Deeply amoral reading: "Power - Why Some People Have It and Others Don't" by Jeffrey Pfeffer

In July 2013, I was fortunate enough to attend a Stanford Business School course. It's title was "Leadership and the Effective Use of Power". The term 'power' makes many uncomfortable. At the very beginning of the course, the professor put the question to the class: "Which of you wants power?" A couple of hands rather hesitantly went up, but everyone else looked rather uncertain. Then the professor asked a second question: "Which of you wants to change the world?" No problem this time, lots of hands up. Then the professor again: "So how are you going to do that without power?"

The course was about leadership, and far from being a education in the brutal subjugation of others, it was about things like building effective teams, influencing without direct authority,  giving and receiving feedback, accessing resources, managing upwards... All rather Californian in fact. So it was something of a shock to the system when, on the penultimate day, a guest professor was brought in to stir things up a bit. His name was Jeffrey Pfeffer, and he had us out of our new Californian comfort zone in no time at all.

He started his class by contrasting the behaviour of two corporate leaders in broadly quite similar circumstances. The first was Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, the second Tony Hayward of BP. Both were testifying before Congressional committees following disasters their companies were responsible for, sub-prime lending based financial meltdown and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. His point was that Blankfein, for all that his company was - in Pfeffer's view - even more culpable than Hayward's, came out of the process completely intact, having cowed the congressmen with a display of personal and corporate power, communicated in what he said, how he said it and in his general demeanour and body-language. Hayward, by contrast, was weak: he evaded questions, he hid behind lawyers, he stonewalled, he deferred to his questioners, allowed himself to be interrupted and, ultimately, he apologised. "Never apologise!" 


At this point, someone in the class could take it no more. "But people died," she protested, "of course he apologised, it was the right thing to do...)". Pfeffer was right back at her: "People die all the time! Hayward's job was to defend BP. He failed, and he failed because he was weak. Blankfein's company probably killed more people, but he focused on his job. He was powerful."

See why I use the term "deeply amoral"?

By the way, you can watch the Blankfein and Hayward testimonies here and here.

The class continued, with the room in a somewhat rebellious mood, and ended up being the most memorable two hours we had in the classroom that week. Though perhaps not entirely reconciled to Pfeffer's world view by the end of it, most of us nevertheless appreciated the provocation, and yes, some wisdom behind it. For my part, there was a degree of fascination at the iconoclasm which left me curious to know more about Pfeffer and his ideas. His book, which he claimed had provoked death threats from some and accusations of working for Satan from others, was in the Stanford book store, but I couldn't quite overcome my general aversion to business books to the tune of thirty-something dollars they wanted. However, I quickly realised I could download the ebook to my kindle (still then a total novelty for me) for much less and duly did so.

The amoral Jeff Pfeffer

However, I still didn't read the book. As I said, I am generally averse to business/management books. They tend to be badly written and to string out article-length ideas into book form by dint of endless repetition. Frequently the ideas are largely common sense anyway, though this does not usually prevent the authors from presenting them as of world-changing import. I ranted about one on this blog some time ago. Anyway, Power languished on my kindle and there always seemed to be something better to read next.

However, Pfeffer is not subdued so easily. Last month, I attended another course, one organised for the senior management of my organisation, given by some professors flown in from Stanford for this purpose. In the margins of the course, held in a Dutch chateau, I got talking to them and naturally enough mentioned my Stanford course from last year. Whence to Jeff Pfeffer and his iconoclastic mixing it up. "Oh yeah," said my interlocutor, "Jeff's great. He loves doing that; that's how we use him, to provoke a reaction. But, you know, he's got some really interesting ideas."

So back to the kindle, and this time I did read it and, notwithstanding some business-booky irritations along the way, actually quite enjoyed it. The Blankfein/Hayward story is there (in chapter 7) with different actors in equivalent roles: Colonel Oliver North of Iran-Contra fame and a man called Donald Kennedy, onetime president of Stanford University. But there's much more than that. This is essentially a guide to how to flourish in an organisation, or, to put it differently, how to accumulate power in an organisation. Advice covers things like networking, how to get yourself noticed, how to bypass formal structures, how to curry favour and use contacts. Essentially, it's about how to play the political game inside organisations. It is amoral, no question. Much of Pfeffer's advice involves quite clearly putting one's own interests ahead of either those of others or of the organisation itself. So be it, says Pfeffer, one of the main things that holds people back, stops them achieving what they could achieve, is the widespread belief that life should be fair and that people's performance should determine their career progression. Well it just ain't like that, he says.

The brutal realities of the US corporate world are, well, more brutal than most of us experience in Europe. You can't get fired in a 25 second elevator ride with Steve Jobs as some hapless Apple employee famously once did. But looking at my own organisation with critical eyes, can I honestly say I don't recognise the realities described by Pfeffer? Can I claim that organisational politics don't work, that great performance is always and necessarily the route to recognition and advancement, that informal contacts and networks don't trump the formal procedures for getting things done and acquiring power? That's basically Pfeffer's case: open your eyes to reality and live in the world as it exists. If, for whatever reason, you want power, and, as he spends one chapter explaining, there are reasons you might not, then accept that you're going to have to use some of the methods he describes.

To be fair, you don't have to be a total bastard. That is not his point. But you do have to see reality and be prepared to adopt a repertoire of skills and techniques beyond those your organisation ostensibly requires of you if you are going to be powerful.

In the end, I suppose my reaction to the book largely corresponds to my reaction to Pfeffer's class, though now on the basis of much more and more nuanced information. His message is in some senses appalling, because it flies in the face of many values - particularly fairness - that most of us hold dear, but at the same time, he is perceptive in his analysis of how the real world works, even in fuddy-duddy European bureaucracies, and at least honest in drawing some conclusions.

I don't know if I recommend this book. I suppose it depends on how interesting you find all of this. I did find quite a nice summary of it here, if you want to know more before downloading it onto your kindle.