Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

đź“– Power

28 min read

Why did I want to read it?

I first heard about this book from a tweet of Joan Tubau. I ended up reading 📖 Leadership BS for ✍️ Sin machirulos hay paraiso. Una charla heterofriendly sobre management and it was so refreshing that I also wanted to read this one… and it doesn’t disappoint.

So seek power as if your life depends on it. Because it does. (Location 3534)

What did I get out of it? Raw highlights

Nobody told me that my coworkers would come to the office each day with a driving agenda to protect and then expand their turf. I guess I haven’t been willing to be mean enough or calculating enough or to sacrifice things I believed in order to be successful, at least as success is often measured.” (Location 103)

third group were primarily interested in power. The evidence showed that this third group, the managers primarily interested in power, were the most effective, not only in achieving positions of influence inside companies but also in accomplishing their jobs. (Location 110)

Some of the individuals competing for advancement bend the rules of fair play or ignore them completely. Don’t complain about this or wish the world were different. You can compete and even triumph in organizations of all types, large and small, public or private sector, if you understand the principles of power and are willing to use them. Your task is to know how to prevail in the political battles you will face. My job in this book is to tell you how. (Location 121)

the lower the rank or civil service grade of the employee, the higher the age-adjusted mortality risk. Of course many things covary with someone’s position in an organizational hierarchy, including the incidence of smoking, dietary habits, and so forth. (Location 131)

control over their work environments. (Location 135)

McClelland considered power seeking a fundamental human drive, (Location 157)

STOP THINKING THE WORLD IS A JUST PLACE (Location 162)

the “just-world hypothesis,” (Location 183)

The desire for control and predictability results in a tendency to see the world as a just place because a just world is one that is also understandable and predictable. (Location 187)

The research showed that others were more likely to reject the (randomly) punished people and to see them as lacking in social worth—even though the observers knew those punished had received their bad outcomes purely by chance! (Location 200)

BEWARE OF THE LEADERSHIP LITERATURE (Location 208)

the teaching on leadership is filled with prescriptions about following an inner compass, being truthful, letting inner feelings show, being modest and self-effacing, not behaving in a bullying or abusive way—in short, prescriptions about how people wish the world and the powerful behaved. (Location 212)

But that world doesn’t exist. (Location 215)

the road to the top may require different behavior than being successful once you have arrived. (Location 220)

if people know that someone or some organization has been successful, they will almost automatically attribute to that individual or company all kinds of positive qualities and behaviors. (Location 231)

Beth’s apparent unwillingness to “play the power game” protects her from the self-esteem consequences of possibly failing in that effort. (Location 257)

The lesson from cases of people both keeping and losing their jobs is that as long as you keep your boss or bosses happy, performance really does not matter that much and, by contrast, if you upset them, performance won’t save you. (Location 349)

One of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking that good performance—job accomplishments—is sufficient to acquire power and avoid organizational difficulties. (Location 351)

As you might guess, supervisors who were actively involved in hiring people whom they favored rated those subordinates more highly on performance appraisals than they did those employees (Location 367)

In 1980, economists James Medoff and Katherine Abraham observed that salaries in companies were more strongly related to age and organizational tenure than they were to job performance. (Location 376)

the senior executives in her company saw her as extremely effective in her current position. But they did not want to lose her abilities in that role, and they did not see her as senior executive material—as a great candidate for much more senior jobs in the company. Thus, great performance may leave you trapped because a boss does not want to lose your abilities and also because your competence in your current role does not ensure that others will see you as a candidate for much more senior jobs. (Location 398)

and mostly make sure you are effective at managing those in power—which requires the ability to enhance the ego of those above you. (Location 414)

Therefore, your first responsibility is to ensure that those at higher levels in your company know what you are accomplishing. And the best way to ensure they know what you are achieving is to tell them. (Location 419)

“the mere exposure effect.” As originally described by the late social psychologist Robert Zajonc, the effect refers to the fact that people, other things being equal, prefer and choose what is familiar to them—what they have seen or experienced before. Research shows that repeated exposure increases positive affect and reduces negative feelings,12 that people prefer the familiar because this preference reduces uncertainty,13 and that the effect of exposure on liking and decision making is a robust phenomenon that occurs in different cultures and in a variety of different domains of choice.14 (Location 433)

