“Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t” is a book by Jeffrey Pfeffer about power and its role in organizations. It goes through a vast array of  topics, but mainly focuses on how to achieve it and the benefits of it.

Getting people to do things for you comes very handy; specially as someone in the management business and with big aspirations for my future. And having power seems a very straightforward way of achieving this. So that’s the reason this book caught my eye.

It was an interesting read. There are a couple of things that I definitely will try to incorporate. There are others that seem borderline sociopathic. But maybe I’m being a bit harsh. It seems that strategic thinking and playing politics constantly is required in order to advance through the corporate world. So, if that’s the case, I may just as well play by those rules. Don’t hate the player, hate the game… I guess?

Here are the notes I took while reading the book. They are not in any particular order or connected in any particular way. This isn’t supposed to be a summary, review or essay. It may even have some key information or examples missing. They are just thoughts and direct quotes that caught my attention and I felt like marking or writing down to try to retain them in my memory. 

Introduction: Be prepared for power.

Success begins with preparation. No one has power just because. They have power because they’ve worked for it, and specifically for it. In fact, managers who look for power, instead of achievements or being liked, are more likely of achieving positions of power and accomplishing their job.

Let others on the team recognize your value, don’t just impose it. Let others walk in your shoes to realize how difficult is what you do.

Why should you want power.

Power leads to:

• A healthier and longer life
• More wealth
• Things getting done

To be effective in your quest for power, you must get past three obstacles. First of all, stop thinking the world is a just place. Just by doing good things or because you feel you deserve it doesn’t mean things will happen or power will be handed to you. Sometimes you have to push it, sell yourself and jump over others. You need to be proactive in building a power base.

Secondly, you’ll need to learn from people you don’t like. You must not let that be in the way of improving yourself.

Finally, get over yourself. People like to feel good about themselves and maintain a positive self-image. So, when being faced with something that may put those feelings and images at risk, they self sabotage in order to have an excuse in case of failure.

It takes more than performance.

There’s a weak link between job performance and career outcome. Both in positive and negative ways. It appears to be that as long as you keep you bosses happy, performance doesn’t mean much. Moreover, if you upset them, good performance won’t save you either.

One of the things that seems to be more influential than performance is formal education. People with more educational credentials are more likely to be promoted, even if they weren’t the best employees.

To help you on your journey for power, you need to pay special attention to three things. First of all, make sure your boss notices you be notices you. Increased exposure boosts positive feelings and diminishes negative ones. People prefer things that are familiar.

Secondly, , influence the dimensions used to measure your accomplishments and emphasize those aspects in which you do well.

Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, “manage” those who are already in power. Remember what matters to your boss, which may be different to what matters to you. The surest way to keep your position and build a power base is to help those in power enhance their positive feelings about themselves. Moreover, research shows that flattery is an effective strategy to gain influence. You have to worry about the relationship you have with your boss as much as you worry about performance. After all, your job is to ensure influential people desire to make you successful.

The personal quality that brings influence.

The following qualities can be developed, even if you don’t have them to start with:

• You must believe personal change is possible.
• You need to asses your strengths and weaknesses as accurately as possible.
• Focus your time and efforts on developing the most important qualities for building a power base.

When people focus on what they need to get done (instead of reviewing what they did wrong) to get to the next stage of their career, they are less defensive. That includes yourself. So believe in personal change.

Assessing one’s weaknesses is as important as assessing one’s strengths. Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

Finally, the fundamental dimensions that distinguish successful people are:

• Will: the drive to take on big challenges. You three qualities embodied in will are ambition, energy and focus.
  • Your ambition, or in other words, the relentless focus on a goal should let you put up with other people’s shit.
  • People are more willing to expend effort if you are too.
  • There are several dimensions to focus
    • Specialization in a particular industry or company, providing deep understanding and a substantial web of focused relationships.
    • Concentration on a limited set of functional skills.
    • Concentration on the activities of your particular position that are most critical.
• Skill: the capabilities required to turn ambition into accomplishment. The four skills useful in acquiring power are self knowledge and reflective self, confidence and projection of self-assurance, the ability to read others and empathize and the capacity to tolerate conflict.
  • Structured reflection takes time and requires the discipline to concentrate, take notes and think about what you are doing.
  • Coming across as confident and knowledgable helps you build influence.
  • When in a conflict, through a process of mutual concessions, both parties may end up better off. But to succeed in such an approach, you need to understand where the other is coming from.
  • Conflict will arise and you’ll have to deal with it. It won’t go away on it’s on.

