Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't

This is an excellent, educational and effective business book, like Professor Pfeffer's previous book The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action You will learn useful things from this book whether you agree with or abhor the practices it educates us about.Many people will not like what this book teaches about how things work in business, government and other organizations in the real world. I did not like many of the lessons this book teaches. Many of us want to believe what's in this book to be not true. Most reviews of this book are highly favorable with 5-star ratings, and it seems that a small handful of reviewers have given this book a one-star rating because they are uncomfortable with and dislike the findings presented in this book. The truth can be a bitter pill to swallow.The lessons taught in this book constitute an accurate, frank and honest description of reality: An ugly reality of how humans have interacted for centuries and continue to. Similar content has appeared in scholarly works for thousands of years. Here are some examples: The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Arthashastra , Essentials of Indian Statecraft; Kautilya's Arthasastra for Contemporary Readers and Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince (Dover Thrift Editions) These ancient books are taught in universities. Professor Pfeffer's modern treatise deserves to be taught at universities across the world.I did not assume that the methods described in this book are the only way to power and success. On that note, having power and being successful or happy are not always the same thing. This book does not present laws of mathematics that always hold true. It is a book about human behavior and its results, things that have different results in different situations. What this book describes has been true of many people in many situations throughout human history. I do personally believe there are other nice, kind and ethical ways to power too: However, what this book teaches can not the disputed as history corroborates it. To not believe this book's findings would be like believing that every person is a caring, kind and ethical human being.In a fair, balanced and research-based style, the book also describes the negative results of having power. It presentes findings from evidence based research. Knowledge of the behaviors described in this book will be helpful to those who do not subscribe to the philosophy of power it describes: It will enable ethical, good-hearted and nice people to know what's going on when interacting with those who use the methods described in this book.Many of us want to believe in things different from what this book teaches. This is a not a "feel good about the world" book, but a book about some of life's harsh realities. If you want a "feel good" book about leadership, I recommend Steven Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective PeopleI recommend that you buy a copy of this book and read it once a year, especially if you hate what this book teaches :-) If you are against the behaviors described in this book, you need to recognize, understand and counter them.

Useful advice ... follow itPsychology's 150-year scientific history has taught, among other things, that people don't follow advice. When people change their behavior, it is because they have learned something new, or relearned something they should have remembered. They have persuaded themselves to change their own behavior. Pfeffer knows all this very well. Why then does he fill his book "Power: Why some people _____________________________________________________________________________________Pfeffer, Jeffrey Power: Why some people have it - and others don't 2010, HarperCollins Publishers, New York NY, ix + 273 pages_____________________________________________________________________________________have it - and others don't" with advice? The answer: because Pfeffer expects his readers to be seeking insights about how to guide their own career into positions of high influence and high reward. His readers want to learn and, thus, may learn. The book is a-reproduction-in-print of the elective course Pfeffer teaches at Stanford University called "The Paths to Power." The virtues of Pfeffer's advice are that (a) he warns readers (correctly) that, for the most part, books and courses offering secrets of leadership are hazardous to one's career, concealing much, much more than they reveal and falsely understanding the causes of success, (b) he closely links his advice to credible research evidence, a rare but vital feature of valid counsel about how-to-help-your-career, and (c) he recognizes (correctly) that we live in a mixed-up and unfair world and are primarily responsible for our own career progress. Further, (d) Pfeffer is understandable, down to earth, very practical, very realistic, while advising from an evidence-based background about how people behave in organizations and how organizations go about their business.Pfeffer opens his advice with a list of rewards for having power, closes it with a list of the costs when one has power. He advises (correctly) that "it takes more than performance," noting the evidence that gaining the top spot is not closely correlated with being the top performer. We receive much instruction in world cultures that self-promotion is injurious to oneself, but Pfeffer teaches (correctly) that self promotion is necessary. He teaches appropriate ways for accomplishing being noticed and achieving influence. He examines how and why people lose power. Knowing that every career experiences setbacks, Pfeffer considers how one deals with defeat, with being fired.Pfeffer's book displays an important oversight. Citing evidence that is solid, Pfeffer advises that "it takes more than performance" to get ahead. Having understood this, the reader has the responsibility to learn and do the things that are needed to win leadership roles and influence ... not simply perform well at his/her job and expect to be noticed. Pfeffer's advice seems to be "If you want leadership, take it." That idea implies that the individual taking leadership is the only one who has a stake in who leads. That can't be right!This reviewer knows, as does Pfeffer, that job performance as routinely assessed in business, government, and non-profits today has much too little impact upon career outcomes for individuals. Many excellent performers are not recognized and rewarded. Is that as things must be? Is job performance assessment as practiced seeing what it should and could be seeing? I think not. We have as leaders only those without knowledge of the behavioral and management sciences ... and so are using almost none of the knowledge from those sciences. The research I've seen and done in a five-decade career in North America's Fortune 50 corporations urges that job performance can be measured, even in executive and professional jobs, that it can be measured much more usefully than any organization is doing it today, and that job performance measurements should provide guidance in determining who is invited to take more responsibility. There is evidence enough that many, many mistakes are made in selecting leaders (or allowing a person into a leadership role ... depending on how one construes what happens). Failures we've seen in top leadership in the first decade of the twenty first century have been dramatic. The sad truth is that poor leadership exists not just at top levels. I admire Pfeffer's advice (reach out and take leadership), think it enormously practical, think it fits the world as it is ... but also think the world needs some significant changes in order to make it better than it is. Measuring job performance well and then being guided by these measurements in choosing leaders are some of the important improvements needed in organizational life as we know it. Science knows how to make the measurements. The role of leader belongs to the leader not only for what it will do for the leader but also for what it will do for the organization being led and for all of society's stakeholders as impacted by that organization.Yes, make Pfeffer's Power a book you keep at hand for frequent rereading. Yes, give this book to offspring, colleagues and friends for their reading. For completeness sake, stick a copy of this review in the book that you pass along.Bellevue, Washington3 October 2010Paul F. Ross, Ph.D., Industrial and Organizational Psychologist (retired)Career experience at Exxon, Arthur D. Little Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation, Texas Instruments, The Prudential, Imperial Oil Ltd. of Canada, The Ohio State University, Harvard University, State of California, Commissioner of Higher Education for The Netherlands, and with other clients