, hard-working, able to show results; your rivals are all smart, hard-working, able to show results. These qualities are like the ante in a Introduction 4 IT’S NO LONGER ENOUGH TO BE SMART, HARD- WORKING, ABLE TO SHOW RESULTS; YOUR RIVALS ARE ALL SMART, HARD- WORKING, ABLE TO SHOW RESULTS. high-stakes poker game. Everybody has to pay those dues to play. But a lot of people think that all they have to do to win is pay those dues. They are markedly mistaken—and most find this out the hard way and usu- ally too late. There is also another catch that no one tells you about—not when you’re a child, not when you’re a college student, not when you’re a young and eager employee—not ever, for that matter. It’s not just that the pyra- mid narrows and the competition toughens as you rise. It’s that the game changes fundamentally. At a certain point on the way to the executive suite, the simple chain of command you have worked under for years turns into filigree, and you no longer have just one boss to please. You now have a complex, hazy matrix of hundreds of bosses. And you cannot rise without impressing a good number of them. These bosses include not just your direct boss, but also the people above him or her to whom you have now become visible, including the organiza- tion’s chief executive and the board of directors. Your other new bosses include every single person who has any influence over any of these higher-ups. Chances are good that the higher-ups are listening to your peers. They are also listening to the people in human resources, the general counsel’s office, and the accounts payable department that processes your expenses. They may very well be listening to some of your underlings, too, who are probably more prominent themselves than any underlings you’ve ever had to supervise before. These bosses are definitely listening to the outsiders you might expect to be influential, such as clients, regulators, and the press. But they’re also Introduction 5 IT’S NOT JUST THAT THE PYRAMID NARROWS AND THE COMPETITION TOUGHENS AS YOU RISE. IT’S THAT THE GAME CHANGES FUNDAMENTALLY. listening to the ones you don’t expect: the spouses of the people you work with and the guy at the gym who notices your temper tantrums when you lose a racquetball game. So now, in addition to getting your job done and done well, you have to develop some very adult skills. You have to manage an incredibly tricky network of relationships, simultane- ously, in private and in public, and in a way that announces your ability to lead. The experiences that have brought you to this point can in no way have pre- pared you for the subtle, tortuous, and sometimes crazy-making challenges you’ll now face. This I learned on my third day with the title of vice president. I’d just come to John Hancock as an outsider to run the company’s communications. In John Hancock’s 122-year history, I was the first vice president ever hired directly from outside the ranks. It was a big step up for me, and the way I was treated was pretty heady stuff. I was given a gorgeous big office on one of the top floors of the beau- tiful building Henry Cobb of I.M. Pei & Partners had designed for the company on Boston’s Copley Square. Soon, people were arriving with styl- ish design plans and asking me questions like, “Do you prefer to furnish with antiques or something more contemporary?” What I’d been used to was this: When you took a new job, whatever fur- niture was in the office when you got there was your furniture. And if there were any delay in your moving into that office, most of the good stuff would have been pilfered by the people in the neighboring offices. Of course, I didn’t understand that just because I’d now have an office fit for a prince, that didn’t mean that a few offices over, there weren’t half a dozen other princes and princesses thinking very hard about how to block me, use me, or kill me. Introduction 6 YOU NO LONGER HAVE JUST ONE BOSS TO PLEASE. YOU NOW HAVE A COMPLEX, HAZY MATRIX OF HUNDREDS OF BOSSES. In my new position, I was assigned a whole series of people, and I was on my best behavior meeting my new employees, including one woman who came from Thailand. Let’s call her Mali. I’d just been to Thailand for the first time and had really enjoyed the trip. “Bangkok is a beautiful and fascinating city,” I said to her. “Incredi- bly industrious, wonderful food, intriguing history. . . . “I took a tour along the river,” I went on in an outpouring of friendli- ness, “which I really loved, except for the polluted river itself. You must be proud to be from a country with such a unique culture. . . .” Mali smiled at me and was very ani- mated, and we had a great conversation. The next thing I knew, I was having the opposite kind of conversation with my new boss—a very unhappy one. “Mali says she can’t work for you,” he informed me, “because you have no empathy for her ethnic origins.” “But I told her I loved her country,” I protested. “Look, it doesn’t really matter what you said. What matters is, she thinks you said she comes from a dirty coun- try, and we don’t want this to escalate up to the president. So I’m taking her department away, I’m taking it away now.” I was dumbfounded. I hadn’t even had my company physical yet, and I’d already lost a whole department. If the Guinness Book of World Records had a contest for “fastest loser of a department,” I would have won—hands down. What had happened was this: There was somebody else at John Han- cock who wanted Mali’s department, and he resented a newcomer taking it over. So when Mali told him that I’d called a polluted river “polluted,” Introduction 7 YOU HAVE TO MANAGE AN INCREDIBLY TRICKY NETWORK OF RELATIONSHIPS, SIMULTANEOUSLY, IN PRIVATE AND IN PUBLIC, AND IN A WAY THAT ANNOUNCES YOUR ABILITY TO LEAD. he saw an opportunity to stir up doubts about me in my boss’s mind— and seized on it. I’d been there three entire days. I had no idea that I even had rivals. And this was in genteel old Boston, at an old-line company where if you got in, you got in forever. The John Hancock of that era made the Civil Ser- vice culture look cutthroat. However, I was like a foreign bee that had invaded a long-standing hive, and the other bees were going to do something about it. That same unpromising week, one of John Hancock’s executive vice presi- dents invited me to lunch. Before we’d unfurled a napkin, he said to me, “The senior officers are taking bets, you know.” “About what?” I asked. “About how long you’re going to last. There’s actually a pool. They’re giving ten-to-one odds that you don’t last six months.” “How’s it going?” “So far, no one’s bet for you.” I looked at him. “How did you bet?” “I make my bet,” he said dryly, “after the lunch.” Even at the time, I thought that was pretty funny of him, and I laughed. He bet against me anyway. And lost, because I went on to run the com- pany, and he eventually worked for me. I’m actually grateful for that harsh introduction to John Hancock. It taught me a few essential lessons about what it means to move into higher management—and fast. That nobody gives you a honeymoon period. Introduction 8 I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THAT JUST BECAUSE I’D NOW HAVE AN OFFICE FIT FOR A PRINCE, THAT DIDN’T MEAN THAT A FEW OFFICES OVER, THERE WEREN’T HALF A DOZEN OTHER PRINCES AND PRINCESSES THINKING VERY HARD ABOUT HOW TO BLOCK ME, USE ME, OR KILL ME. That good intentions do not count. That every foolish word out of your mouth is now subject to scrutiny by the people both above and below you. That there is so much at stake—money, prestige, the power to make real decisions—that the competition will be ruthless. That bosses at this level will not put up with anything or anybody who risks embarrassing them. That this is a new game called hardball, and the problem is, you can strike out without even seeing a pitch. When you are promoted to senior management, my advice is to celebrate the night before you start the job, because there is no celebrating afterward. Just because you’ve been made a field general and given a spiffy new uni- form with epaulettes doesn’t mean that you won’t have battles to fight. You’ll now have to impress that complex matrix I mentioned earlier, everybody from the commander-in-chief to the lowliest private, from the other generals to the Pentagon corre- spondent at the New York Times. And you can’t always expect to be judged fairly. Some of these people will know you intimately. They may well have worked with you for years. In any case, you’ve moved into a smaller orbit near the top of the organization. The trouble with that, of course, is that familiarity can breed contempt, and people may discount your hard work and dedication just because they are in the mood for a new face. Even worse, some of these people will be actively rooting for you to fail. There are your peers, a much smaller group now, some of whom will ben- efit directly if you go down in flames. There are also those people with nothing to gain, who simply enjoy a crash scene if they stumble across it. Of course, if it’s a nuclear event for the organization, that’s one thing. But a nuclear event for your career? Don’t kid yourself. A lot of people will not mind that at all. Introduction 9 THIS IS A NEW GAME CALLED HARDBALL, AND THE PROBLEM IS, YOU CAN STRIKE OUT WITHOUT EVEN SEEING A PITCH. Consider the case of publisher Judith Regan. Her career at Harper- Collins ended in late 2006, thanks in part to the controversy surrounding her acquisition of what many viewed as a confessional book by O. J. Simp- son. Regan had brought so many successful books to HarperCollins. You’d think that when she was fired, her coworkers would, at a minimum, have mourned the loss of future revenues. Instead, there was no shortage of them willing to share their glee with the press. And let’s admit the truth: Some of the people judging you will inevitably be mean, power-mad, incompetent, or