If you are interested in

• Advancing your career
• Being a leader
• Being Influential
• Gaining a seat at the power table
• Understanding power, organizational dynamics and leadership

I strongly suggest you read POWER.

Flawed Power

Jeffrey Pfeffer has written a very useful guide, complete with success stories, on how people attain and maintain positions of power in traditional organizations. It’s a book worth reading despite its flaws, which are:

Failure to Define Power

From the outset Pfeffer fails to define power. “No big deal,” you say. “We all know what power is.” Not so fast. In our research on women and power Jane Perdue and I heard varied definitions, specifically as to whether people define power by position and/or by the ability to influence. A few chapters into Pfeffer’s book it becomes clear he’s referring to positional power. Why not say so up front?

Failure to See Beyond Traditional Power Schemes

Pfeffer takes on the community of leadership writers, thinkers and teachers as “HAZARDOUS TO YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL SURVIVAL” (in capital letters). He claims the leadership they prescribe takes place in an altruistic world that does not exist. Oh really? Has Dr. Pfeffer read about DaVita, Conscious Capitalism, Zappos, Patagonia, Replacements Ltd, and similar companies that are changing the rules? Pfeffer’s words would be more credible if he referenced most companies and the power brokers within, who still play by the rules of scarcity. If one of us gets more, the other gets less. So, thank you very much, but I will take more. These rules are beginning to change in some spheres. Let’s hope the fire catches on. Until then, however, Pfeffer’s advice is well-heeded in many but not all companies.

Dr. Pfeffer advises readers to get ahead by flattering the egos of those in power. While this may work well in some situations, it is certainly not true of all people in positions of power. Several hours before putting the finishing touches on this review, I spoke with an SVP who runs a $500,000,000 software business, certainly a position of power. Yet, there is very little ego involved in what she does and why she does it. Asked why she aspired to a power position, she answered, “I saw norms that needed changing and I wanted to change them. For me it is diversity and inclusion, not just race and gender but diversity of thought. And I know there are people in the organization who would say the  same about the norms I’ve created. They too can win seats of influence. They need to create a track record and make what they’ve learned visible to others, not to stroke their egos, but to spread the learning.” I have no doubt this woman of power would see right through the flatter-her-ego approach.

Overuse and Misuse of Social Science Research

Pfeffer supports his claims with a plethora of social science research, but often discusses only the surface of study findings, omitting the more complex and variegated meanings below. In one such example, peering deeper into the study one can see that women and men relate to power differently, but this does not support the author’s point, so why bother. On other occasions Pfeffer references research far afield of power to make his point, but the dots do not connect. For example, one study concludes college students were more likely to wear T-shirts emblazoned with the team’s name after several wins. Pfeffer implies this type of support is equal to power, but rooting for your team concerns affiliation not power. Pfeffer’s observations and advice about power stand strong without the unrelated research and unqualified statements.

Recommending Pfeffer’s Book

Anyone who spends just a few months in a traditional corporate, government or not for profit setting will recognize the realities in Pfeffer’s very rich, well-told, real life examples; and he offers plenty of them. Those who intend to spend their careers in such settings would be well-advised to heed much of Pfeffer’s advice. Readers will find many examples of people who think and act beyond traditional boundaries to win positions of power, and it won’t take much imagination to translate the principles to the reader’s own situation. Pfeffer shares one such story of a summer intern who returns to his college and organizes recruiting events on campus for graduating seniors interested in working for the company. By doing so, he gets to know and be known by senior executives as well as college grads who will be in a position to hire him when he graduates. (I’m passing that advice on to my son, who is a junior and a business major.) The chapters entitled “Standing Out and Breaking Some Rules,” “Making Something Out of Nothing” and “Building Efficient and Effective Social Networks” are exceptional and well worth your time, but you might want to grab your highlighter before getting started.

There is much to savor in Power: Why Some People Have It – and Others Don’t

P.S. With a wink and a nod to Dr. Pfeffer, I would like to acknowledge what I learned in one of the studies he cited. “Amabile found that negative reviewers were perceived as more intelligent, competent, and expert than positive reviewers, even when independent experts judge the negative reviews to be of no higher quality.”

So you see, I learned valuable lessons from Power. I think you will too.