7 Rules of Power

IN THE BEGINNING

The Challenge of Power

If you want power to be used for good, more good people need to have power.

-A quote attributed to me.

I REGULARLY SUFFER A FORM of what might be called intellectual whiplash. On the one hand, people-even a good friend and insightful editor-tell me my ideas about power don't fit the prevailing zeitgeist with its emphasis on collaboration, being nice, and enacting politically correct behavior. On the other hand, I get emails like the one from an individual enrolled in my online class on power. That person told me and his classmates that he learned that performance is not enough. Rather, he now knew he had to ask people in power in his company for what he wanted and needed to advance his career and achieve his job objectives and to flatter higher-ups; to believe in himself and act and speak with power; to build a network and support system; and, when confronting opposition and conflict, to be smart in how and when to fight his battles. And oh, by the way, he would miss my final live session because his network-building and "get noticed" efforts had resulted in his being on the corporate plane with two C-level officers to make an international market visit at the same time as the session.

So, what to believe about power? How to act-what to do? 7 Rules of Power captures my current thinking and the most recent social science research to help you answer those questions.

WHY THIS BOOK, NOW?

I thought I would never write another book on power. I have written three,1 four if you count a prequel2 that confronts leadership aphorisms that are mostly untrue and unhelpful, like recommendations to be modest, authentic, and truthful. My last two books on power have done reasonably well, being used in classes literally worldwide; why this book, and why now?

Four things changed my mind. First, I have continued my efforts to convey material on organizational power and politics ever more effectively. I have the privilege of doing so for some of the most talented people in the world, both online and in person. This activity has deepened my insights about how to simplify, clarify, and articulate more clearly the ideas behind rules of power-how and why people can take actions that, very practically and often quickly, will alter their career trajectories and their lives.

Students have shown me how learning the rules of power and their application can have profoundly positive and immediate effects. A recent, not unusual email:

Thank you for all the lessons from your . . . class. It helped me start my own department, get a salary and title I never considered at my age, and today it got me praise from two ministers during an international signing ceremony. What's the secret? I simply asked for things. I also took your advice of strategically placing myself in places where my . . . degrees and AI knowledge are considered very rare instead of common. Lastly, I invested in putting myself out there, networking with those at work, and building a name for myself.

None of what this individual, a Saudi national working for Aramco, described is rocket science, although all of what they did is consistent with social science evidence-and all too infrequently implemented. That this example comes from a different country and culture suggests what research evidence says: the rules of power are quite general and hold across cultures. Because of the positive effects of this material, I thought I should share my expanding capability to teach about organizational power and, more broadly, my most recent insights about helping people on their path to power.

The Magic Number Seven

After observing my former students as well as political and business leaders (particularly successful ones), and reviewing the relevant social science, I concluded that there were basically seven rules of power. Organizing lessons about power into these seven fundamental rules is an effective way to teach people what they need to do to have more influence and success.

Seven turns out to be a good number of rules. In 1956, George Miller wrote an influential article arguing that "the unaided observer is severely limited in the amount of information he can receive, process, and remember," with seven elements or ideas, plus or minus two, constituting most people's capacity.3 A more recent analysis of Miller's argument noted that "the number 7 occurs in many aspects of life, from the seven wonders of the world to the seven seas and seven deadly sins."4 Further research has consistently confirmed the validity and robustness of Miller's original insight about cognitive limitations once one gets much beyond seven items.

Fortunately, my ideas about the building and use of power can be effectively captured in seven rules, which constitute the chapters of this book. The seven rules are:

1. Get out of your own way.

2. Break the rules.

3. Appear powerful.

4. Build a powerful brand.

5. Network relentlessly.

6. Use your power.

7. Success excuses almost everything you may have done to acquire power.

I believe the seventh rule to be one of the more important, as it can cause people to act rather than worry needlessly about consequences.

Explaining the Current Leadership Landscape

The second factor that changed my mind was the observable reality of contemporary political and business leaders, including but certainly not limited to people like Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, and Elon Musk, that I find people do not understand. Many people consider these individuals and their behaviors anomalies, but fail to recognize that as they exemplify the rules of power, these leaders offer important lessons about contemporary-yes, contemporary, not ancient-successful leadership behavior.

Trump surely follows the seven rules of power I outline in this book. In fact I originally intended to write about the leadership lessons of Trump. I decided against it because he is such a polarizing figure that people find it hard to objectively watch what he does and evaluate it outside the context of Trump himself. However, in thinking about why Trump has been so unexpectedly successful in politics and other domains, I developed insights into not only the social science foundations that help explain his success, but also the behavior and outcomes achieved by many other corporate leaders and politicians in the United States and elsewhere.

Because people do not understand the behavioral realities of power, they are continually surprised by both what happens and the effectiveness of actions that seemingly violate conventional wisdom about leadership-mostly because much of this wisdom is largely untethered from research on the social psychology of human behavior. Sometimes the surprise is accompanied by unanticipated career setbacks that arise because people are unprepared for the realities of social life.

My hope is that this book will help people better understand the everyday dynamics and political truths of organizations of all types, public and private. My explicit goal, stated in my Paths to Power course outline, is to provide people with the knowledge that, if implemented, can help them never have to leave a job involuntarily. Although I have not achieved that goal, as I still see too many people being ousted, the goal remains relevant and important. Teaching people how to put the seven rules of power into practice can help them achieve that objective.

Power Is Not a "Dark" Art; It's the Key to Success

My third motivation for writing this new book: all too frequently I encounter people, either by email or in my courses, who initially express resistance, skepticism, discomfort, challenges, and similar feelings with the ideas I teach. Not because they doubt the ideas' existence in the world or maybe even their validity founded on social science research or what they observe. To use the word of one recent email correspondent, they find the principles and research findings "depressing"-or, quoting my friend and colleague Bob Sutton, "dark." Consequently, people eschew opportunities to make things happen and accelerate their careers as effectively as they might.

I figured that one way to fight these perceptions was to provide people seven rules that, if they used them, would make them more powerful. Once people had more power, they would be much less depressed and experience the world as less dark, because they would be considerably more effective at getting things done as they navigated that world. They would also be physically and mentally healthier, because research shows that health is related to job control and one's position in the social hierarchy,5 and happier, because power is associated with increased happiness.6

Have the Principles-the Rules-of Power Changed?

Fourth, I wanted to address directly the frequent narrative that today everything is different-fundamentally changed by new values, new generations (and their own new values), and new technologies, particularly social media-and therefore old ideas about power and influence are no longer relevant. That argument is why it is not surprising that people feel ambivalent about my class and writings, given the current attitude in business schools and other programs in leadership and administration. Power-and possibly even more so, organizational (or maybe all) politics-is on the outs.

Many books and research studies that are...