#22 Power Hour

Here's a quick story: I like making things. Especially valuable ones, so I've built my house a few times. I'm generally respected by builders and other trades who've seen my work, and it helps I started as a kid with my dad.

So I do okay behind a hammer. Some of my friends say that skill is “innate.”

Meanwhile, I have a buddy who bought a local trade business here in our town. I admire his smarts: his background is finance, not the trades at all. A few local contractors were skeptical he could succeed without “born with it” experience.

But he’s great at it. I recently hired his company to fix something at the house I've been too busy to deal with, and he fixed it himself so fast I wondered if I'll ever fix anything again.

Meanwhile, does my friend have something innate?  Yeah! The skill that brought him here: numbers. (In this case, a monopoly for sale, in a dream town, at a great price.)

We all have our thing. He’s crushing it at his AND mine!

The point of the story is there really are some things other people seem born with, and you weren’t. Then, some of those are things you need to learn and master anyway, even decades behind the innate folks.

Whichever way you get good at those things, you just need to be good at them. Power is one of those things.

That’s because power works something like compound interest: you’re either earning it, or you’re paying it. And if this is new to you then most likely you're paying it.  

The difference is, unlike interest, power is uncomfortable to talk about. 

It feels cynical, or unethical. Or competitive in a kind of gross way, like SEO. (There's only one top result on Google, and since everyone can see you there, the core activity of staying #1 is obfuscating how you do it.)

The result (like SEO) is that power usually goes to those who proactively like to think about it.  

In my experience, most C-somethings don’t mind thinking about power dynamics. But a lot of them are still being outplayed by those who were born with it, or who think about it more.  

Two books are relevant here.

1. Niccoló Machiavelli’s The Prince. Written in 1513 and probably read by you when you were 15 or 13. Read it again.

2. Robert Greene's, The 48 Laws of Power. You do need to read it, but this book is sort of like a handbook for people who confuse cunning with competence.

It’s a comprehensive guide for how to be a manipulative turd, but with historical footnotes.

You can tell I take a dim view of it. But you still need to read it. 

You need to read it because everyone who proactively wants to harm you, use you, or displace you has read it closely and refers to it often. I’m not kidding.

I also want to say that I really think you SHOULD become more powerful. (That is, if you're not a piece of crap.)

A long time ago, I quit a corp comms job after I realized the company had gotten big enough that my talents were going mostly to help a few senior middle managers afford bigger vacation homes, instead of helping the executives or products shape the world.  

A lot of people mistake that story to be one about vacation homes versus vision. NO. It's about how those middle managers were exactly that: middling, and pieces of crap.

YOU are the one who should have a bigger vacation home. That's a vision! 

So let's get you one.

Okay, these short tips are just my tiny additions to anything you’ll find in Machiavelli or Greene. I’ll keep it to 6 but I probably have 10.

How to grow and keep your power, C-Something Edition:

1. Do it. 

First, I hope you'll take a positive voice to yourself and start to see that growing your power, wherever it matters most to you, is a moral obligation. That is, again, if you're not a piece of crap. 

Imagine there's two kinds of people in the world: pieces of crap, and not pieces of crap. Wouldn't we all be happier when the powerful people are not pieces of crap?  And aren't we all worse off when the pieces of crap are in control–of your company, your school board, your team?  

If you’re not a piece of crap, there’s a strong chance you becoming more powerful is an ethical responsibility.

Or, you’re already the boss. In this case, remember a simple fact: power cravers surround the powerful. It’s your own bench most likely to unseat you.

Your options are fight to win, or fight because you already won.

2. Repeat yourself. 

(I told you I was going to keep telling you this). 

One thing that has always amazed me is how often VP-level leaders will complain their boss doesn't have clear priorities. Ironically, this usually happens barely a month after long exercises or offsites where those same VP's helped define the clear priorities. I’ve seen this more than I want to be true. 

But it happens, and the reason it happens is once those priorities are set, everyone gets to work on them! And work, if you're doing it right, results in new obstacles and challenges. (And who has time to remember last month’s planning sesh??)

In a lot of companies, work also results in growth.  Which means new people haven't even heard your priorities to even forget them yet. Easy solution: repeat your priorities constantly. Repeat yourself so often you hate hearing yourself. 

One trick that works stupidly well here: just send your team an email, every Tuesday, with your top 3 priorities or things on your mind that week. Do this without ever missing a single week, for about 3-5 years, and your career will skyrocket.

I have a 6/10 success rate on convincing newish C-somethings to do this, and the 6 who did it now all sit on boards of the biggest companies in the world.

Correlation, or causation? Fair question. But I’m pretty sure that email can put mountains under you.

3. Repeat yourself (STONER VERSION). 

Try this. Imagine you just washed off your deodorant and smoked a big fat doobie.

And then I said, "repeat yourself." And then you were like, "yeaaaah man, like there should be more of me. Lots of me's! Just repeating into infinity, man, like a whole army of ME's. Everything I say, THEY say!"  

Yes. That's actually precisely what I mean.

