Chapter - 07

The Seven Lifting The Lid On Success

Company Politics—Good Or Bad?

"Stay out of company politics," the ambitious newcomer is warned, "or you'll get your throat cut before you know where you are."

It is an old warning with a lot of tradition to support it. The fact that tradition supports it, however, should be enough to make it suspect. Company politics has seen its evil days, and some organizations are still torn with it, but by and large the day when close-knit groups resented each other in general and all ambitious newcomers in particular is drawing to a close. As both the groups and the affected companies have learned in recent years, such intramural skirmishing for prestige and influence did the groups no good while greatly impairing the productivity of the company.

When people get along together, production rises; when they don't, it falls. And when they do get along, you can be sure good company politics is behind it, just as you can be sure the opposite is true when hostility holds sway. In either case, politics good or bad is inescapable. When three people in the same car-pool discuss the company on the way to work, you have a caucus. At the drinking fountain, or during a coffee break, or at lunch, if people aren't talking about their work—playing politics—they just don't care, and that's bad.

Lift Your Horizon

Company politics is here to stay. To close your ears to it is not to remove yourself from politics but from the company. How else are you to know what is going on? And if you don't know what is going on in the company, how are you to know where you're going?

Playing good company politics is easy, informative, and rewarding, and is covered by three simple rules. (1) Say something interesting or constructive about your work. (2) Say something good about your boss, supervisor, or company policy —with sincerity. (3) Keep on doing a good job. If you can't do these after a month or two on the job—if your work is so dull and the company so uninteresting—you are in the wrong job.

Carl Anderson did not believe that. He was convinced that his private life and his work life were two separate incarnations. In his private life he had a home, wife, and friends. He could relax and enjoy himself. But work was to him the serious business of getting ahead on his own merits. To him, friendships didn't count in business. He had read a lot of success stories, and was filled with such theories as "stand on your own two feet," and "don't count on your friends in a pinch," and "no one is more resentful than the friend you've stepped over on the way up." The result was that he made it impossible for himself to have any friends during the most productive hours of his day. He never had lunch with "the boys." Company social activities he avoided like the plague. He politely refused to comment on the well-earned promotion of one of his associates, not wanting to commit himself one way or another. In the meantime he waited for his own hard work and attention to detail to bring him the promotion he felt he deserved.

Well, he had a long wait. Three years, in fact, before he came to me for assistance. Even then, I am sure, he didn't expect to find anything wrong in his attitude. He wanted me to tell him what was wrong with a company that refused to recognize his merits. Three interviews of an hour each had to take place before he was willing to concede that people who work together should get along together.

"You say you have been with the company three years, come next Wednesday," I said. "Who hired you?"

"The same boss I've got today. Except for a couple of cost-of-living raises, I haven't moved an inch," he replied.

Everyone in the plant had received "cost-of-living" raises, but the opportunity was there. "Go in and tell your boss next Wednesday that this is your third anniversary, and invite him out for a drink," I urged. "Thank him for hiring you, and thank him for the two raises. Let him know you are alive, and let him know you know he is a living person. Get some Life into your job, even if it takes two drinks."

With some reservation Carl accepted my suggestion. Much to his surprise, he found his boss to be quite a likable person, and I am sure the boss was equally surprised to find Carl possessed some of the warming characteristics of a human being. Next Carl joined the department golf team, which he thoroughly disgraced in the company tournament, and found himself better liked as a human being for it. Six months later, when his boss was transferred to a new plant in Texas, Carl was named as the new chief. Politics? Of course. And where would he, or his boss, or the company be without it?

Being the realist I must be, I will admit that company politics can still reveal its evil side in some organizations. Tom Arlen was one such victim. After 23 years with his company, he had risen to the position of Assistant-to-the-President, and indeed functioned as president during "the old man's" frequent absences. Two sons, both ambitious, served as vice-presidents.
 
Then came the cablegram notifying them that the "old man" had died of a heart attack in Jamaica. Instantly both sons moved to take over. Tom, a good negotiator, stayed neutral.

Tom felt that his responsibility—plus a deep feeling of loyalty to his late boss—was to keep the company going. He refused to take sides as the warring sons fought to line up executives and stockholders for the showdown that would turn the company over to one or the other. When the fratricidal activity was over, Tom was out no matter which son emerged as winner. He was fired for disloyalty by the victor when the actual charge should have been unwise impartiality.