just plain crazy. I’ve seen people in all kinds of senior management jobs that I wouldn’t allow to litter-train my cat. And yet they were responsible for hun- dreds or thousands of careers. As you go along, you may also find it very difficult to measure your own suc- cess. At a certain level, your bosses cease giving you praise when you do well. High performance is simply expected. And when you do badly, you now have enough power of your own that you probably won’t be killed off directly, unless you do something truly offensive, like date the boss’s spouse. Now it’s a matter of how many dents you take. You’ll take some unavoidably, but you can’t take too many—and how many are too many? You may find it difficult to assess your performance even by your own standards. For most of your career, you’ve almost certainly succeeded by being an expert of some kind or other—engineer, tax specialist, commu- nity organizer, professor of anthropology—and by managing small groups of people on projects you’ve understood better than anybody else. With a Introduction 10 SOME OF THE PEOPLE JUDGING YOU WILL INEVITABLY BE MEAN, POWER- MAD, INCOMPETENT, OR JUST PLAIN CRAZY. I’VE SEEN PEOPLE IN ALL KINDS OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT JOBS THAT I WOULDN’T ALLOW TO LITTER-TRAIN MY CAT. move into higher management, however, you’re suddenly thrust into a new role, one where you are now managing experts in fields you have no knowledge of. It’s a case of the blind leading the sighted, and if that role fails to alarm you, you’re either too full of yourself, too immature, or just too plain stupid to be successful. And when you move up, you’ll be represented by people whose names you barely know because you no longer have six or ten people working for you. You now have a hundred or a thousand or five thousand. Yet the quality of your hiring decisions—and the hiring decisions of the people you’ve hired—looms large as people judge your ability to lead. What’s more, you may well find yourself being blamed for problems that you had no part in creating simply because you are the person now in charge. In organizational life, they do sometimes kill the messenger. Finally, you may find yourself struggling with geopolitical turmoil— redrawn national boundaries or your old commander-in-chief ousted and replaced by a stranger—while you’re in the midst of battle. For example, it’s been virtually impossible in recent years to pick up the business pages of any newspaper without seeing scandal after scandal breaking: books cooking, options backdating, lying to Wall Street, lying on Wall Street, plus the ever-popular personal peccadilloes story. Every one of these scandals represents career upheaval for more people than you might guess. Even more career plans are thrown off track by mergers and acqui- sitions and dislocations in the economy, such as the one set in motion by the subprime mortgage crisis. And in an information age when a single careless comment can live on in infamy, even nonprofits and universities are no longer the calm, secure berths they once were. In late 2005, University of Richmond President William E. Cooper was done in by a moment of excessive honesty when Introduction 11 IN ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE, THEY DO SOMETIMES KILL THE MESSENGER. he complained that, given the quality of his student body, his institution was only “turning mush into mush.” Soon after, he announced that he’d be stepping down. You don’t have to flame out yourself, either. Have a boss who flames out, and you may soon follow him or her out the door. You can be rising happily within an organization for two decades, only to find the rug pulled out from under you in an afternoon. As a result, the very worst thing that can happen to you if you intend to climb is to develop a sense of entitlement just because you’ve been somewhere for a long time. You may think, “Look, I’ve put my 15 years in, I’ve come through six jobs, I deserve this next job.” Well, the world does not work that way anymore. It’s no longer useful to have a ten-year plan. Even God had only a seven-day plan. So you’d better develop the ability to improvise above all. And the higher you go, the more nimble you have to be. Consider this little statistic: According to Joe Griesedieck of recruiting firm Korn/ Ferry International, 40 percent of CEOs fail within their first year or two on the job. There are species of fruit flies with longer life expectancies. I wrote this book not to alleviate the uncertainty that comes with any move into higher management, but rather to alert you to the things you should be worried about—and what to do about them. In my experience, the single greatest reason why otherwise talented people get stuck in midcareer is because they believe that the same rules that applied for the first part of their career still apply. They don’t. You now have to master a much subtler set of rules. Introduction 12 THE VERY WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU INTEND TO CLIMB IS TO DEVELOP A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT JUST BECAUSE YOU’VE BEEN SOMEWHERE FOR A LONG TIME. You’ll need to learn how to acquire the global perspective your peers lack, when and how to deliver bad news, when to take a shot at your rivals and when to be gracious, and most important, how to handle the many new influences on your trajectory. In Executive Warfare, we’ll take those influences one by one—including bosses, directors, underlings, peers, and clients—and show you how to deal with them in a way that will get you where you want to go. Intelligence, imagination, and cun- ning are all required here—but not underhandedness. You know, thanks to my earlier books, I’m sometimes accused of being too manipulative and Machiavellian in my view of organiza- tional life. That was not true of those books, nor is it true of this one. I don’t believe that you need to be devious to succeed. In fact, I think that being exces- sively political is a mistake. I also don’t advise turning yourself into a heartless machine. If you have no human- ity, you will inspire no one. And no matter how tough the game gets, you are more likely to win it if you maintain your sense of fun. That said, you do have to be aware of your surroundings. Defense at this level is largely about trying to figure out where the ball is going. And you are certain to run into some very manipulative people. If you fail to anticipate what the other players are doing, you are not a player. You are why they invented bleachers. Learn to play this game, however, and the rewards of reaching the top of an organization are more than worth the trouble. The difference between being a vice president and a senior vice president can easily be hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for many years. It can be the dif- ference between actually making the kinds of decisions you’ve always Introduction 13 FORTY PERCENT OF CEOS FAIL WITHIN THEIR FIRST YEAR OR TWO ON THE JOB. THERE ARE SPECIES OF FRUIT FLIES WITH LONGER LIFE EXPECTANCIES. dreamed about making versus merely participating in them. You will have to take risks to rise, and you will make mistakes. I’ve made plenty, and I’ll share them with you. Through triumphs and stumbles, the essential thing is to make it clearer and clearer to the people around you that you ought to be in charge. This book will tell you how to lead all your many bosses to the inevitable conclusion that you, and you alone, have what it takes to run the show. Introduction 14 INTELLIGENCE, IMAGINATION, AND CUNNING ARE ALL REQUIRED HERE— BUT NOT UNDERHANDEDNESS. ONE ATTITUDE, RISK, AND LUCK They Are the Most Influential Bosses Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so. Bertrand Russell 1 Copyright © 2008 by DFD Enterprises, LLC. Click here for terms of use. This page intentionally left blank I don’t care what your parents told you. You can’t be anything you want to be. Some people simply cannot play the piano well, no matter how hard they try. Some people will never succeed as investment bankers, either. Even among those people who do play the piano well, very few will get to Carnegie Hall. On the other hand, a substantial number of them could conceivably make a good living at a piano bar. The same holds true in every kind of career. Most businesspeople will never be invited to run General Electric. But that doesn’t mean they can’t become rich and famous at a solar panel startup or old-line fabric house. Much of life—and work—is about finding the right instrument to play in the right orchestra. Sounds easy? It’s not. I figured this out early. Like most public school kids of my era, my musical education started with the flutophone, which is basically a baby clarinet without a reed. Then, in fourth grade, it came time for the kids in my class with any degree of talent or non-talent to join the school band. So we each got an appointment with the head of the music department, Mr. Wetzel. Mr. Wetzel asked me, “Well, David, what instrument do you want to play?” Excitedly, I said,“I really want to play the clarinet.” This was the natural next step after the flutophone. “We don’t have any more clarinets,” he said. “All the clarinets are gone.” “That’s okay,” I responded cheerfully. “Then I want to play the saxophone.” He shook his head. “You can’t play the saxophone unless you play the clarinet first.” I thought. A trumpet is like the clarinet because you blow through it, and it has keys and stuff. Besides, it’s kind of a cool instrument. After all, Louis Armstrong played one. “What about the trumpet?” Attitude, Risk, and Luck 17 MUCH OF LIFE— AND WORK—IS ABOUT FINDING THE RIGHT INSTRUMENT TO PLAY IN THE RIGHT ORCHESTRA. No, the trumpets were taken. At the end of the day, I couldn’t even get a stringed instrument like a cello or bass or even a drum. Yes, I had a choice—tuba or trombone—but I had never even seen either one up close before. I