Choosing where to start.

If you want to move up quickly, you should go to under-exploited niches where you can develop leverage without resistance and build a power base in activities that are going to be important in the near future, instead of the ones that are today.

Speaking with one voice and being able to act together as one in a coordinated fashion is an important source of departmental power and effectiveness. Another source of departmental power is the ability to provide critical resources, such as money or skill, or the ability to solve critical organizational problems.

Getting in, standing out and breaking some rules.

Launching or relaunching your career requires that you develop both the ability and the willingness to ask for things and stand out. You also need to get over the idea that you need to be liked by everybody or that likeability is important in creating a path to power.

The worst thing that could happen from asking for something would be getting turned down. And if you are, so what? You wouldn’t be any worse than if you had not asked in the first place. Also relevant, those contemplating making a request tend to focus on the cost others will incur complying with their request and don’t emphasize enough of the cost of them saying “no”.

Another reason why asking works is that we are are flattered to be asked for advice or help. Actually, the more flattering you can make your request, the more effective it will be. Also, people are more likely to accept requests from others when they share even the most vague of connections.

On another note, you need to be interesting, memorable and able to stand out in ways that cause others to want to know you and get to you. Research shows that playing by the rules (or following conventional wisdom) favor those already in power, while doing things in an unconventional way or recurring to unconventional strategies permits even the most outresourced underdog to triumph.

Finally, although it’s desirable to be both loved and feared, if you have to pick one, you should choose fear if you want to remain in power.

Making something out of nothing: creating resources.

Having resources is an important source of power, but only if you use those resources strategically to help others whose support you need, in the process gaining their favor. Also, resources are great, because once you have them, maintaining power becomes a self-reinforcing process, since power and resources bring more power and resources.. So, if when choosing among job, choose positions that have greater direct resource control of more budget or stuff.

Building a power base is a process of accumulating leverage and resource control little by little, being able to see or create opportunities and have the patience and persistence to follow through on those opportunities.

Creating something out of nothing.

Helping others generates a more generalized obligation to return the favor, and as a consequence, doing even small things can produce a comparatively large payoff.

Provide attention and support.

Being nice to people is effective because people find it difficult to fight with those who are being polite and courteous.

Do small but important tasks.

Taking on small tasks can provide you with power because people are often lazy or uninterested in seemingly small, unimportant activities. Therefore, if you take the initiative to do a relatively minor task and do it extremely well, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to challenge you for the opportunity. Meanwhile these apparently minor tasks can become important source of power.

Build a resource base inside and outside your organization and leverage your association with prestigious institutions.

“Contacts ultimately mean contracts”.

Power accrues to people who control resources that others cannot access, and there’s often natural monopolies created by those who move first. Bringing people together entails your taking a brokerage role and becoming central in social networks. Networking skills are important and the networks you create are an important resource.

Building efficient and effective social networks.

A definition of networking and networking skills.

Behaviours that are aimed at building, maintaining, and using informal relationships that posses the potential benefit of facilitating work-related activities of individuals by voluntarily gaining access to resources and maximizing advantages.

The ability to network is important in most jobs.

The evidence shows that networking is important for peoples careers, with the two most important networking behaviours being “maintaining external contacts” and “building internal contacts”.

Studies show that networking is is the most important competency for a manager, followed only by the use of technology.

Spend sufficient time.

Networking skills can be taught, learned and perfected. But you need to spend time on it, as you do with any other skills. People undervalue the importance of social relationships and overvalue other aspects of job performance in thinking about what produces career success.

Network with the right people.

Managerial jobs are more likely to be found through personal contacts rather than through more formal means. On the other hand, lower-level or even well-paid but technical jobs tend to rely on more traditional means of hiring. For the first, the type of  social ties that mattered in the job-finding process were weak tie, that is casual acquaintances, people you hardly know and with whom you have fairly infrequent interactions.

The reason for this is that weak ties are more likely to link you to new people, organizations and information, providing new information and contacts.

Create a strong structural positions.

Centrality matters. Network position matters a great deal for your influence and career trajectory.