But you don't have to get high for that. When I say “repeat yourself,” I mean don't just repeat your words, repeat your SELF. Make more of you. It’s not what you say, it’s what people say you said. How are you going to make sure they get it right?

4. You are not you. STOP BEING YOU. 

I hear you: "Jesse, doesn't this seem to contradict what you just said about repeating my self?"  Of course it does, but you were stoned. Remember?!

Probably the hardest thing about your career is the whole damned time you've been YOU.  

Meanwhile, to other people, you’re constantly changing. 

First you were a nobody, or a maybe friend. Then you were pretty driven, and got a better job. Traitor. Successful. Both. Then you’re a good mentor, or role model, and now all of a sudden you're the boss. 

And the boss has something everyone else wants: power. The boss is also denied something everyone else gets: sympathy. 

It doesn't matter if you feel like you're still the same person. Your audience, your teams, your peers, your board, and even some of your friends all see you differently.

You must, unfortunately, trust people less.

Their expectations and interactions with you are going to include their own self interest, and for you to admit that requires you to admit that you are no longer you. Face it now or pay for it later.

The result is a whole bunch of people trying to get things done with you, through you, or by killing you. And a funny rule about power is: the more power you have, the best weapon against you is your own words. 

So choose those words very carefully. Speak and behave as the boss, and absolutely never as yourself. Transparency is for windows, and your feelings are for therapists. I’ve seen C-somethings screwed by their own lawyers!

Save your true self for your family, and make sure you have a good one.

Btw, this sucks, and it’s lonely. I can’t help you decide if this step is worth it, but it’s definitely not optional.

5. Be adaptable, never predictable.

If someone knows what you'll say about their idea, then you're going to hear a version of it tailored to the response they want.

Power is not always a zero-sum transaction, but in this scenario it is. They want your power transferred to their project.

The solution, from a communications perspective, is to listen more than you speak. This makes you less predictable. And you learn more! Win win.

Second, be widely adaptable. Here's some cool shit I saw from a now-C-something back when she was just barely a new manager:

Someone told her she "owned" the company narrative. But instead of claiming power, she built it. She told every team—marketing, engineering, execs, comms: “Oh I don’t own ANY narrative. My team just amplifies yours.”

Suddenly, everyone wanted to work with her, even her ego-driven peers fighting for ownership. She’s very successful now and didn’t even remember this story. (And speaking of ego, I want to add she reads and shares my newsletter).

People chase power when they believe it adds to their own. If you’re adaptable, yours grows too. If you’re predictable, only theirs does.

6. Relationships are a strategy.

As an introvert and autist this one has been hard for me. It’s also hard for a lot of leaders and founders in technology, for much the same reason. (Also for a lot of my friends and colleagues in writer-world: we don’t like spotlights.)

But you have to try, and it's not as hard as you think.

Here’s a trick my dad taught me when I was 8 and defines my life. Help people more than they help you.

This is hard with assholes, because they’ll burn you. But as a habit, I think it pays off.

Here's another trick I learned from Sheryl Sandberg: just care. Genuinely care about what people are saying, and listen. Then, do that at scale.

And don’t make excuses like you have limited capacity to care about stuff. You already operationalize a million other things don’t you? You can figure it out.

I worked for a guy 20 years ago who still asks me about Idaho. Because he put it in his notes the day we met that I had always wanted to live here (and now do). This guy could walk a floor of 250 people and have that 2-second conversation with everyone, flawlessly.

What good did it do him? Nothing, transactionally.

But in aggregate, he now has more than 40 years of tens of thousands of people who like him and want him to succeed. Spoiler: he could now buy Idaho.

One of the biggest social facts I think we forget is that anyone who has a substantial amount of power has it because a lot of people want them to.

Finally, to wrap it all up, I think there’s two ways to get to the top of any system.

1. You could be a total piece of crap and say all the right things at the exact right time.

2. Or, you could actually be good at your work, and also say all the right things at the exact right time.

One is easier, and the other is real power. 

Either way you'll have to say something,
Jesse

PS: Linkz!

1. The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene. Like I said, it sucks, but you need to read it. 

I would describe it as perfect for anyone who thinks backstabbing is a career. But that’s the kind of person who’s going stab you.

(It’s also a must-read for people who confuse passive aggression with communication. Essential reading to become insufferable. The book you buy when you want to be feared but still have roommates. A field guide for aspiring ponzi schemers. This is so fun I COULD GO ON FOR DAYS)

2. The Prince, by Niccoló Machiavelli. I recommend the little cloth-bound version, so you can feel really philosophical while reading it, instead of feeling like a goober-conniver taking notes on power from Audible.

3. Song of the week. Seemed appropriate.

4. Completely unrelated: Emily says I live under a rock (aka, don't scroll Instagram enough) for not knowing about $50 potato chips.

They're REALLY good (but maybe not as good as $50 worth of $5 bills?) I recommend them if you have some couch time coming up like March Madness, or reading Robert Greene's 48 ways to become unbearable in relationships.

PSSSSSS: Share this one with your friend who's a good person getting screwed over by a bad one.