reluctantly chose the trombone. But two years later I asked again for a clarinet. Mr. Wetzel’s answer was,“Well, you can’t have a clarinet because you’ve already been playing the trombone for two years. You’re a sixth grader now, and we have fourth graders who get the clarinets.” So I played the trombone for six years, hated every moment of it, and learned that life is not fair. Most careers are a lot like playing in Mr. Wetzel’s orchestra, and I don’t care if that career takes place in a giant corporation or in the priesthood. Most people know they want to play some instrument, but they are not sure that the instrument they’ve been handed is the right one. So they end up in jobs that aren’t necessarily suited to their best skills. They may not even know what their best skills are because they haven’t been developed yet. Possibly the orchestra itself is not very sympathetic to them and has given them no chance to find out where they could really shine. There are a million reasons why people become trapped in the wrong place with the wrong job, but my point is that most of them do become trapped. They might have picked the wrong major in college or took an entry-level job in the wrong field because that was all that was available at the moment. Maybe they graduated with a fine arts major but succumbed to pressure to join the family business buying wholesale lots of nuts and bolts and have hated their working lives ever since. Maybe they stayed in a city with few opportunities because their spouse didn’t want to leave. E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 18 EVEN INCREDIBLY SMART PEOPLE END UP MERELY DOING WELL BECAUSE THEY BECOME UNWILLING TO RISK ANY CHANGE. 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 already too late. Meanwhile, all the people like him, trapped in the wrong jobs, are quickly surpassed by the lucky few who are in the right jobs, those people with a nat- ural aptitude for the profession in which they find themselves. Having a natural aptitude for an instrument is such an enormous advan- tage that if you don’t have it, you have to work three times harder than the people who do, even to be credible. And 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. Attitude, Risk, and Luck 19 HAVING A NATURAL APTITUDE FOR AN INSTRUMENT IS SUCH AN ENORMOUS ADVANTAGE THAT IF YOU DON’T HAVE IT, YOU HAVE TO WORK THREE TIMES HARDER THAN THE PEOPLE WHO DO, EVEN TO BE CREDIBLE. Sure, it may be too late for you to become an astronaut or a ballerina. But I don’t believe that successful careers are necessarily about following a childhood dream. What matters is finding a job for which you are well suited, one that makes you happy. And that is doable. Without losing or compromising your job, for example, it’s possible to learn about other areas of your own organization, make contributions there, figure out what you like to do, and work your way into a position where you’re the one with the natural aptitude who can play rings around the other musi- cians. If your organization is run by a Mr. Wetzel, and God forbid that someone who joined in percussion should ever play the flute, it’s also possible to move to a different kind of organization where they really don’t care where you started as long as you can do something valuable today. For example, I entered John Hancock in communications. I’d worked in public relations and advertising, and I was using the instrument I’d been handed. But what I really liked was mar- keting, which is much more sales-, price-, and product-driven. I knew that John Hancock happened to need good marketers, so I seized the oppor- tunity to learn a new instrument and trade in the old one. Soon, I was playing the right instrument in an orchestra that was glad to have me. Eventually, they made me conductor. To rise, you too may have to broaden your horizons, and you may have to look for an employer who will allow you to broaden them. You’ll also E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 20 WITHOUT LOSING OR COMPROMISING YOUR JOB, IT’S POSSIBLE TO LEARN ABOUT OTHER AREAS OF YOUR OWN ORGANIZATION AND WORK YOUR WAY INTO A POSITION WHERE YOU’RE THE ONE WITH THE NATURAL APTITUDE WHO CAN PLAY RINGS AROUND THE OTHER MUSICIANS. need three things to make the most of the chances you are given: the right attitude, a willingness to take calculated risks, and dumb luck. Let’s take these deciding factors one at a time. ATTITUDE: The Boss Within It’s incredibly important to get your own head in the game if you intend to rise. If fear or sloth rules your psyche, you’ll never do what you need to do to stand out from the crowd. If you are bossed around by your own greed, arrogance, or childish lack of discipline, you will give people rea- son to doubt you, and you will undermine yourself. Let’s talk about a handful of things you need to do to appear to be material for higher management. First, though it sounds obvious, learn how to present well. Meetings are the stage on which you rise or fall, thrill or flop—so make sure that you know how to express yourself there. Quietly take lessons, if you need to, at your own expense. Second, study, study, study. Not to master your own art, not to master the art of knowing what everybody else knows, but to master the art of knowing what nobody else has even considered. I used to make sure that I had a staff person who spent a lot of time analyzing the company I worked for as a whole, helping me to understand what was really going on in all the areas outside my own. And I would be briefed, three times a week, on their major initiatives. That way, if something came up in a meeting, I’d be prepared. For example, I once learned that my company was thinking about investing in a joint venture with the Colombian govern- ment. So I put in the time required to learn about the political climate in Colombia. Attitude, Risk, and Luck 21 MASTER THE ART OF KNOWING WHAT NOBODY ELSE HAS EVEN CONSIDERED. During the meeting at which this idea was presented to the top deci- sion makers, I asked, “What happens to our investment if the guerillas destabilize the government or a civil war breaks out?” This was a question that needed to be asked, but the people whose job it was to ask it had not thought about it. My bosses suddenly looked at me as if I might be the most valuable person in the room. By learning as much as you can about the organization as a whole, you are able to show dimension and prove that you belong in a broader role— possibly one that spans the whole organization. There are other, smaller ways of showing dimension, too. I once had a boss who was dying to go to Wimbledon. This was long before the advent of eBay made buying tickets to anything easy. None of my peers could figure out how to get him there, but I could. Now, was that going to make me the person who went up to the next job? No, but it was not going to hurt, either. You will have to do many other things that we’ll talk about in subse- quent chapters, such as hire well, moti- vate your employees, and convince your boss to trust you. Ideally, you will bring in truckloads of money for the com- pany or partnership or university and get to a point where people start thinking they cannot afford to lose you. Most important, you will have to not be stupid. This sounds obvious, but I have seen so many cases of ridiculous stupidity even at the highest levels of organizational life that perhaps it is not so obvious. The first thing people are told when they go into politics is, “Get used to the scrutiny.” This applies just as well to higher management. You are being judged every minute, and small things can tip the balance in your favor or against it. E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 22 BY LEARNING AS MUCH AS YOU CAN ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION AS A WHOLE, YOU ARE ABLE TO SHOW DIMENSION AND PROVE THAT YOU BELONG IN A BROADER ROLE. Let me give you an example. I was once in one of those general stores you find in small Vermont towns that have everything. This store had a little restaurant, made sandwiches to go, and sold coffee mugs, sweat shirts, and canned tomatoes. I went to check out, and near the box of maple-sugar moose candies by the cash register, there was a board with Xeroxes of people’s driver’s licenses and the checks they’d bounced. And I saw one of my own employees there. It wasn’t a very big check, something around $37.90. He wasn’t a criminal, obviously. But every time I saw that guy after that—or glanced at his name on a list of possible promotions—I thought, how responsible can he be? Virtually everybody in business is supposed to have some knowledge of how things work financially, if only to control their own budgets. Fail to pay your child support or have your wages garnisheed by the IRS, and your chances of being promoted even at the most senior level go out the window. You can’t allow your own aggressive tendencies to make you irrespon- sible, either. There are a lot of Type A personalities in senior positions, and they’re very, very competitive in everything they do. I mean, they play cro- quet competitively. I can remember an incident from a conference I attended many years ago that was one of the stupider things I’ve ever witnessed. A tennis game was scheduled, mixed doubles, with the CEO’s wife and another execu- tive’s wife playing against two senior managers, one of whom we’ll call Charlie. The two women were decent enough tennis players, but the men were much stronger. What should have been a friendly game turned into a fiercely competitive one. Instead of gauging his serve to the skill of his Attitude, Risk, and Luck 23 THE FIRST THING PEOPLE ARE TOLD WHEN THEY GO INTO POLITICS IS, “GET USED TO THE SCRUTINY.” THIS APPLIES JUST AS WELL TO HIGHER MANAGEMENT. 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 to the senior levels of any organization and a tremendous amount of discre- tion, not just in your professional behavior but also in your personal behavior. 