If virtually all information and communication flows through you, you will have more power. One source of your power will be control over the flow of information, and another is that people attribute power to individuals who are central.

By connecting units that are tightly linked internally, but socially isolated from each other, the person doing the connecting can profit by being the intermediary who facilitates interaction between two groups. But you have to be the one doing it, since people even one step removed from the person doing the brokerage enjoyed virtually no benefit.

Recognize the trade-offs.

Large networks of weak ties is good for innovation and locating information. Meanwhile, small networks of strong ties are better suited to exploit existing knowledge and transferring tacit skills.

Acting and speaking with power.

Observers watching people who don’t deny or run away from their actions naturally presume that the perpetrators don’t feel guilty or ashamed, so maybe no one should be too upset. Expressing anger is usually more effective than. expressing sadness, guilt, or remorse in being seen as powerful.

The secret of leadership is the ability to play a role, to pretend, to be skilled in the theatrical arts. Differences in the ability to convey power through how we talk, appear and act matter in our everyday interactions. It may not seem right that we are judged on our appearance, on how we present ourselves. But the world isn’t always a just place. To come across effectively, we need to master how to convey power. We need to act and speak with power.

Acting with power.

Authority is 20% given and 80% taken. You need to project assurance even if, or maybe particularly if, you aren’t sure what you are doing.

Here are some things to help you act with power

• Be aware of your audience
  • You are on stage more than you think.
  • Call people on the phone or go meet with them in person. You have much more influence and will be much more memorable and powerful.
• Display anger instead of sadness or remorse.
• Watch your posture and gestures.
• Use memory to access the desired emotions you want to display.
  • Go to a time where you did feel the emotion you need to project at the moment.
• Set the stage and manage the context.
• Take your time in responding.
  • Don’t speak while flustered or unsure of the situation.

Speaking powerfully.

• Interruption.
  • Those with power interrupt. On the other hand, those with less power get interrupted.
• Contest the premises of the discussion
  • When someone challenges the assumptions form with a conversation stems, it can be a very potent power play.
• Persuasive language
  • Language that influences is able to create powerful images and emotions that overwhelms reason. Such language is evocative, specific, and filled with strong language and visual imagery.
  • Use us-versus-them references.
  • Pause for emphasis and invite approval or even applause through a slight delay.
  • Use lists and enumeration.
  • Avoid using scripts or notes.
  • Use humor to the extent possible and appropiate.

Building a reputation: perception is reality.

One important strategy for not only creating a successful path to power but also maintaining your position once you have achieved is to build your image and your reputation.

You get only one chance to make a first impression.

People start forming impressions of you in the first few seconds of contact. These first impressions are remarkably accurate in predicting other more durable and important evaluations.

Not only are reputations and first impressions formed quickly, but they are durable. Because of fatigue or boredom, people don’t pay as close attention to later information as they do to information that comes early, when they first form judgements.

Also, there’s a thing called cognitive discounting, which is once people have formed an impression on another, they disregard any information that is inconsistent with their initial ideas. People engage in behaviour that helps make their initial impressions of others come true. Finally, biased assimilation plays a role, which involves taking later information and reinterpreting it in ways consistent with our original beliefs and judgements.

So, if you find yourself in a place where you have an image problem or people don’t think well of you for whatever reason, it is often best to leave for greener pastures. It’s better to demonstrate your many positive qualities in a new setting where you don’t have to overcome so much baggage.

Overcome the self promotion dilemma.

On the one hand, research shows that when people don’t advocate for themselves and claim competence, particularly in settings where they would be expected to do so, others believe they must be either incompetent or unskilled in handling such situations, a percentage that works to their advantage. On the other hand, self-promoting behaviour also creates difficulties. When you tout your own abilities and accomplishments you face two problems: you are not going to be as believable as presumably more objective outsiders; and research shows that people who engage in blatant self-promotion are perceived as arrogant and self-aggrandizing, which causes others not to like  them.

There is a solution to this dilemma: get others, even those you employ, to tout your abilities.

The upside of some negative information.

Displaying some negative characteristics, as long as they aren’t so overwhelming as to preclude your selection, actually increases your power because those who support you notwithstanding your flaws will be even more committed to you and your success.

Overcoming opposition and setbacks.

How and when to fight.

