Will tomorrow’s aspiring startup staff need to sharpen their elbows?
Power has become a dirty word in a culture which favours cooperation over competition, so will this leave future recruits imagining that they’ll be able to avoid office politics by joining a startup?
This Stanford professor argues that we need to equip the next generation with the tools for securing and handling the power they will need in order to realise their potential. He feels that working in a startup is not a way of avoiding this: as far as he is concerned, in the context of power, startups and established organisations pose exactly the same kinds of challenges.
He recognises the value of self-desensitisation (to ‘wanting to be liked’) on the road to power, but he also identifies insensitivity as a potential shortcoming of those who achieve it.
The current generation is less ready to join the workforce because they’ve been shielded from competitive situations while growing up.
This leaves the reader of his book with a dilemma: if you obtain power at the expense of others, is it worth it – will this leave you with the power you seek, but also leave you feeling so guilty, insecure, selfish and callous that you wish you hadn’t bothered?
The answer is that this book helps you appreciate the value of being clear about what you want and approaching the conduct of relationships with others based upon this clarity of purpose.
Once armed with this unsentimental objectivity, you are no more or less absolved of the moral considerations you need to weigh up regarding how to reconcile the value that you give to their interests with the value that you place upon your own.
How to clarify our objectives and interactions (by being realistic, rather than sentimental about how power can be won and lost) is unquestionably valuable and reviews (here’s one which I have read) of this book (which I have yet to read) suggest that the book does a very good job of addressing this requirement.
However, cooperation and collaboration are becoming widely recognised as valuable, perhaps even essential resources in the world of innovation and startups, and so perhaps an important question in this context is not merely how to obtain power, but how to share it and how to make it a sustainable resource.
It is possible that the understanding of the dynamics of power in the world which Pfeffer describes, a world where there is always just one CEO, one person in charge, is essential, even if the future of power (a world of socially mediated activity, perhaps?) might turn out to be significantly different and require an additional set of power tools.
Here are some details on Jeffrey Pfeffer:
Jeffrey Pfeffer, Ph.D., is the author of Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t and 13 books on management.
He educates leaders on evidence-based management, the knowing-doing gap, high performance culture, and unconventional wisdom.
He is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
Pfeffer has taught both elective and core classes in human resource management and the core course in organizational behavior.
When he joined the Stanford faculty, he developed an elective on power in organizations.
First called Power and Politics in Organizations, some years ago the class was retitled The Paths to Power.
The elective has been consistently popular, with Pfeffer teaching two sections per year and, over the years, other colleagues teaching sections as well.
Pfeffer has written cases on how individuals acquire power and manage their careers, including cases on Keith Ferrazzi, Zia Yusuf, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, and Laura Esserman.
He has also written cases on companies that practice high commitment/high performance work arrangements, including Southwest Airlines, DaVita, the Men’s Wearhouse, Holy Cross Hospital,SAS Institute, and the Andean region of Kimberly-Clark.
Pfeffer has given talks in 34 countries around the world and has taught management seminars for numerous companies and associations in the United States including Sutter Health, theMayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, John Hancock, Hewlett-Packard, and the Online Publishers Association.
Although he is probably most famous in academic circles for developing resource dependence theory (The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence-Perspective), he has done theoretical and empirical research on the subjects of human resource management, power and politics in organizations, evidence-based management, the knowing-doing gap, leadership, stratification and labor markets inside organizations, the sociology of science, how and why theories become self-fulfilling, the psychological relationship between time and money, and economic evaluation.
He has written more than 125 articles and book chapters.
Pfeffer has won numerous awards for his articles and books.
He was elected a fellow of the Academy of Management more than 20 years ago, was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, and has won the Richard D. Irwin award for scholarly contributions to management.
Pfeffer has served on the boards of several human capital management companies including Resumix, Unicru, and Workstream.
He also served on the board of publicly-traded Sonosite (SONO) for ten years and on the boards of private high-technology companies Actify and Audible Magic.
He is currently on the board of directors of two nonprofits: the San Francisco Playhouse and Quantum Leap Healthcare.
For five years, Pfeffer wrote a monthly column for the Time-Warner magazine, Business 2.0.
For almost three years, he wrote a career advice column for Capital, the leading economics and business magazine in Turkey.
He currently writes a bi-weekly blog for BNET/CBS Interactive as well as an occasional contribution for the online On Leadership section of The Washington Post.