That unhappy result of company politics had not gone unnoticed by rival concerns. Men of Tom's proven ability were scarce, and they were quick to bid for his services. Tom was in no condition to make up his mind. For 23 years—his entire professional life—he had given his undivided loyalty to the company and its president, and that his reward should be dismissal because of company politics had left him stunned. His confidence shattered, he could feel only that if he hadn't made good in his old company, how could he expect to make good with a lot of strangers in a new job?

No man can stay aloof from company politics without feeling the effects, adversely. Such an attitude makes him unaware of the inroads politics can make in his career. Bad politics is based on greed, selfishness, power-seeking, and often prejudice that may be regional or racial in nature. Actually company politics is not the name for it, for the company will suffer irreparable damage in the long run. It is personal, or factional, or clique politics, played for the advancement of the few, and let the company go hang, as it frequently does. Yet it cannot be ignored. If it is to be counteracted intelligently, it must be recognized for what it is, from the lowest man subjected to its pressures to the president of the firm. If one is in no position to combat it—and Tom had felt it was not his right to participate in what was essentially a family quarrel—then one must know what it is all about for his own protection. One's personal success is not to be found where partisanship and bias have more influence than merit.

Once I was able to convince Tom of that fact, and that he could not have "pounded the two kids’ heads together as their father would have done," he was ready to consider some of his job offers with more confidence. When he did make his choice, it was a bold one. From the New England company producing hard goods he moved to a South Carolina textile firm as vice president in charge of company relations. His parting words were, "I'm a Yankee going South for the first time to handle company politics, something I've always avoided. My Dynamic Success Factors say I can do it—that human relations factor was something I had taken for granted. And you know what I think of bad company politics. Well, if your theories don't work, you'll hear from me."

I've heard from him several times since, following each of his promotions. Recently he was named to the board of directors of his firm, still in charge of company relations, but of all five plants instead of one. I treasure his story particularly. Here was a man whose 23-year career had been wiped out by company politics, and yet in company politics he has found his greatest success.

Clothes Can Unmake The Man

At the age of 33 Williams was ten years out of college, but he still looked like a college fashion plate from the pages of Esquire. He worked in the sales department of an engineering firm, preparing estimates on the costs of steel, equipment and labor for the various engineering projects on which his company bid. His work was accurate, and often his shrewd judgment in the selection of cost-cutting equipment won him commendation from the front office. But commendation was as far as it went. When the time came to really go out and do some selling to put the company across—and incidentally make a nice commission—someone else was selected.

Everything in the young man's achievements, education, and training indicated that he was qualified to be much further advanced in his chosen field. But when I looked at him, fresh and eager, his crew-cut blond hair as neat as the bristles on a brush, his clothes representing the last word from Yale, I was reminded of the old adage, "Don't send out a boy to do a man's job."

I handed him a current issue of Fortune, suggesting that he scan the pictures of the executives featured in the various articles. He studied the magazine for several minutes, occasionally pointing out a man he knew or had heard about, but when he handed the magazine back, his face was blank. "What's the point?" he asked.

"Did you see any executives dressed the way you are?" I asked. It was a delicate question with no delicate way of putting it, so I let him have it.

You could see the chips piling up on his shoulder. "Are you criticizing my clothes?" he demanded.

"Would you go to a wedding dressed the way you are?" I continued, ignoring the chips.

"Of course not!"

"Nor a funeral, nor a formal ball, nor a deep sea fishing trip?"

Somewhat less frostily he agreed that his campus garb was hardly appropriate for those occasions.

"What you recognize then," I said, "is that certain kinds of clothes are appropriate for one occasion and not for others. Could it be that the clothes that make the big wheel on the campus do not make the big executive?"

He was bright enough. He got the point. Realizing that if he was going to compete with grown men he had to look grown-up, he appeared in his office the following Monday looking like a junior executive. And when he looked like one, it is not too surprising that he was recognized as one. Of course the new suit did not make him. Clothes do not make the man. Only ability can do that. But clothes can so unmake a man that ability has difficulty in finding a chance to shine.

This is such an important point that I will illustrate it with another case history. This concerns a 36-year-old Greenwich Village spinster who was left frustrated by both art and life. She wanted to be a member of the Bohemian set and paint in oils, but what she actually did was design packages. Time and again her packaging skill had won national and international prizes yet her income was far below that of rival designers; the reason: she looked like a French scarecrow, and a poor one at that.