Try a little tenderness and leave people a graceful out. You can turn enemies into allies, or at least people who are indifferent to you and not in your way, through strategic outplacement. Giving adversaries something to make them feel better works to your advantage, particularly if the move doesn’t cost you that much. Beware, once people have nothing left to lose, they will have no inhibitions or constrains on what they will do to fight you.

Don’t cause yourself unnecessary problems.

People lose sight of what their highest priorities are and get diverted fighting other battles that then cause unnecessary problems.

Don’t take things personally. Make important relationships work.

After you reach a certain level, there comes a point in your career where you simply have to make critical relationships work. Your feelings, or for that matter, others’ feelings about you, don’t matter. To be successful you have to get over resentments, jealousies, anger or anything else that might get in the way of building a relationship where you can get the resources necessary for you to get the job done.

Be persistent.

Persistence works because it wears down the opposition. Much like water eroding a rock, over time, keeping at something creates results. In addition, staying in the game maintains the possibility that the situation will shift to your advantage. Opponents retire, leave or make mistakes. The environment changes.

Advance in multiple fronts.

This one is pretty self explanatory. The more you advance in multiple fronts, the more you can leverage power from one setting to get influence in another.

Move first. Seize the initiative.

If you move quickly, you can often catch your opponents off guard and secure a victory before they even know what’s happening.

Don’t wait if you see a power struggle coming. While you are waiting, others are organizing support and orchestrating votes to win.

Use rewards and punishments to shape behaviour.

People who have any resource control use it to reward those who are helpful and punish those who stand in their way. If using power this way seems tough, it may be. But get over your inhibitions, because many of the people you will meet on your path to power will have less hesitation about rewarding their friends and punishing those who oppose them.

Make your objectives seem compelling.

Your path to power is going to be easier if you are aligned with a compelling, socially valuable objective.

Power struggles inside companies seldom seem to revolve around blatant self interest. Clever combatants customarily invoke “shareholders’ interests”. So place your own objectives in a broader context that compels others to support you.

Coping with setbacks.

Don’t give up.

We are subject to the just-world effect, that is when people lose a power struggle, the first thing they do is blame themselves. This reaction may be natural, but is not helpful.

The best way to overcome the embarrassment is to talk about what happened to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. You will probably learn that you have more support than you think, and that others, rather than blaming you, will want to come to your aid. You will become acclimated to the story and desensitized to its effects.

Continue to do what made you successful.

When you face a setback, don’t take the advice of those who advocate finding another area of work. Your experience and contacts are all context-specific; and doing so would rob you of the resources and competence you have built doing what you do.

Act as if, projecting power and success.

One of the ways others are going to ascertain how things turned out is by how you present yourself.

The price of power.

As you chart your course and make decision about what you will and will not do to acquire power, consider carefully what you are striving for and if you really want it.

Cost 1: Visibility and public scrutiny.

Holding a position of power means that more of your job performance is being carefully watched. All this scrutiny makes doing your job more difficult.

There’s this thing called the “social facilitation effect”, which happens when you are in the presence of other people, making you more motivated and on edge. That’s fine, but up to a point. The relation between motivation and performance is curvilinear: positive up to some level as effort increases but then negative as increased tension decreases your ability to process information and make decisions.

Also, time spent with scrutiny and managing appearances is time that cannot be spent doing other aspects of one’s job. The distraction caused by the requirements for responding to the demands of visibility can cripple both individual and organizational performance.

Moreover, under de pressure to “look good”, people and companies are reluctant to take risks or innovate, opting to do what seems safe.

In conclusion, because of the costs of scrutiny, it can pay to be under the radar for as long as possible.

Cost 2: The loss of autonomy.

The loss of control over how you spend one’s time is one of the big costs of holding a position of power.

Cost 3: The time and effort required.

The quest for power often exacts a high toll on people’s personal lives. You can’t have it all, and trade-offs will be necessary.

Cost 4: Trust dilemmas.

The higher you rise and the more powerful the position you occupy, the greater the number of people who will want your job. Consequently, holding a position of great power creates a problem: who do you trust?

The higher you rise in an organization, the more people are going to tell you that you are right, leading to an absence of critical thought which makes it difficult for senior leaders to get the truth.

Cost 5: Power is an addictive drug.

In the center of frenetic energy and attention, is difficult not to lose one’s identity and values.