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 E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 24 YOU CAN’T ALLOW YOUR OWN AGGRESSIVE TENDENCIES TO MAKE YOU IRRESPONSIBLE. get the big chair. So, if you have a drinking problem, by all means keep it to your off-hours and conceal it. Conceal it even if you don’t have a problem. My theory is that if some- body sees you with two tumblers of scotch in the same night, it’s prob- lematic. Despite the great popularity of large martinis, you should never have a martini at a company event. Ever. Once you embarrass yourself in public, you will never get rid of that aura of doubt. The same is true if you distract people with your messy sex life. Let me tell you a story. One day, I came back from lunch and passed by a woman waiting in my foyer. Let’s call her Brenda. She was the secretary of a senior executive who worked for me—we’ll call him Oscar—and she was crying. I said to my secretary, “What does Brenda want?” My secretary shrugged. “She says it’s an emergency, and she has to talk to you.” So Brenda came in and told me that she was sleeping with her boss. Which, by the way, I could have cared less about. The company had no nonfraternization rule. It was highly discouraged, but it was not against the rules. However, since she was weeping and choking and sobbing to the point that I was scrambling for Kleenex, I had to address the situation. I was very careful not to pry. I said, “If you are filing a sexual harassment complaint, we’ll call Personnel right now, and they’ll come and interview you. If that’s not the issue, this is just something you and Oscar have to work out.” She said, “I don’t know what to do. I love him so much.” And now Brenda’s starting to pour her heart out to me. The affair has been going on for three or four years. She’s so in love. But Oscar is reject- Attitude, Risk, and Luck 25 I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU KEEP YOUR PERSONAL LIFE PRIVATE. TAKE THE RISK OF PEOPLE NOT KNOWING YOU. ing her because of another woman in the office, who’s an executive, not a secretary. It turned out that Oscar was not only in the middle of a nasty divorce, but also sleeping with two coworkers at the same time. It was like Big Love, the HBO show about polygamy, except that I didn’t think there was any “living the principle” here. This was more “unprincipled living.” I didn’t want to seem cold, but the last thing I wanted was to be involved in was this quadrangle. I now know that I have to call the law department to look at the financials to make sure that Oscar is not using company money on either of these women. And I’m not happy about it. So, after Brenda dried her tears and left, I called Oscar to my office. We were not friends, but I knew him well. He came in, all smiling. I said, “You are not going to believe what happened to me after lunch today. Brenda came to see me.” His smile fell. “I don’t need to know any details, but are you having a relationship with another woman, too?” He said, “Yes. I’m trying to get rid of Brenda.” “How is she going to go away? She’s your secretary. She sits twelve feet from you every day. And this other woman marches in and out of your office a dozen times a day. “Personally,” I said,“I don’t care. But what are you, stupid? This is going to be a mess now.” So he told me that he would take care of it. A week went by. I came back to my office from a meeting, and sitting in my foyer is somebody new. The executive Oscar’s been sleeping with. Angry as a hornet. Oscar had decided that the way to solve this problem was to erase the blackboard. So he dumped both of them. And the executive was now furi- ous with me, convinced that her ouster from Oscar’s affections was my fault. I didn’t want to punish the women in this case, so I had the lawyers work out transfers for the secretary and the executive. They actually E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 26 wound up in better jobs. But Oscar? He had gone from somebody who was going places to a mere curiosity. The truth is that there are always office romances. People spend a lot of time together, it happens. There is no illusion that everybody in the workplace is a saint, and everybody makes mistakes. But there is a big dif- ference between playing with matches and doing what Oscar was doing, which was walking a tightrope over a volcano. And be aware that even the most benign and above-board office romance has consequences. Make sure of your ground before you make any kind of romantic overture to a coworker because you’re changing the dynamic forever, one way or the other. If it turns into a rela- tionship that’s really going, one of you is probably going to have to leave. If it doesn’t, it will be very hard to main- tain the same collegial relationship you had in the past. With every office romance, somebody is going to move on faster than natural laws would dictate. So think about whether it’s worth it. CONFORMITY IS NOT A PREREQUISITE FOR POWER You have to be discreet in your personal behavior to rise, but you don’t have to be a conformist. Every ambitious person is going to take some knocks. If you try to fit the mold of your organization too much, the rap will be that you are too dull or too dry or too sycophantic. So you might as well be yourself and get points for having the courage of your own style. Although I was as ambitious as the tip of a blue flame, by the time I reached John Hancock, I did not even try to fit in. I tried to avoid com- pany-sponsored social events as much as possible. With some of my supe- Attitude, Risk, and Luck 27 THERE ARE ALWAYS OFFICE ROMANCES, BUT THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PLAYING WITH MATCHES AND WALKING A TIGHTROPE OVER A VOLCANO. riors, this didn’t sit well. They thought I was arrogant, standoffish, not a team player. But it wasn’t about arrogance. It was about the fact that things would be said at dinner that people would regret the next day, and I’d rather not risk either hearing or saying something stupid. I was also much more direct than many of the people I worked with, and my bosses occasionally gave me trouble about it. And I certainly did not look the part at John Hancock, an old-line Boston company dating back to 1862. My ancestors came from the Basil- icata region of Italy, not the Back Bay. When I started at John Hancock, the uniform was an off-the-rack suit from Brooks Brothers, a blue Oxford shirt, and the same striped tie. I would have felt like I was wearing a costume in those clothes. So I wore Italian suits and bright ties. When I looked around the Hancock boardroom, there were seven or eight oil paintings of the former CEOs. Most of them looked like our country’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton types with sharp profiles, swept-back hair, and impressive cravats. In no way did I resemble those people. I actually once said that to the CEO when he was giving me a promotion: “I’m very happy for the promotion, but I have no illusions that my picture is ever going to hang on that wall.” He said, “Don’t be so sure about that.” The first hint I had that style questions wouldn’t hold me back came from the most unlikely person, a distinguished old Brahmin named Elliot Richardson, who was on the board of John Hancock. Richardson had had an illustrious career in government, serving in cabinet positions under E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 28 EVERY AMBITIOUS PERSON IS GOING TO TAKE SOME KNOCKS, SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE YOURSELF AND GET POINTS FOR HAVING THE COURAGE OF YOUR OWN STYLE. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He’d also shown considerable personal courage during the Watergate scandal, when he was attorney general. Nixon had ordered him to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused, resigning instead. At John Hancock, we used to have lunch together as a board, and one afternoon Richardson and I both came in late. Everybody else had wan- dered off, so for the first time, it was just the two of us sitting at the table. Richardson had just gone to his fiftieth reunion at Harvard and said con- spiratorially to me, “You know, if a guy was an ass at 21, he’s still an ass at 71.” I thought that was very funny. Then Richardson went on to say, “Most people don’t know this about me, but one of my ancestors was a quarter Italian,” as if this made the two of us Sicilians in arms. It was not only amusing, I thought it was quite endearing. It was his way of telling me that as far as he was concerned, I was okay. And for the first time I understood that I could be a contender for the top job at John Hancock. I’d advise you to be yourself, but also to disarm potential critics where you can by being self-deprecating. In my case, since I was much more aggressive and direct than my peers and wore ties with so much more wattage, I think it was extraordinarily important for me to maintain a sense of humor. If you’d have taken away my sense of humor, then there would have been no question that I was just an ambitious jerk. Humor has helped me deflect many an awkward question over the years, including at the press conference in Toronto in 2003 where we announced that John Hancock was merging with the large Canadian insurer Manulife Financial. When a reporter asked me why I was paid more than most Canadian CEOs, there was only one possible answer. “America is a great country.” Everybody laughed, and we left it at that. Attitude, Risk, and Luck 29 RISK: Slice It, Dice It, and If It Looks Good, Eat It for Breakfast One of the most significant attitude adjustments you will have to make as you move into higher management is your attitude toward risks. If you have played it safe thus far in your career, understand that you can no longer avoid taking risks—big ones, where the stakes are frighteningly high. On the