She wore a faded beret from beneath which strands of black hair hung limply and unevenly, as though the beret was leaking its stuffing. Her face, except for her dark eyes, was colorless, untouched by the cosmetics for which she designed her most attractive cartons. For a cloak she wore a shapeless French cape, her dress was on the order of a blue smock, and her black lisle stockings and black, flat-heeled shoes did nothing to improve matters.

At our second interview I asked her if she believed in packaging. "It's the only thing to believe in that I have left," she said unhappily.
"You don't act like it," I said. I wanted to say that anyone seeing the way she packaged herself wouldn't believe she could put beans in a bag, but I had to let that go. "I should think that anyone who can package perfume as beautifully as you can would be tempted to package herself."

The tears came on then, and after that the story. She was actually a very timid woman, far more concerned with trying to "belong" than in developing her own personality and career. And since it was the current fashion of her set in Greenwich Village to run around looking like spooks—the fore-runners of the beatniks—she had accepted the garb rather than risk the disapproval of her neighbors, or at least those of her "arty" neighbors with whom she was trying to "belong."

Once she discovered through an analysis of her success factors the value of being herself, she was able to see herself as her employers had seen her. Her weird garb had not made her a Bohemian artist in oils, but most certainly it had impeded her progress in the field for which she had real talent. Within a month, a living example of her own packaging skill, she became chief package designer for a large cosmetics firm at a salary commensurate with her talent. And from a new confidence in her voice I gathered her other frustrations were within a fair way of being removed, too.

Good Work Will Keep You There

Did it ever occur to you that as a conscientious and hardworking employee you could be standing in your own way? That in mastering your job to the satisfaction of your immediate boss he is quite satisfied to keep you there? A promotion involves more than an advancement and an increase in salary. A whole series of events is put in motion, not the least of which is that in advancing from one job to the next, you have left your former boss with a big hole to fill. He has to find a new man for your job, train him, and then hope the newcomer will work as hard as you did. At the same time, your new boss is wondering how much training he will have to provide before you become as good as the man you replaced.

Under the circumstances, it is not to be wondered at if your immediate superior is far more interested in retaining your high performance record than in seeing you move on, leaving him with a hole to fill. Many a good man has been stopped cold, not for lack of ability but because of too much. The longer a boss has been in his position, the less he may like to see a disturbance of the status quo, and even the most tolerant of bosses can get irked if he thinks his department is being used as a training ground by the higher-ups. That a boss would want to keep his best men cannot be considered a plot on his part to keep his men down, but a perfectly natural effort to keep his own performance record up. You can't cure this situation, but you can save yourself a lot of worry if you recognize it for what it is and take steps to circumvent it. These steps will be discussed later.

Let's Look At The Record

Not all good men are kept down because of a superior's desire to retain his most efficient workers. Frequently a supervisor is so concerned with production problems and keeping up with his paper work that his good workers are the men he doesn't have to worry about, and as long as he doesn't have to worry about them, he can forget them. On the other hand, he does know those who are doing a poor job, and he does have to worry and put in a lot of time with them. Thus he slights his most valuable assets—his best men—to concentrate on his substandard workers. So wide-spread is this procedure that a doctrine of management has developed from it called "Management by Exception." Though the procedure is not intended to penalize the good workers, in its concentration on bringing the poor workers up to par, the good workers are neglected in too many instances.

As Irving Wiltse had occasion to discover in a double-barreled way, the boss may know his good men—meaning the men he doesn't have to worry about—and yet remain in complete ignorance of their higher qualifications. Wiltse came to us after three years as plant maintenance supervisor, deeply depressed by his "failure" to advance. His first assignment, as was yours, was to make a list of the achievements that had been important in his life. He was in a more optimistic frame of mind when he returned with an impressive list of achievements, two of which concerned contributions he had made to improve maintenance efficiency.

"This is the first time I've ever gone over my life in an organized way," he admitted. "It made me feel good to realize I’ve accomplished a few things."
 
On his list Achievement No. 9 had become his greatest. This stated, "I set up a separate maintenance shop in the corner of the plant where we could coordinate the repair work of all departments. We had our own tool crib and repair equipment in one place. Instead of trying to bring the men and the tools to a broken-down machine, we could bring smaller machines to the shop and really do a job."