You can’t select what you can’t recall. (Location 445)

consistently emphasize those aspects on which you do well. (Location 459)

to ask those in power, on a regular basis, what aspects of the job they think are the most crucial and how they see what you ought to be doing. Asking for help and advice also creates a relationship with those in power that can be quite useful, and asking for assistance, in a way that still conveys your competence and command of the situation, is an effective way of flattering those with power over you. Having asked what matters to those with power over you, act on what they tell you. (Location 487)

A large literature documents the importance of similarity in predicting interpersonal attraction.17 (Location 501)

if you do highlight some error or problem, do so in a way that does not in any way implicate the individual’s own self-concept or competence—for instance, by blaming the error on others or on the situation. The last thing you want to do is be known as someone who makes your boss insecure or have a difficult relationship with those in power. (Location 521)

The research literature shows how effective flattery is as a strategy to gain influence.19 (Location 524)

Flattery also works because it engages the norm of reciprocity—if you compliment someone, that person owes you something in return (Location 527)

When I wrote him a note after he visited my class, he sent back a handwritten message on the note complimenting me on my thank-you. (Location 536)

there might be a point at which flattery became ineffective, but she couldn’t find it in her data. (Location 555)

Machirulos

sitting in a slightly dominant position through the course of the interview,” he said. “All of this was done to convey that I had some level of power in the room.” (Location 597)

focuses on “feedforward,” which emphasizes what people need to do to get ready for the subsequent positions and career challenges they will confront. The idea is this: when people focus on what they need to get to the next stage of their careers, they are less defensive. (Location 627)

In most instances, the reason the person is having a particular problem is evident in how the request is made: no attempt to provide any sort of evidence of similarity or social connection; no understanding of the other’s perspective as the recipient of such a request; no explanation as to how I, as the target, was selected. And if the question is school-or project-related, there is often no familiarity with or mastery of the subject matter. (Location 644)

Cornell social psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning (Location 650)

they could not accurately recognize the relative competence of others. (Location 655)

The two fundamental dimensions that distinguish people who rise to great heights and accomplish amazing things are will, the drive to take on big challenges, and skill, the capabilities required to turn ambition into accomplishment. The three personal qualities embodied in will are ambition, energy, and focus. The four skills useful in acquiring power are self-knowledge and a reflective mind-set, confidence and the ability to project self-assurance, the ability to read others and empathize with their point of view, and a capacity to tolerate conflict. (Location 672)

Organizational life can be irritating and frustrating and can divert people’s effort and attention. Ambition—a focus on achieving influence—can help people overcome the temptation to give up (Location 689)

permits her to put up with the annoying, stupid, frustrating situations she encounters—to, in her words, not get hung up with the imperfect in the moment. (Location 691)

I know of almost no powerful people who do not have boundless energy. That’s because energy does three things that help build influence. First, energy, like many emotional states such as anger or happiness, is contagious.14 Therefore, energy inspires more effort on the part of others. (Location 703)

Second, energy and the long hours it permits provide an advantage in getting things accomplished. (Location 710)

Some investigators have even suggested that the notion of talent or innate genius may be pure myth.”16 (Location 714)

expending great energy signals a high degree of organizational commitment (Location 717)

But this is awful! We may race to the bottom!

As Melinda, the credit card executive, commented, if there are two people and one is willing and able to work 16 hours and one just 8, it is clear who will be chosen for a promotion opportunity. (Location 718)

OMG, this is awful advice and has no evidence to back this up

get by on less sleep. (Location 720)

one advantage of staying in one place is that you get to know more people in a single organization, and this deeper knowledge permits you to better exercise power because of the stronger personal relationships (Location 737)

A recent profile of CEOs of S&P 500 companies found that the median tenure with their company was 15 years.17 (Location 740)

Generalist vs specialist

If, as much research suggests, genius requires a large number of hours to achieve outstanding levels of competence, it is true, by definition, that you can acquire those hours in less elapsed time if you focus your attention more narrowly. (Location 743)

Particularly talented people often have many interests and many opportunities and can’t choose among them. Moreover, they often feel that diversification in their work roles provides some protection against making the wrong choice. That may all be true, but the evidence suggests that you are more likely to acquire power by narrowing your focus and applying your energies, like the sun’s rays, to a limited range of activities in a small number of domains. (Location 752)

research on executive compensation consistently shows a connection between the size of the firm and CEO pay, an effect much larger than the relationship between pay and performance. (Location 1417)