other hand, if you’ve been a rambler and a gambler, you can no longer afford to be entirely freewheeling, either. Higher management is all about handling risks intelligently and in a calculated fashion. For example, we’ve recently come out of a period when mortgage lenders were extending credit to virtually anybody, devising subprime loans that allowed many people to get into the housing market way over their heads. Clearly, there was going to be a backlash to that kind of exposure, and nobody should have been surprised when there was a tsunami of foreclosures in 2007. But the CEOs of some of the world’s most sophisticated financial organ- izations apparently didn’t see it coming and made big bets on securities based on these subprime mortgages because they generated outsized fees and returns. Charles Prince of Citigroup, E. Stanley O’Neal of Merrill Lynch, James Cayne of Bear Stearns, and Peter Wuffli of UBS all lost those bets, were forced to write down billions in late 2007, and lost their jobs. In other words, these executives took on too much risk, which does more to end careers than anything except taking on too little. Even if you never have to deal with the kind of quantitative risks that Wall Street uses to make its living, risk is still the name of the game. If you work in a nonprofit, you may someday have to decide whether to accept a big donation from someone who has been indicted or, worse, who gets indicted after you take the gift and spend it. If you manufacture art sup- plies, you may have to decide whether to move into the children’s craft E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 30 BE YOURSELF, BUT DISARM POTENTIAL CRITICS WHERE YOU CAN BY BEING SELF- DEPRECATING. market. Thousands of jobs may hang on your decision, not to mention the forward movement of your own career. Let me tell you about a moment when I was unwillingly forced to bet the house. I’d taken over John Hancock’s retail division in 1991, a huge step up for me. I’d hardly been there six months when I found myself in the midst of a decade-old problem that was about to boil over. For the last 10 or 15 years, a number of salespeople throughout the life insurance industry had been taking advantage of their customers in two ways. First, some of them were rolling over existing insurance policies with a cash balance into new policies for one purpose only—to generate com- missions. In some cases, the customers didn’t even know they were being rolled over because the documents were forged. The second problem was salespeople selling life insurance on the basis of “vanishing premiums.” The idea was that because the customer’s pre- miums were invested in the stock mar- ket, there would be a point at which the premium bills would vanish and the life insurance would be paid for out of investment returns. This was sold aggressively as a way to have life insurance without having to worry about the cost as you grew older. Our sales presentations virtually guar- anteed vanishing premiums. Then the stock market stopped cooperating, and customers began getting bills they’d never expected. And if they didn’t pay, the only thing that would “vanish” was their policies. There was plenty of blame to go around for this stuff. Fortunately, though, it did not fall on me and my team, since we were new. Life insur- ers had clearly either not put sufficient checks and balances on their sales- Attitude, Risk, and Luck 31 HIGHER MANAGEMENT IS ALL ABOUT HANDLING RISKS INTELLIGENTLY AND IN A CALCULATED FASHION. people or had ignored the warning signs because the pressure to generate new revenue was so great. At John Hancock, we worked hard to unravel this mess and made sure that it stopped. By the time the heavy-weight class-action lawyers began circling overhead and suing John Hancock and its competitors for astro- nomical sums, we were somewhat ahead of the game. Nonetheless, there was a substantial cadre of lawyers, both Hancock lawyers and the company’s outside lawyers, who wanted us to fight. It was all about minimizing the financial damage. Plus, there was a certain macho appeal to fighting, and litigators like to litigate. I remember one meeting very distinctly: One guy was saying,“This law- suit is going to drag out three to four years, and the burden of proof is going to fall on the customers, individ- ual by individual. If we fight, we might be able to settle this down the road for just 20 or 30 cents on the dollar.” Here was my response: “You are crazy. First of all, we did this. Second, our business stands for, ‘When you die, we take care of your loved ones.’ It does not stand for, ‘When you die after hav- ing paid us three times more than you were supposed to, we take care of your loved ones.’ Even if we could settle the class-action suit for 30 cents on a dollar, how much damage would our brand take, and how much would sales drop in the future? Isn’t it better for us to fess up? Didn’t we all learn this in second grade?” With that speech, I had just taken the biggest risk of my career. And made many, many people unhappy. I was inviting umpteen regulators to take a look at us, since we were regulated state by state, and assuring that we would have a lot of contact E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 32 “ISN’T IT BETTER FOR US TO FESS UP? DIDN’T WE ALL LEARN THIS IN SECOND GRADE?” WITH THAT SPEECH, I HAD JUST TAKEN THE BIGGEST RISK OF MY CAREER. with class-action lawyers. Listening to blistering inquiries from both groups proved to be extraordinarily unpleasant. It was also going to cost us some untold amount of money to make things right, hundreds of millions of dollars. First, we had to pay for an enormously expensive system to figure out fair compensation, customer by customer. Then, not only did we have to rebate the premiums that our customers had paid on “vanishing premium” policies, but we also had to give everybody the products we had promised at the price they thought they were buying them at, which was often at a steep loss for us. Not to mention the fact that we had already paid out millions to sales- people in commissions on these policies, many of whom were now gone with the wind. I made sure that some others were to follow. And none of this made me par- ticularly popular with the remaining salespeople. Because of my decision to admit our wrongdoing, we also did not know whether or not the company or indi- viduals within it would be open to criminal prosecution. In short, with this decision, I was volunteering everybody at John Han- cock for a long, long period of humiliation—not to mention lower com- pensation as the company took the financial hit. Remarkably enough, the CEO and the board supported me. So did a few of my colleagues. Aside from them, the only people pleased with my decision were the division heads in other parts of the company, who were buying drinks for each other, delighted to see a competitor in such an uncomfortable spot. Attitude, Risk, and Luck 33 THESE ARE NOT THE KINDS OF PRESSURES YOU FACE LOWER IN AN ORGANIZATION WHEN YOU’RE WORKING FOR ONE PERSON AND YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE IS GETTING A SINGLE PROJECT DONE ON TIME. These are not the kinds of pressures you face lower in an organization when you’re working for one person and your biggest challenge is getting a single project done on time. And nothing you’ve learned earlier in your career can prepare you for it. You naturally start to doubt yourself in a situation like this. I wondered, “Am I overreacting? Being too moralistic, a goody two-shoes? If we could settle for 30 cents on the dollar, wouldn’t that be better?” However, it had not been solely a moral decision. It also was a question of costs and ben- efits: Ultimately, what would hurt us the most? And it was clear to me that we actually could have put the entire enterprise at risk by fighting, because we would have eventually lost.We then would have had to pay out far more money and would have been far more severely pun- ished by our regulators.We would have hurt our brand, possibly permanently. And the whole process would have been paralytic to the company. I credit my boss for recognizing the enterprise risk here and allowing me to make my decision. But no real reward followed it. Not once did any- body pat me on the back and say, “That was a really smart thing to do. We’re glad you did it.” Then some of our competitors decided to fight rather than settle with the class-action lawyers, and they were lit up like Christmas trees. Prudential, for example, seemed to be battling the inevitable every step of the way. Even after the company agreed to settle, some of the relevant sales documents were carelessly destroyed. There was a reluctance to share documents with customers who had decided not to participate in the class-action settlement. Even those customers who did participate accused the company of foot-dragging, stonewalling, and making the paperwork deliberately confusing. The fight cost Prudential an astounding sum—according to court esti- mates, more than $3 billion by May 31, 2000. It also cost the company E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 34 THE ONE RISK YOU MUST NEVER BE WRONG ABOUT IN YOUR CAREER IS ENTERPRISE RISK. years of terrible newspaper headlines and a steep decline in the number of life insurance policies people bought from the company, which fell from about one million in 1991 to less than 300,000 in 1997. There was also considerable misery for the top executives there, including being forced to change their plans at Christmas after a judge ordered them to be deposed in the destruction of documents. While Prudential eventually righted itself, it was not before a lot of suffering. The one risk you must never be wrong about in your career is enterprise risk. It doesn’t appear that often, but there are times when, even in a position below CEO, you can actually put the entire organization in jeopardy. Just