"Did you think this was an achievement when you got the shop in operation?" I asked.

"Well, not exactly," he hesitated. "Not in so many words. I guess I thought of it as something to make my work easier."
"Did your boss think of it as your achievement?" I continued.

Wiltse bristled at that. "He should have. He was there. He okayed the plans. He saw me install everything."

"Yes, but you were there, too, and they were your plans, and you saw the machines installed, yet at that time you didn't think of it as anything special." Then I made my point. "If you didn't recognize your own achievement, why should you expect your boss to do so?"

He got that all right, but I wasn't through with him. "What about your own crew of maintenance men?" I asked. "Got any good men there?"

"I sure have," he said with pride. "The best in the plant. I cover for them, and they cover for me."

"And your boss covers for you," I said. "And that's what you are complaining about. You can call it covering, or you can call it smothering. The results are the same."

Wiltse was frankly astounded. "I never thought of it that way," he admitted. "I guess I was so busy trouble-shooting for the plant that I never thought others might be having the same troubles as myself."

More to the point, once Wiltse was ready to admit he had done nothing to recognize the superior talents of his men, he had to acknowledge the possibility that his boss might be unaware of his—Wiltse's—potential.

It was another case of a good man's keeping accurate, imper-sonal records of the achievements of his department while keeping no record of his own progress and development—seemingly because there was nothing to report. In a follow-up session with Wiltse I suggested that he keep a personal record of his development as an aid in the "maintenance" of his own career, reminding him that through his records he knew when to grease his machines, while at the same time he had let his own career run dry.

The matter of bringing these important records to the attention of a superior will be discussed in detail later. It is enough for the moment that Wiltse did so, releasing an unexpected chain of events. His boss, in charge of maintenance, plant safety, and special services, had long been held back from promotion to superintendent of a branch factory for lack of a suitable replacement. Wiltse's progress report provided just the ammunition he needed. And you can be sure that Wiltse, having learned from his own analysis of achievements, had brought up one of his best men to succeed him as maintenance supervisor. [None of this being held back for lack of a suitable replacement for him.]

All of which brings up an important point. The higher you go, the broader will be the view of your superiors, until at the top the view is unlimited. That is what makes big executives big. Not for them is the idea that while they are taking six weeks in Florida their underlings are busy in the home office sharpening knives. Confident in their own abilities, and confident in the abilities of those they have left behind to tend the store, they relax and refresh themselves for even greater efforts on their return. You are not apt to encounter this broadminded-ness in your first efforts to make a habit of success, but it is a nice thought to keep in mind.

The "Breaks" Are There For The Breaking

Success stories are filled with anecdotes in which lucky "breaks" played a dominant part. The little opera singer who is understudy to the star, and comes through in great style when the star breaks her leg. The first mate who saves the ship when his skipper has a heart-attack in the midst of a hurricane. But you know the story. You also know that unless that little understudy had spent years in preparation for the role and was fully qualified to handle it, she was thanked nicely for her effort and never heard of again. And you know that the first mate, unless he had seniority and experience behind him, continued his career as a first mate under a new skipper. Yet so firmly planted is the idea that the breaks are all important that when a man says, "He got the breaks and I didn't," we don't think of him as offering an excuse; we think of him as stating a fact.

But we are always getting the breaks. The day doesn't pass but what all of us get a break of one kind or another, such as walking into the office just at the moment the boss is ready to fire the first man who walks through the door. Or like taking a Florida vacation during the coldest weather in forty years. The breaks come in all shapes and sizes, and in all degrees of good fortune and bad.

Of course the man who gets a promotion through a lucky break is more discussed than the man who lost it, bad break of equal import though he had, just as the man who breaks the bank at Monte Carlo is more discussed than the hundreds of men whom the bank at Monte Carlo broke. In fact, the top executive who got there through the breaks is about as rare as the gambler who breaks the bank. In the long run the good and bad breaks will cancel each other out, and the man who waits for the "right chance" to come along might do better buying lottery tickets.

Breaks don't make the man, but a man with a program who knows where he is going can make his own breaks. Most of my clients will agree to that, but in some a curious type of reverse thinking sets in. The reasoning goes like this: "I'm dissatisfied with my present job, but at least I know where I stand. To move to a bigger job involves risks, many of them unforeseeable and therefore dangerous. And with a wife and three children to support, I can't afford to take a chance."