Resources are great because once you have them, maintaining power becomes a self-reinforcing process. (Location 1424)

the best, most talented people want to work with those with the most power and resources, so those with access to important resources have advantages in hiring precisely the sorts of smart, hard-working individuals who can further their success. (Location 1431)

people do not precisely calculate how much value they have received from another and therefore what they owe in return. Instead, helping others generates a more generalized obligation to return the favor, and as a consequence, doing even small things can produce a comparatively large payoff. (Location 1474)

Being nice to people is effective because people find it difficult to fight with those who are being polite and courteous. (Location 1484)

people miss the point: some jobs are mostly about networking (Location 1611)

the study by the German academics Wolff and Moser is particularly informative because of its longitudinal design. They measured networking behavior in October 2001 and then did follow-up surveys late in 2002 and 2003 with more than 200 employees in Germany. Their measures of career success were total compensation and a career satisfaction scale. Networking affected career satisfaction, concurrent salary, and salary growth over time, with the two most important networking behaviors being “maintaining external contacts” and “building internal contacts.” (Location 1661)

People are going to eat and exercise anyway—why not use that time to expand your network of contacts? (Location 1706)

such ties should be as many and as diverse as possible and useful for your obtaining power. (Location 1762)

People even one step removed from the person doing the brokerage enjoyed virtually no benefit. (Location 1841)

University of California–Berkeley professor Morten Hansen has studied what types of social networks are most useful given different types of product development efforts. When you need to access tacit knowledge, a smaller network of close ties is important because it takes close relationships to get people to spend the time to explain their tacit expertise. When the project requires locating explicit knowledge that can be readily transferred once you find it, a large network of weak ties provides greater benefit. (Location 1851)

Observers watching people who don’t deny or run away from their actions naturally presume that the perpetrators don’t feel guilty or ashamed, so maybe no one should be too upset. (Location 1883)

Using long, convoluted sentences full of subordinate clauses, answering questions indirectly, admitting that he was “embarrassed,” and looking extremely uncomfortable, Kennedy made a weak impression—he looked guilty. He left his position as Stanford president soon thereafter. (Location 1907)

As we will see later in this chapter, expressing anger is usually much more effective than expressing sadness, guilt, or remorse in being seen as powerful. (Location 1914)

Harriet Rubin (Location 1916)

the secret of leadership was the ability to play a role, to pretend, to be skilled in the theatrical arts. (Location 1918)

I’m an actress. My chief trait in business is that I’m an actress. (Location 1938)

Research shows that people who express anger are seen “as dominant, strong, competent, and smart,” although they are also, of course, seen as less nice and warm. (Location 2000)

Only successful people can afford countersignaling. Be Wary of Imitating High-Status People Who Can Afford to Countersignal.

As the former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir said, “Don’t be so humble; you’re not that great.” (Location 2041)

But when people do this and it is super evident, I think it backfires. What does Humber think about this?

You can dress up, an act that conveys power and status—to look like you belong in the position to which you aspire. (Location 2047)

people weren’t going to pay high hourly rates for someone who worked at a cheap metal desk. (Location 2074)

He used classroom-style, tiered meeting rooms, which focused the owners’ attention on the front of the room and, because of the seating arrangement, subtly reminded the owners that Ueberroth was the “teacher” and they were “students” under his direction. (Location 2081)

have gotten their nervousness under control so they can project influence. (Location 2094)

Breathe and take time to collect yourself— (Location 2096)

Those with power interrupt, those with less power get interrupted. (Location 2103)

challenges these assumptions—such as how the company is competing, how it is measuring success, what the strategy is, who the real competitors are now and in the future—this can be a very potent power play. The questions and challenges focus attention on the person bringing the seemingly commonsense issues to the fore and causes people to have to renegotiate things that were always implicitly assumed. (Location 2128)

Lists make a speaker appear as if he or she has thought about the issue and the alternatives and considered all sides thoroughly. (Location 2167)

Avoid using a script or notes. If you speak without aids, the implication is that you have a mastery of the subject and are spontaneous. (Location 2174)

Humber also says this!