ask Andy Fastow, former CFO of Enron, or David Duncan, the partner in charge of the Enron account at the now-defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen. The problem with living in the verti- cal village of an organization is that you can become very provincial. Within that bubble, it’s easy to forget how the outside world might view your actions and the degree to which your organization could be made to pay for them. Enterprise risk, by the way, doesn’t always take the form of scandal. I recently hired two companies, an air-conditioning company and a plumb- ing company, for a renovation. The owners worked on many of the same job sites and were in the process of merging. Now, one would think that such a merger would be relatively easy. Two families, 20 employees each, pipes and water in common. But it is just as hard as a big merger. Questions such as “Who brought the newer trucks into the marriage?” and “Who is going to pay for the new trucks going for- Attitude, Risk, and Luck 35 EVERY PROJECT IN THE WORLD HAS A FATHER OR MOTHER WHO DECIDED TO TAKE THE RISK. AND ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY IS VERY SHARP ON THIS POINT—WHO DECIDED TO TAKE THE RISK. ward?” are just as fraught with peril as any question in the AOL-Time Warner union. This little merger also represents an enterprise risk. The two owners are making a potentially business-ending bet that, first, they will get along and, second, they will make more money because they have joined forces. Even smaller risks are career makers or breakers. Every project in the world has a father or mother who decided to take the risk. And organiza- tional memory is very sharp on this point—who decided to take the risk. So you must learn to take risks in a calculated way. The worst sin is not to be able to understand the risks you face, either because you are so risk- averse that you say “No” to everything or because you have no risk filter whatsoever. For example, I once had a senior executive who thought we ought to throw every conceivable product into the marketplace as quickly as pos- sible, to the point where we had way too many products, many of which didn’t function properly or were mispriced. Our salespeople, sensibly enough, were picking through this grab bag and only selling the ones that were well priced. But not necessarily for our profit. Well priced for their commis- sions. Needless to say, this executive soon lost all credibility with me on the product-development front. Many people never rise above a cer- tain level because they never see the downside of anything, particularly since it is not their own money at risk. This is a particular danger for people who start out in sales. They have to have such a positive attitude that they often lack any kind of risk DNA. They’ve knocked on a thousand doors and are used to getting E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 36 THE WORST SIN IS NOT TO BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE RISKS YOU FACE, EITHER BECAUSE YOU ARE SO RISK- AVERSE THAT YOU SAY “NO” TO EVERYTHING OR BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO RISK FILTER WHATSOEVER. a “No” before they get a “Yes.” Therefore, everything to them is just a ques- tion of finding someone to say “Yes.” The problem is that you’re squan- dering your organization’s resources on those yeses, and soon no one values your opinion. Other managers become reckless in their risk taking simply because the pressure is on them to generate new rev- enue. I’ve seen university development people, for example, launch capital cam- paigns prematurely, before lining up big donors. They do it because their compe- tition’s doing it, and they fail miserably because they just haven’t done the proper research. Just as dangerous as the risk-lovers are those people who never saw a proj- ect they didn’t want to kill. Everything’s bad. Every potential product is bad, every proposal for a new computer system is bad, every new idea is bad. These people often come from the financial side, where they have got- ten the impression that things don’t need to be sold in order for money to arrive. They’re terrible for an organization because nothing ever gets done in their area. Their thinking is that if the risk is not taken, there is no downside. Well, they’re wrong. The downside is that no money comes in. Con- sider Detroit, where there seems to be a lot of these people. The mind-set is, “We’ve made big cars all of our lives. We’re going to continue to make big cars. It’s always served us well. If the public doesn’t like it, too bad.” So then what happens is that the Japanese start making smaller, more fuel-efficient cars that are also more reliable, and Detroit gives up market share to Japan and begins a downward spiral. What’s really unbelievable is that this same thing has now happened to the American car companies twice in my lifetime. Attitude, Risk, and Luck 37 JUST AS DANGEROUS AS THE RISK-LOVERS ARE THOSE PEOPLE WHO NEVER SAW A PROJECT THEY DIDN’T WANT TO KILL. Playing safe is often the riskiest thing you can do in a career. If you stand still, the odds are overwhelming that the world will leave you behind. You cannot encourage the people underneath you to play safe, either. You set the tone. If you have a low tolerance for any kind of mistake from the people who work for you, you will only get safe decisions from them. The most successful organizations tend to be those where ideas flow freely, but where there are then mecha- nisms in place to analyze whether or not those ideas make sense. Try to follow the same pattern. Be open to new ideas, but do the work to analyze the risk. Surround yourself with people who can give you good answers as to what the risks really are. Unfortunately, the more senior you become, the fewer mistakes you’re allowed because bad outcomes become more public. If you bat .300, you’re a star in Major League Baseball, even though you’re wrong 70 percent of the time. Just try getting away with that in corporate life. And if a risk goes south on you, you need to fess up early. I can remem- ber when I first took over a big department at John Hancock, the Group Department. We were the largest group health and life insurer in the country. I had a bunch of IT people telling me that we had to put a new claims system in place. Although it was going to cost $120 million, they promised that it would save us many millions every year. It seemed like a reasonable bet, except that the time frame kept moving out- ward and the price tag kept rising. I was too young in my business career to understand what was really going on. There were hundreds of people working on this project, and E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 38 KNOW WHEN TO TAKE YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR A BAD BET. BE OPEN TO NEW IDEAS, BUT DO THE WORK TO ANALYZE THE RISK. they had gotten so deeply into it and were so delighted to be fully employed that they could no longer see the forest for the trees. The soft- ware they were developing was actually going to be obsolete by the time they finished. For all we were spending, we’d wind up behind our competitors. One of the characters in my world finally saw that this was insanity, and she shared that insight with me. For over a year, I had been extolling the virtues of this project to my bosses. Now I had to go to them and say, “Look, we’re going to have to write off the $75 million we have into this. And we still don’t have a system that works well because we have to go back to the old system.” I was chastised for letting the project go on longer than it should have, but I was also praised for not delaying any longer. Know when to take your punishment for a bad bet. If I had waited another year and a half to take mine, it would have been worse. It would have been, “You, too, will be heading toward Siberia on a hay wagon.” LUCK: Smarter Than Reaching for the Brass Ring Is Letting It Slap You in the Nose There is no such thing in this world as a pure meritocracy. Nobody gets to the top without being lucky. Luck happens to the most deserving of peo- ple and some of the most undeserving. It seems to me that George W. Bush got pretty lucky in 2000. It could just as easily have gone the other way. When the New York Times asked Time Warner Chairman Richard Par- sons in 2006 how he wound up running the company, he answered mod- estly, “Only in America. It’s a society where a certain level of energy, grit, competence, and a huge dollop of luck enable somebody to go from the very bottom to the very top, or from the very top to the very bottom.” Attitude, Risk, and Luck 39 GOOD LUCK OFTEN TAKES THE FORM OF HAVING THE RIGHT SKILLS AT THE RIGHT MOMENT. Good luck often takes the form of having the right skills at the right moment. Parsons, who is famously diplomatic, took over Time Warner at a moment when the Time Warner people were so bitter about their merger with AOL—and the subsequent decline in the value of their company stock—that civil war threatened. A diplomatic personality was just what was needed. I certainly got lucky at John Hancock. The two CEOs before me were actuaries, and two of the finest executives I ever worked with. However, you couldn’t find a personality or back- ground more different from the actuar- ies than mine. They were numbers people, I was a marketer. But Hancock needed top-line growth, and I was one of the few people inside who had demonstrated the ability to drive top- line growth. Now, had I planned that there’d be two actuaries ahead of me? No. Had I planned that the company’s biggest need in that era would be top-line growth? No. And if the opposite had been true— that we had plenty of top-line growth but were having trouble making a profit on it—would I have been picked? Probably not. Often you get the brass ring not because you reached so deftly for it, but because the brass ring smacked you in the nose. Little