Dr Mark Powell - Machiavellian Intelligence

Advance Praise

This book will surprise and shock you and if you work for a corporation of any size it is essential reading! The real stories will galvanise you to build better and flourishing futures for your business and colleagues, to design and create new corporate behaviours, rituals and systems that make you proud and society better.

Anton Musgrave, Senior Partner, FutureWorld International

The antidote to the idealised business cultures of recent years. This book is a stark reminder of the fact that business means business.

Eleni Chalmers, Leo Burnett

A must read for anyone aspiring to senior leadership positions in business. You get a gut-wrenching sensation as you re-live your own experience of the authors scenarios and start to appreciate what you really should and could have done in your best career interests.

Robert Williams, Transformation Director, Denton Williams Consulting

Published by

LID Publishing Limited

The Record Hall, Studio 204,

16-16a Baldwins Gardens,

London EC1N 7RJ, United Kingdom

524 Broadway, 11th Floor, Suite 08-120

New York, NY 10012

www.lidpublishing.com

www.businesspublishersroundtable.com

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the publisher of this book.

Dr Mark Powell & Jonathan Gifford, 2018

LID Publishing Limited, 2018

Printed in Great Britain by TJ International

ISBN: 978-1-911498-50-6

Cover and page design: Caroline Li

A Ruthless Master

The modern corporation is a highly unusual sort of organization: something very different from the other kinds of social structures that human beings have developed over the last few millennia. Because of this, success in the modern corporation depends on behaviours that are quite different from those that are successful in other kinds of communities.

Some people are very good at the behaviours that lead to success in modern corporations; others do not adopt the appropriate career strategies so instinctively, even though they may be very successful in other areas of life. Many talented and intelligent people fail to see their careers develop to the full extent that their aptitudes and skills deserve.

It is becoming increasingly dangerous for modern executives NOT to achieve the highest status that they are capable of attaining in their chosen field, and as quickly as possible.

Our economies have changed, fundamentally and forever. The days when people might expect to stay with one employer for most of their career or even for their entire career are over. This shift has changed the dynamic of our relationship with our employers. It means that loyalty has become a one-sided affair: your employer expects loyalty from you, but it cannot promise loyalty in return; if it is in your corporations best financial interest to let you go at any point in your career, then it will be obliged to do so. We have already witnessed the loss of whole categories of manufacturing jobs to automation and the effects of globalization. Many jobs that used to require human beings can now be carried out by robots or, of course, by human beings in different parts of the world who are prepared to do the same job for less money.

The same thing is happening to a new swathe of professional jobs. Computing power and the rise of artificial intelligence will automate more and more professional roles, while the rise of educated would-be professionals in other parts of the world will see an increased outsourcing of professional tasks to the developing economies.

This is not good news if you happen to be one of the people whose job is at risk of being automated or outsourced. Whether you are an engineer, a designer, an accountant, a researcher, a marketer, a manager, or any other kind of professional, your job is now more at risk than at any time since such roles first came into existence.

This book will argue that the new realities of modern employment demand a new ruthlessness from employees that it is essential for employees to do everything they can to further their careers, because doing a good job will not be enough to guarantee continued employment. The best way to secure yourself against falling victim to this new and brutal reality is to rise to a level within the corporation where you are responsible for making the strategic decisions, not bearing the brunt of their consequences.

To put it bluntly, it may be tough at the top, but its dangerous in the middle.

There is another aspect to this part of the argument: those at the top of modern corporations are dramatically better rewarded than those in the middle. The CEO of a large modern corporation will count their annual remuneration in millions of dollars, or the equivalent. A middle manager can only expect to earn a fraction of that vast sum. A top executive whose career comes to an end is likely to be financially secure for the rest of their life. A middle manager who has been let go in the middle of their career can expect to struggle.

Only you can make the career choices that suit your life aspirations, but if you are interested in making it to the very top (or near to the very top) of your chosen field, this book will provide invaluable advice.

In this book, we will be using the word corporation rather than organization because there are a great many kinds of organization and it would be stretching the point to claim that every organization behaves like this. Corporations, on the other hand, have a very distinctive and unique nature.

Corporations were created to be legal entities in their own right they have a life of their own, independent of the people who happen to serve the corporation at any one time. This gives corporations a unique dynamic and tends to create a very specific power relationship between the corporation and its servants.

Most of the advice provided in this book is about progressing your career in a corporation, but the guidance also applies to many other kinds of large organization: government offices; public services; educational establishments and large non-profit organizations. If there is strong competition for the top roles within the organization you work for and if you are one of the competitors for those top roles then what we have to say about behaviour in corporations will apply to you too.

The independent status of corporations fosters an unusual relationship between the corporation and its employees. There is a compelling logic to this:

• Corporations are legal entities individuals in the eyes of the law. They are also potentially immortal.
• The purpose of corporations is to survive and prosper; to make profits in order to reward the shareholders who have invested money to bring the corporation into being and to see it grow. The people who work for a corporation at any time are its servants; they are paid by the corporation for the sole purpose of advancing the corporations interests.
• Corporations do not exist to employ people and, in general, prefer to employ as few people as possible. Corporations are also not human beings. The corporations interest in the human beings who serve it is entirely selfish and the corporation itself has no feelings about its employees (because it is not human).