As the novelist Salman Rushdie noted on a radio program, “If you make people laugh, you can tell them anything.”31 Humor is disarming and also helps create a bond between you and your audience through a shared joke. (Location 2182)

Sometimes reputation adheres to individuals, but sometimes individuals get a good reputation by their association with high-status institutions. (Location 2221)

Social psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal did a meta-analysis of the accuracy of predictions in many domains in clinical and social psychology. They found that short slices of behavior—less than five minutes—yielded accurate predictions, for instance, about assessments of people’s personality. Moreover, they found that predictions based on extremely small samples of behavior, less than half a minute, did not differ in their accuracy from impressions formed using longer, four-and five-minute snippets of behavior. (Location 2247)

when people believe they are interacting with a qualified, intelligent individual, they ask questions and provide opportunities for the other to demonstrate competence and intelligence. (Location 2273)

First, if you find yourself in a place where you have an image problem and people don’t think well of you, for whatever reason, it is often best to leave for greener pastures. (Location 2290)

because impressions are formed quickly and are based on many things, such as similarity and “chemistry” over which you have far from perfect control, you should try to put yourself in as many different situations as possible—to play the law of large numbers. If you are a talented individual, over time and in many contexts, that talent will appear to those evaluating you. But in any single instance, the evaluative judgment that forms the basis for your reputation will be much more random. (Location 2294)

As the cases of Marcelo and Nuria Chinchilla illustrate, it is possible and desirable to have a media image–building strategy even at the beginning of your career. Consider getting public relations help early on. (Location 2388)

As Karen told me, when people are going to meet you, they Google you, and in her case, they could read her musings, which gave her credibility. (Location 2396)

OVERCOME THE SELF-PROMOTION DILEMMA (Location 2400)

There is a solution to this dilemma: get others, even those you employ such as agents, public relations people, executive recruiters, and colleagues, to tout your abilities. (Location 2409)

even though people understand the financially intertwined interests of people hired to act on your behalf, and even though they know that agents or intermediaries are under your control, they will still rate you more highly and offer more help than if you acted on your own. (Location 2419)

If you know you are hiring someone who is difficult, and you do so anyway, you will be more committed to the decision—because you will have made the selection in spite of whatever flaws the person has. (Location 2434)

As long as the quirks you display are irrelevant to the core of your reputation and why people select you—in the case of Summers, for his brilliance in the field of economics—the flaws and foibles can actually strengthen people’s commitment to you. (Location 2444)

Social psychologist Jack Brehm’s theory of psychological reactance holds that people rebel against constraints or efforts to control their behavior—force is met with countervailing force. (Location 2508)

You can turn enemies into allies, or at least people who are indifferent to you and not in your way, through strategic outplacement—getting them a better job somewhere else where they will not be underfoot. (Location 2522)

If you make it easy and pleasant for your opponents to depart, they will. By contrast, once people have nothing left to lose, they will have no inhibitions or constraints on what they will do to fight you. (Location 2536)

Zia Yusuf, the former senior executive in SAP, sometimes exasperated his subordinates because in a meeting when he saw that the decision was going against him and his group, he typically did not dig in his heels and fight. “It is important to live to fight another day,” he says. Because he did not push too hard against his bosses or his peers, Yusuf defused the emotional tone of meetings and by not creating unnecessary enmity, could often get the decisions he wanted, even if it took some time. (Location 2547)

Gary Loveman’s advice: after you reach a certain level, there comes a point in your career where you simply have to make critical relationships work. Your feelings, or for that matter, others’ feeling about you, don’t matter. (Location 2563)

The ability to not take opposition or slights personally, think about whose support you need and go after it, regardless of their behavior toward you or your own feelings, and remain focused on the data and impartial analysis requires a high level of self-discipline and emotional maturity. It is a rare skill. But it is crucial in surmounting and disarming opponents. (Location 2570)

Don’t wait if you see a power struggle coming. While you are waiting, others are organizing support and orchestrating votes to win. (Location 2616)

get over your inhibitions, because many of the people you will meet on your path to power will have less hesitation about rewarding their friends and punishing those who oppose them. (Location 2632)

Power struggles inside companies seldom seem to revolve around blatant self-interest. At the moment of crisis and decision, clever combatants customarily invoke “shareholders’ interests.” (Location 2642)

place your own objectives in a broader context that compels others to support you. (Location 2655)

Embarrassment is the normal reaction to losing one’s job, even if it isn’t your fault. And why not? We are as subject to the just-world effect—believing that we get what we deserve—as are outside observers, so when people lose a power struggle, the first thing they do is blame themselves. This reaction may be natural, but it is not helpful. (Location 2683)