things can tip the balance. Somebody remembers a kindness that you paid them seven years ago or remembers something they read about you. And suddenly you’re in. Luck works the other way, too. Sometimes when you are passed over for a promotion, it ain’t because you weren’t good enough, and it ain’t your fault. It happens in politics all the time. Very capable people are E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 40 LUCK WORKS THE OTHER WAY, TOO. SOMETIMES WHEN YOU ARE PASSED OVER FOR A PROMOTION, IT AIN’T BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T GOOD ENOUGH, AND IT AIN’T YOUR FAULT. thrown out of office because their party is suddenly unfashionable. In 1994, the people of Washington State got rid of a sitting Speaker of the House, willing to sacrifice Tom Foley’s clout to express their displeasure with the Democrats. The same kind of thing happens in universities and businesses, too. If the last head of the English Department was a Victori- anist and fantastically unpopular, and you are a Victorianist, well, guess what? You are probably not going to be named department head. So what can you do if you find yourself passed over for the promotion you should have gotten? Make your own luck. TRY THE BEN FRANKLIN METHOD OF ADVANCEMENT: Fly a Kite with Keys in a Rainstorm If you are passed over for a promotion, think about trying a new instru- ment. Get assigned to task forces that cross divisions. Do whatever you can to be exposed to different disciplines. Contribute in new ways. Make sure you do all that you can to prove yourself, and then make it known that you’re available to run a bigger show. There are a lot of places, however, where you may never get the oppor- tunity to test yourself outside your discipline because the discipline you want to move into already has so many good people. When I worked for Commercial Credit, I knew there were armies of strong business managers already doing the kind of thing I wanted to do. Because it was an old mutual insurance company that had never had to fight for a stock price, John Hancock was not as rich in great managers. So when I got the chance to go to John Hancock, I leapt. Even if you are sure that you’ve found the right instrument, make sure that you are playing it in the right place. If Attitude, Risk, and Luck 41 IF YOU ARE PASSED OVER FOR A PROMOTION, THINK ABOUT TRYING A NEW INSTRUMENT. your goal, for example, is to be a marketing chief, you would certainly want to be from Nike, one of the world’s great marketing organizations, because you’d learn a tremendous amount there. But I’m not sure how long you would want to actually be there. Nike has legions of fantastic marketing people. The competition for the top marketing spot is so intense there that your chances of getting the job are slim. Remember also that by the time you get into your late 30s or so, you have another problem in an organization too rich in people with your skills: There is younger competition coming in underneath you. They are very, very smart. After all, they are Nike marketers. While you’re waiting to move, they might move ahead of you. Stay too long at the Nikes of this world, and you may start to look like Rumpelstiltskin. You can spin straw into gold, but nobody knows your name. So, at a certain point, go some place that really needs marketing talent. Go some place where the top people will brag about snagging you: “We have a guy who was in charge of the East Coast marketing for Nike, and he’s now our national marketing manager.” That way, you can operate in a bigger landscape and get a chance to do what you always wanted to do. Even for somebody at the level of Bob Nardelli, a change of venue can do wonders. He was ousted as CEO of Home Depot in 2007 in part because he couldn’t get the stock to rise and in part because he was widely considered too impolitic for the head of a public company in today’s world. But then Chrysler was taken over by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm. And the private equity world doesn’t really care what E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 42 EVEN IF YOU ARE SURE THAT YOU’VE FOUND THE RIGHT INSTRUMENT, MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE PLAYING IT IN THE RIGHT PLACE. public company analysts and business reporters think. Political finesse means nothing to them. They’ve got a Chrysler to rebuild and want a top-notch man- ager. So Bob Nardelli gets a second chance in an orchestra that is probably a better fit. Not even the most powerful or ambi- tious person can force lightning to strike. But you can maneuver yourself into a position where it’s more likely to strike. Figure out how to stand tall in an open field as soon as you can. Attitude, Risk, and Luck 43 STAY TOO LONG AT A PLACE TOO RICH IN YOUR SKILLS, AND YOU MAY START TO LOOK LIKE RUMPELSTILTSKIN. YOU CAN SPIN STRAW INTO GOLD, BUT NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME. This page intentionally left blank TWO BOSSES You Need a License to Cut Hair, but Not to Manage and Control Thousands of People If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure. Charles J. Sykes 2 Copyright © 2008 by DFD Enterprises, LLC. Click here for terms of use. This page intentionally left blank While this book is about the many “bosses” you acquire as you rise, this particular chapter is about your relationship with that one person your organization calls your boss. Of course, if you happen to be unlucky enough to work for one of those matrix organizations where you not only report to the head of an individual business but also to the organization-wide grand pooh-bah boss in whatever your function happens to be . . . well, my condolences. You not only have many “bosses,” you also have more than one actual boss to keep happy. And that is difficult, because the relationship you have with your imme- diate boss is one of the oddest you’ll have in life. You generally don’t choose this person, you generally don’t care for this person, yet you have to honor and obey this person. As you rise, that relationship only becomes odder and more slippery. It’s complicated now because you have some power of your own. You’re no longer just a foot soldier. You may be running a legion of 5,000 soldiers, and your job is to protect that flank and take the Gauls over there. One minute you’re barking orders at your troops, who look to you for direction. Then the next minute you have to ride the entire line and go to the general’s tent. And now it’s your turn to listen to orders. You have to be very adroit at switch- ing roles. At this level, I don’t care whether your boss is a dictator, a deceiver, a maniac, or a pussycat. I can guarantee you one thing: That boss has a head somewhere between the size of a hotel room and an entire Bosses 47 THE RELATIONSHIP YOU HAVE WITH YOUR IMMEDIATE BOSS IS ONE OF THE ODDEST YOU’LL HAVE IN LIFE. YOU GENERALLY DON’T CHOOSE THIS PERSON, YOU GENERALLY DON’T CARE FOR THIS PERSON, YET YOU HAVE TO HONOR AND OBEY THIS PERSON. hotel. All day long people are telling your boss that she’s right, and inevitably she starts to believe it. And at this level, it’s a good bet that you have a head roughly half the size of a hotel room yourself and don’t like being told what to do. Resentment on your part is natural. GROW UP! YOUR BOSS IS NOT YOUR MOM OR DAD You may try to camouflage that resentment by telling yourself that your relationship with your boss is like a relationship in a family, where you also don’t always choose the people you report to. Actually, no. There is a very good chance that you are not going to go to the funeral of the person you spent 10 years with between the ages of 30 and 40. There’s a good chance that if she outlives you, she won’t come to yours. More than likely, there will be no lasting emotional tie. Early in your career, because you are so inexperienced and are generally working for people who are older than you, your relationship really does resemble that of student to teacher or parent to child. I say “resembles” for a reason. Real teachers, as we all know, are actually civic-minded. Real parents are actually self-sacrificing. In 35 years in organizational life, I have yet to meet the boss who is any such thing. They may tell you, “I’m interested in making your career better.” But what they mean is, “I’m interested in making my own career bet- ter. If it happens to make your career better at the same time, then I’ll E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 48 AT THIS LEVEL, YOUR BOSS HAS A HEAD SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE SIZE OF A HOTEL ROOM AND AN ENTIRE HOTEL. AND IT’S A GOOD BET THAT YOU HAVE A HEAD ROUGHLY HALF THE SIZE OF A HOTEL ROOM YOURSELF AND DON’T LIKE BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO. claim credit for both. But I’m not going to be happy if your career gets better and mine doesn’t.” Move toward the upper reaches of an organization, and even the pre- tense of parental concern tends to drop away. You are now an orphan. You cannot count on your boss to protect you now that you are visible to the pres- ident, the CEO, and the board. Mess up with these people, and you will be treated as roughly as Oliver Twist on the streets of London. Your boss is not there to mentor you. At this level, she wants you for what you know, not for what she can nurture in you. And you are not there to serve her out of childlike gratitude, either. The first rule of your relationship with your boss is to understand that it’s a business transaction. That doesn’t mean it has to be unpleasant. That does- n’t mean some of your bosses won’t be wonderful people. Some of mine were. But it’s a cold fact of ambition. If you really want to get to a place where there are the fewest possible people issuing you orders—and the greatest number hanging on your every word—bosses are, at best, a means to an end. Most of the time, they are merely the major