The man with that defeatist kind of thinking is doomed if he does, and doomed if he doesn't. Jobs are like shoes. When they are too small for one, they pinch. The pain shows up in many ways—in dissatisfaction, frustration, chronic illness, and all-too-often a short temper that can seriously disrupt family life. A good salary or a title on the door is of little help if the job is still too small. The man seeking to ease his frustrations in the bar of an exclusive club is separated only by his surroundings from the malcontent seeking to drown his problems in a cheap dive. Both are failures, and the difference is only one of degree. One fails more luxuriously than the other, but the therapeutic value of the luxury is dubious, to say the least.

It is true that you are not gambling with your future if you elect to remain in a job too small for you. It is a sure thing that you are going to lose. But let's eliminate gambling, an unpleasant word unless one can afford to lose, and especially unpleasant when a career is at stake. When you know your Dynamic Success Factors and know how they apply to your next step upward, you won't be stepping up in the dark on that neck-snapping step that isn't there. You'll know where you are going, full speed ahead, and let the breaks fall where they may.

Those Distant Goals Can Strain Your Eyes

Back in 1943 a bomber pilot trained in sunny California got his plane and crew as far as Iceland where the weather is more variable at hundred-yard intervals. The next morning he managed to taxi his plane through a blizzard, but when he got to the runway for his take-off to England, he had to call the control tower with the information that he couldn't see half way down the runway.
 
"That's all right, you're cleared for take-off," assured the voice from the tower. "When you get half-way down the runway, you'll see the other half."

The long-range plan is like that. The pilot of the plane had to have England as his long-range destination, but he could have been stopped far short of there if he hadn't been able to look at it a few hundred yards at a time. The more you concentrate your gaze on a distant goal, the more apt you are to stumble over something right under your feet. The career diplomat who favors a top post in South America is on the right track, but first he should set his eye on learning Spanish and Portuguese, and history, and economics, and politics, plus a plain ability to get along with people before that distant goal comes into focus. Remember what I said about planting seed successes? Use the distant goal as a reference point, but pour plenty of salt over the old adage, "Hitch your wagon to a star, keep your seat, and there you are." The achievable goal you set out to reach within the next 24 hours is the one that gets you there. Unless the immediate goal is reached, with more attainable tomorrow and the next day, the distant goal remains just that—distant. A strain on the eyes and the hopes.

In Summation

(1) It is a mistake to believe your supervisor knows what you are doing, unless you are doing it wrong. Then hell know soon enough, but superior performance quickly becomes expected performance—"I don't have to worry about that man."

To reverse an old saying, "Out of mind, out of sight."

(2) It is an error to keep your work and your life in completely separate compartments. You have a life of your own, but colleagues can be friends.

(3) Dress the part. The "package" makes the first impression and it should be a favorable one.

(4) It is almost tragic to overlook the constructive side of office politics. If you don't know what's going on around you, no one is going to know you are around.

(5) It is a mistake to believe that the time given to an analysis of your mistakes and weaknesses is not time robbed from the development of your strengths and best talents. Talent is what you have to sell. Mistakes, no matter how thoroughly analyzed and presented, have small market value.

(6) It is a mistake to believe you can get ahead without keeping records of your progress. Even the small storekeeper rings up a five cent sale. You, with a career at stake, cannot leave your future to guesswork anymore than the storekeeper can leave his charge accounts unrecorded and hope everyone will pay in full later. And until you keep a record of your achievements, you won't know whether you've collected on them or not.

(7) It is a mistake to have long term, reach-for-the-stars ambitions if you don't have some short-term, achievable goals in between. Nothing succeeds like success, and the rocket which, at present writing, is observing Venus is not one big blast-off, but the accumulation of many lesser successes that began with the invention of explosives. (Here again, I might point out, the sole interest is in the achievements of the survivors, and not in the mistakes of the thousands who blew themselves—and a considerable number of innocent bystanders—into fragments.) In short, to achieve the long range success, short term successes must be provided to develop the habit that makes the big one inevitable.

So much for the fallacies and the mistakes. They have the power of out-moded but traditional thinking behind them, and so must be recognized for what they are. Now let's get on to uncovering in the next chapters what to do about circumventing them.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...