Reminds me of my bill shock

The best way to overcome the embarrassment is to talk about what happened to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. (Location 2690)

Even though he had left his previous position and was running a company that was both small and in a precarious financial position, in talking to him you would never know there had been any problem at all. He spoke enthusiastically about his current job and the company’s prospects (Location 2716)

One of the ways others are going to ascertain how things turned out is by how you present yourself. Are you upbeat? Do you project power and success or the reverse? (Location 2722)

This advice does not mean that you should not tell people what happened and enlist their aid. It does mean you need to show enough strength and resilience that your potential allies will not believe their efforts to help you will be wasted. (Location 2726)

if you are going to misbehave in any way, do so before you achieve a high-level position that makes you the object of constant attention by peers, subordinates, superiors, and the media. (Location 2749)

The social facilitation literature shows that the presence of others, by increasing motivation and psychological arousal, will enhance performance of overlearned and simple activities such as running or walking, but will decrease performance on tasks that entail new learning or involve novel or difficult activities. (Location 2770)

Another cost of visibility is distraction of effort. People are interested in their reputation and image. Consequently, they spend time on impression management. This need to spend time and other resources on image maintenance increases as public scrutiny increases. And time spent dealing with scrutiny and managing appearances is time that cannot be spent doing other aspects of one’s job. (Location 2776)

Richard Feynman noted how the attention that came with winning the prize often made it impossible for the winners to continue the research work that brought them distinction in the first place: (Location 2787)

Time spent on your quest for power and status is time that you cannot spend on other things, such as hobbies or personal relationships and families. The quest for power often exacts a high toll on people’s personal lives, and although everyone bears some costs, the price seems to be particularly severe for women. (Location 2824)

Some people will be seeking to create an opportunity for themselves through your downfall, but they won’t be forthcoming about what they are doing. (Location 2868)

typical senior management team, all the people reporting to the CEO believe they could hold the CEO position, many think they could do better than the incumbent, and most direct reports aspire to their boss’s job. Some people are going to be willing to take their turn and hope that they will be chosen when the incumbent steps down, but others will be more proactive in their efforts to move up. (Location 2882)

To be a public figure and perform at a high level requires an intensity that produces, in his words, “a caffeinated high.” (Location 2921)

“Why is he doing this at this stage in his life?” One can reasonably conjecture, not just for Welch but for many other people who have left positions of great power and status and continue to serve on multiple boards and maintain an intense pace, that, accustomed as they were during their work life to days filled with frenetic activity, once out of the job they seek to re-create the same peripatetic life, the same adrenaline high, and if possible, the same level of adulation they once received routinely. (Location 2937)

Studies of the effects of power on the power holder consistently find that power produces overconfidence and risk taking,7 insensitivity to others, stereotyping, and a tendency to see other people as a means to the power holder’s gratification. (Location 2993)

Overconfidence and insensitivity lead to losing power, as people become so full of themselves that they fail to attend to the needs of those whose enmity can cause them problems. (Location 3012)

Patricia Seeman, a consultant and executive coach to senior Swiss executives, (Location 3039)

commented that “unless you understand yourself pretty well, you’re going to lose control of yourself.” (Location 3040)

“What you have to do is every now and then expose yourself to a social circle that really doesn’t care about your position.” (Location 3042)

Unfortunately, people who arrive at high-level positions with lots of power often do not like to be reminded of what and who they once were and how far they have come. (Location 3045)

Maidique, in all the decades at the helm of FIU, somehow managed to keep his composure and outward demeanor of charm, regardless of what he actually felt. (Location 3104)

If you feel yourself getting tired or burned out and you hold a position of substantial power, you might as well leave. (Location 3130)

It is both possible and desirable to, as my wife nicely puts it, “leave before the party’s over” and to do so in a way that causes others to remember you fondly. (Location 3172)

Higher levels of perceived politics inside organizations are associated with reduced job satisfaction, morale, and organizational commitment, and higher levels of perceived politics are also correlated with higher intentions to quit.2 (Location 3184)

When I asked him why he would be forced out given that he had just recently been brought into the firm to provide “adult supervision” to the ego-driven interpersonal dynamics, his insightful response was that people who were behaving badly didn’t want to be reminded of their bad behavior, even by having someone around with the responsibility for improving organizational processes. (Location 3199)