obstacle standing between you and the prize. Love them or hate them, what you really want is to get beyond them. MAKE THINGS HAPPEN FOR THE BOSS Though they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, bosses are all interested in precisely the same thing—in having you make them look better. Any- Bosses 49 THERE IS A VERY GOOD CHANCE THAT YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GO TO THE FUNERAL OF THE BOSS YOU SPENT 10 YEARS WITH BETWEEN THE AGES OF 30 AND 40. THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE THAT IF SHE OUTLIVES YOU, SHE WON’T COME TO YOURS. thing else is incidental to them. So it’s your job to make sure that you get something in return—that they help you rise. To make the right deal with your boss, it’s helpful to develop a healthy dose of cynicism about what the boss is up to. No matter what bosses say, it’s all about them. You are just an instru- ment to them. They’ll treat you well as long as you’re useful. On the other hand, I’ve never had a boss who hasn’t expected 110 percent loyalty. No matter whether they were a former priest or perhaps headed in the other direction in the afterlife, they expected to be venerated. And you have to put up with this imbalance because they have such enor- mous power over you, especially as you move up and start receiving compli- cated forms of compensation that vest over time. You become very much mar- ried to your boss, like it or not. So it’s worth thinking about what it takes to be an effective instrument for the boss. First of all, if your boss is any good, he is going to be searching for the truth. The boss needs the truth to make good decisions. So you have to give him the truth, even when it’s unpleasant. I had a peer at John Hancock once who was so afraid to deliver bad news that he would try to disguise even the worst news as good news. Let’s call him Tim. At one point, Tim’s group lost a large commercial account that was not terribly profitable—but it was very important to the com- pany in terms of prestige and helped us sell many other accounts. Tim, however, went to the big bosses and said, “Well, we’ve lost it, but not to worry. It’s not a big loss to the bottom line.” This was so transparently cowardly, I had to smile. The boss is not stupid, so don’t put a shine on the ball. At this level, you just don’t. It frustrates the boss and makes you look like a lightweight. E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 50 THE FIRST RULE OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR BOSS IS TO UNDERSTAND THAT IT’S A BUSINESS TRANSACTION. If you are willing to give the boss the truth, you’re probably going to engage in some spirited debate with your boss as part of the decision- making process. This leads me to the second thing you need to do to be a valuable instrument: Understand that once the decision is made, even if you don’t agree with it and have argued against it, you must drop your opposition and execute it to the best of your abilities. Until you are in the top slot at your organization, you have exactly this much power: You have the right to carry out the boss’s directive in the manner in which you believe it should be carried out. But you don’t have the right not to carry out the directive or to alter its course dramatically. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen actually confuse this. For example, I had a guy who worked for me at John Hancock. When I would tell him,“I’m going to green-light these projects. Show me your timetable for delivering them,” he would show me a timetable. And then he would go off and redo the timetable, as if we’d never talked about it, because he’d decided it was wrong. What, are you kidding me? You do, however, now have enough power not to put up with much nonsense. For example, I once had a boss who would schedule staff meet- ings and then bring his secretary in and dictate memos to his boss for an hour as we just sat there—and we were all senior people. The boss pre- tended that this was an efficient means of communicating with us, but it was really just raw arrogance. Excuse me, listening to dictation is not a staff meeting. So I just stopped going to the meetings. Bosses 51 NO MATTER WHAT BOSSES SAY, IT’S ALL ABOUT THEM. YOU ARE JUST AN INSTRUMENT TO THEM. THEY’LL TREAT YOU WELL AS LONG AS YOU’RE USEFUL. 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 understand what your boss’s goal is. It also is helpful to understand some- thing beyond the immediate goal. I 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, E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 52 THE BOSS IS NOT STUPID, SO DON’T PUT A SHINE ON THE BALL. never tell stories about your boss. Never make the boss feel betrayed— unless, of course, you are ready to grab the boss’s job, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Your goal here is to wind up as the most trusted person in the boss’s stable. You want to be so trusted that you wind up as a de facto chief of staff. And you want to do that for one reason—because then you will get tremendous exposure to the most powerful people in your organization. Other people will come to you with messages for your boss. Your boss will send you out with messages for other people. This is the smartest possible way of building your own network and broadening yourself without being dis- loyal to your boss. The downside to becoming the favored implement in the boss’s drawer is that she will become dependent on you. So it’s your job to make a pact with your boss: “I’ll help you reach your own goals, but you have got to do something for me, which is push me along.” If you fail to have a conversation like this with your boss, you are as dumb as mud. As I said before, it’s all about them. It’s a good bet that your boss does not spend much time thinking about you. So do not be lulled into assuming that she will help you move up just because she likes you. Don’t assume that she will know or care where you want to go unless you tell her. It’s up to you to make sure that this relationship is a deal. Ask, “If we’re successful here, what’s going to happen to me?” If the boss says, “Well, I can’t tell you for sure,” make sure that you talk about some options. And try to make sure that the promises are enforceable. Bosses 53 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. A CONTRACT BEATS A CARROT ANYTIME The problem is that you often have to rely on the word of your boss, who may be utterly trustworthy or as manipulative as a snake. Let me tell you about the time I was wooed by the head of a good-sized advertising agency that employed 200 people. Let’s call him Fred. Fred played the part of the poor misunderstood entrepreneur and gave me this big song and dance: “The junior partners don’t know what they’re doing. I need someone smart like you.” He told me that I’d be the number two guy at the agency. He offered me more money than my father had made in 10 years, and I was only 30 years old. I was ready to take the job after the first lunch. But Fred wanted to keep wooing, so we had lunch three times at the Four Seasons in New York City. Each time, he ruined more cloth napkins with his magic marker, sweetening my deal. He threw in a Corvette and a big advance and six weeks’ vacation. And then for every account I landed, I would get 5 percent of the first year’s billing. Of course I took this deal. Wouldn’t you? Coincidentally, Sparks Steak House was right across the street from my new place of employment, the spot where mafia boss Paul Castellano would be gunned down on John Gotti’s orders. Something not entirely dissimilar happened to me. Here I was, all enthusiastic, installed in an office next to the big boss— and Fred just threw me to the wolves. As soon as he got me there, he hardly deigned to say a word to me. There was a new account we were pitching, and I stayed up two whole nights working on the presentation, which I was very proud of. I walked into Fred’s office to show it to him and the first thing he said to me was, “Your hair is too long.” Then he flipped through the presentation, ripped it into four pieces, and threw it at my head, with a pleasant, “This is a pile of garbage. I can’t E X E C U T I V E W A R F A R E 54 YOUR GOAL HERE IS TO WIND UP AS THE MOST TRUSTED PERSON IN THE BOSS’S STABLE. be paying you all this money.” And he walked out of his office and left the building. That was the extent of my feedback. So what did I do? I went out and got a haircut. Next, I went to tell one of the senior people this story and ask for some advice. He laughed. “Do you have the presentation on a word processor so you can make another copy?” he asked. “Sure,” I said. “Use that.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Fred never looked at a word of it,” the guy said sagely.“He’s just teach- ing you who’s boss.” The next time I saw Fred was at the client presentation. I used the same presentation he’d ripped up. The client gave us the account on the spot. Fred put his arm around me and told the client that I was the brand new star of the agency. I was thinking to myself, “Why am I waiting for him to tell me my hair looks better?” Bosses can so mess with your psyche, if you let them. At the end of the quarter, we got the first payment on this new account. I asked Fred about the 5 percent that was mine, and he said, “What percentage? I just made you that promise to get you here.” A lot of people live in places like that, where they are constantly being car- roted and sticked by manipulative bosses. It’s not unusual for a boss to promise the same job to three people. And then the boss will come up with a series of excuses as to why you didn’t get it. People’s hopes are often dashed because they depend on the word of people above them. In recent years, an awful lot of ambitious people have Bosses 55 THE DOWNSIDE TO BECOMING THE FAVORED IMPLEMENT IN THE BOSS’S DRAWER IS THAT SHE WILL BECOME DEPENDENT ON YOU.