Here’s an interview with him about his current book:
I agree with Jeffrey Pfeffer. It seems that the young generation today have it easier. It seems that parents and teachers do not want these kids to be hurt or offended. I mean, have more than one valedictorian in a school?
Just look at this article - http://althouse.blogspot.com/2006/06/high-school-with-41-valedictorians.html
It says, “The push for multiple valedictorians began years ago, prompted by concerns that high school had become too competitive — so competitive that a few students seeking the title filed lawsuits.”
If these kids do not learn how to cope with competition – what can we expect from our future leaders?
Same feelings here Grace. Kids, mainly in developed countries I have in mind, do have it easier.
If they won’t learn how to compete while young, they will have it really hard to learn when grown up. How to compete, win, lose, and what is always related to such things – respect other competitors. If we can’t teach them how to do it in schools, there is always a possibility to do it on a sport pitch. Any sport will do, for the pure idea of fair competing while being still young. It learned me a lot when I was a kid, so somehow know what it means.
Me too, Greg. My dad was overprotective when I was a child. So, I had a difficult time when I first got into College. Fortunately, I learned really fast that if I just sit down and complain about how difficult things are, I would never get anywhere.
Would leaving huge companies for startups really mean no competition? I rather think it will be a different kind of competition, different kind of ‘office politics’ and problems to face as a CEO.
We have to remember that working in startup, as a CEO, means fewer possibilities for mistakes. Not enough funds and resources to survive such things. Some people are afraid of such responsibility, hence choose to work for bigger companies, with more people managing the business, and responsibility spreading to more people naturally.
Hey Greg, I agree with what you said – startups involve a different kind of competition.
But whether you work for a big company or you have your own startup, I think the expectations are basically the same. If you’re the CEO of a company – big or small, you are expected to lead that company to success. Which brings me back to my earlier comment.
If the youth of today do not work hard to be at the top of their class – and just decide to file lawsuits because they want the title but their school is just too competitive – then, perhaps future CEOs may not be as successful as the ones we have in big companies today.
Sure, company’s success – no matter huge or startups – is the ultimate goal.
With the situation you have highlighted, it’s plain crazy in my view. Even if it works for these students – adult life will brutally teach them something completely different.
Brutal is right. I guess that’s why there are so many dysfunctional families these days. Then, there are so many psychological “disorders” being diagnosed by doctors.
So, I guess, that’s why parents and teachers are sooo careful of how they treat the kids today. It’s a vicious cycle.
Yeah, it surprises me as well – what happened in last few years from the time that I was younger, that kids seem to have so many problems now, papers from doctors that explains their problems with learning and such. Of course, I understand there are some cases where this is valid – but in such numbers in such short time? Scary stuff.
‘He recognises the value of self-desensitisation (to ‘wanting to be liked’) on the road to power, but he also identifies insensitivity as a potential shortcoming of those who achieve it.’
Surely, feelings need to be set aside in work. As controversial as it may be, this is the way it goes while managing companies. You have to analyze and consider what is best for the company, not what people will think about you. Not everyone can handle it in right manner – some people feel the urge to be popular and generally liked by others; not the best way to manage. The thing is to find the right proportions here.
That’s right Greg. Although, I would have to say that when it comes to female CEOs, this can be quite difficult. Women are more emotional by nature. Then, there is the fact that, to this day, women are still trying to prove that they can do things, as well as men – especially in the corporate world.
Women do have it hard, thanks to a traditional model of ‘man in charge’ in companies. But these things, slowly, but do change, at least in Europe. As this article states:
‘More women are breaking through the glass ceiling to become CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. There are 15 women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies this year, up from 12 the previous year.
[…]
In the European Union women have filled 6m of 8m new jobs created since 2000’.
This has to lead to more women CEOs on the market soon, no turning back.
It’s a different story here in Asia, Greg. Just take a look at this article: http://www.globewomen.org/ENewsletter/2010/26March2010.html where it says, “The U.S., in general, remains the pacesetter in appointing women to board seats with 19.5% of board seats held by women from the 61 American companies that were included in the Fortune ranking.Asian companies form the majority of those with not a single woman on their corporate boards (29 out of 45). The one exception is China, whose percentage of women directors among the 11 companies ranked by Fortune came to 10.8%, slightly ahead of the U.K. at 10.6%.”
While there are more women holding management positions in different Asian companies these days, there are still too few women CEOs in Asia. I guess, it’s really more of a culture thing. In most Asian countries, men are still considered to be superior and many Asian women support that.