The lesson is clear: you should always watch your back, but be particularly wary and sensitive to what is occurring during times of economic stress. That is when political turmoil and the use of power are likely to be at their peak. (Location 3218)

He did not have the support of the staff in the human resources department, which actually resented his independent success and executive access, and they eliminated him as soon as they could. (Location 3226)

If organizations aren’t worrying about you and you can lose your job in a political struggle or on a whim, why should you worry about them? Reciprocity works both ways. This is not a book about broken promises, but the list of companies that have shown little concern for their employees is enormous. (Location 3231)

Holding aside the fact that you are probably in an environment where survival of the fittest—the most politically skilled—prevails, even if you wanted to avoid the organizational politics, I don’t think it is possible. (Location 3256)

hierarchy is ubiquitous in animal societies—even among fish! As soon as hierarchy exists, it is natural to want to move up and avoid being at the bottom. Consequently, there are contests for dominance among all animals that travel or congregate in groups. (Location 3267)

as social psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld has told me, many people have trouble with hierarchical relationships. (Location 3278)

First, status is “imported” or “carried” from one setting to another. Personal characteristics that define status in the larger society—such as race, gender, age, and educational credentials—get imported into informal and formal organization settings and are used to create status hierarchies. (Location 3283)

personal wealth and social ties could be redeployed and also because people assume that if you are smart enough to succeed in one highly competitive domain, you must be competent in other, even unrelated domains as well. (Location 3288)

One implication of this phenomenon for you is that the specific organization or domain in which you rise to power may matter less than the fact that you manage to achieve high-level status someplace. The prestige and power that come from achieving a senior position will generalize to some extent to other contexts, providing you with status there as well. (Location 3289)

Research by New York University social psychologist John Jost provides even stronger evidence that people seem to prefer hierarchical relationships. Jost’s research shows that people will voluntarily contribute to their own disempowerment to maintain a stable hierarchical social order. (Location 3299)

As Winston Churchill noted, “It is said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”18 (Location 3336)

inside companies democracy is the exception. In spite of many studies showing the superior performance achieved through delegating decision-making authority, little devolution of power has occurred inside companies in the last 50 years. (Location 3339)

Maybe, as Churchill’s quote suggests, democracy is good not only as a form of government for public entities but also as a way of making better decisions in companies and nonprofits. This was the point made by James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds. Surowiecki reviewed evidence that not only were collections of individuals better at making estimates and predictions than were experts, often aggregating their judgments through simple voting mechanisms; they can also be more effective in figuring out which product ideas to support and what strategies to pursue.20 (Location 3345)

There are only two ways to resolve the inevitable disagreements about what to do and how to do it—through the imposition of hierarchical authority in which the boss gets to make the decision, or through a more political system in which various interests vie for power, with those with the most power most affecting the final choices. Neither system is perfect, but before we eschew the operation of markets, including markets for power and influence, inside organizations of all types, remember the research summarized by James Surowiecki and the wisdom of Winston Churchill. (Location 3356)

Building power does not require extraordinary actions or amazing brilliance. Instead, as comedian, actor, and movie director Woody Allen has noted, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”1 (Location 3381)

Social psychologists Cameron Anderson and Jennifer Berdahl reviewed literature showing that people who had less power or didn’t feel powerful exhibited “inhibitive nonverbal behaviors,” such as shrinking in, caving in their chests, physically withdrawing, and using fewer and less forceful and dramatic hand gestures.3 (Location 3440)

People give up their power in other ways, too. They don’t behave strategically toward people with power over them, such as their boss, and instead let their true feelings show. (Location 3449)

People give away their power by not trying. If you don’t try, you can’t fail—which protects your self-esteem. (Location 3465)

If he was not going to put up a fight, no one was going to pick up the cudgel on his behalf. (Location 3483)

It’s not just that the world is not always fair so you should stop counting on the triumph of your merit. People align with who they think is going to win. (Location 3494)

The people who pay attention to these small things have an edge in creating power. (Location 3502)

Michael Marmot’s study of 18,000 British civil servants—all people working in office jobs in the same society—uncovered that people at the bottom of the hierarchy had four times the risk of death from heart disease as did those at the top.6 (Location 3528)

So seek power as if your life depends on it. Because it does. (Location 3534)

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