Power is also addictive, in both a psychological and physical sense; even if you voluntarily choose to retire and even if you have more money than you could ever spend.

How and why people lose power.

Overconfidence, disinhibition and ignoring the interests of others.

Studies of the effects of power on the power holder consistently find that power produces overconfidence and risk taking, insensitivity to others, stereotyping, and a tendency to see other people as a means to the power holder’s gratification.

Overconfidence and insensitivity lead to losing power, as people become so full of themselves that they fail to attend to the needs of those whose enmity can cause them problems. Conversely, not letting power go to your head and acting as if you were all-powerful can help you maintain your position.

Having a position of formal authority or even being right is not going to win you the support of those whose mistakes you have called out. If you are going to survive, you need to get over yourself and you formal position and retain your sensitivity to the political dynamics around you.

Misplaces or too much trust.

When you are powerful and successful, you are overconfident and less observant. One specific manifestation of such tendencies is to trust what others tell you and rely on their assurances. As you become less vigilant and paranoid about others’ intentions, they have the opportunity to take you out of your position of power.

People lose patience.

It’s easier to lose you patience when you are in power. Power lead to disinhibition, to not watching what you say and do, to being more concerned about yourself than about the feelings of others. But losing patience causes people to lose control and offend others, and that can cost them their jobs.

People get tired.

It is hard work to keep your ego in check, to constantly be attentive to the actions of others, and obtaining and keeping power requires long hours and lots of energy. After a while, some people get tired, they become less vigilant and more willing to compromise and give in.

The world changes, but tactics don’t.

Companies and leaders can fail to see the changes in the social environment that can make old ways less successful than they once were. The tendency of power to diminish the power holder’s attention and sensitivity to others with less power compounds this problem. The combination of diminished vigilance and changed circumstances often leads to the loss of power.

Leave gracefully.

You cannot always completely control how much power you maintain, but you can leave your position with dignity and thereby influence your legacy.

Power dynamics: Good for organizations, good for you?

Higher levels of perceived politics inside organizations are associated with reduced job satisfaction, morale and organizational commitment. And higher levels of perceived politics are also correlated with higher intentions to quit.

You should always watch your back, but be particularly wary and sensitive to what’s occurring during times of economic stress. That is when political turmoil and the use of power are likely to be at their peak.

If organizations aren’t worrying about you and you can lose your job in a political struggle or on a whim, why should you worry about them? Reciprocity works both ways.

Power and hierarchy are ubiquitous.

Status is “imported” or “carried” from one setting to another. People assume that if you are smart enough to succeed in one highly competitive domain, you must be competent in other, even unrelated domain.

Influence skills are useful for getting things done.

Getting things done under circumstances where you lack direct line authority requires influence an political skills and knowledge about your organization’s dynamics, not just technical skills and knowledge.

It’s easier than you think.

Building power does not require extraordinary actions or amazing brilliance. 80% of success is showing up.

Building your path to power.

The first step in building a path to power is to pick an environment that fits your aptitude and interests. One where you can be successful in both the technical and political aspects of the work.

To do so, first must be brutally honest about your strengths, weaknesses and preferences. Second, you can’t get trapped into following the crows and doing something because everyone else is. This conforming behaviour can get in the way of doing what’s right for you. Third, besides being objective about yourself, you should also be objective about the job and its risks and opportunities. You need to be realistic about the political risks, not just yours, but also of those whom you are tied to.

Don’t give up on power.

People give up their power in several ways. They don’t behave strategically towards people with power over them, such as their boss, and instead let their true feelings show. The sometimes give away their power by defining situations outside of their control, thereby playing the victim role. The do so by not trying, since if you don’t try, you can’t fail. But not trying guarantees failure to win the competition for power and status.

Take care of yourself. Don’t expect justice.

People align with who they think is going to win. Id you don’t stand up for yourself and actively promote your own interests, few will be willing to be on your side. Since observers will see you as not trying to triumph and therefore losing, they will either not join your side or desert you, making your organizational demise more certain.

Surviving and succeeding in organizations.

You have both the responsibility and the potential to change your situation. Stop waiting for things to get better or for other people to acquire power and use it a benevolent fashion to improve your situation. It’s up to you to find or create a better place for yourself. And it’s up to you to build your own path to power.