Niccolò Machiavelli - Machiavelli on Business: Strategies, Advice, and Words of Wisdom on Business and Power

Introduction and editorial notes copyright 2014 by Stephen Brennan

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Jacket design by Jane Sheppard

Portrait of Niccol Machiavelli by Santi di Tito

ISBN: 978-1-62873-798-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-077-3

Printed in China

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The chief business of the American people is business.

Calvin Coolidge

Machiavelli has much to offer todays entrepreneur if we could but understand him aright. It is by no means too great a stretch to juxtapose and to compare these meditations on the getting and keeping of power by this famous or infamous Renaissance Italianto the exigencies and imperatives of the business leaders of our own time. One might even go so far as to assert that the political conditions pertaining in Machiavellis time were in many ways not unlike our own cut and thrust to say nothing of cut-throat postmodern business climate. Then as now, the center seems to have given way. Then, Italy found herself politically fractured, divided into numerous city-states, each with its own system of governance, leadership, and interests, and each in conflict with the other; just as now, we see a multiplicity of economic powers and centers of business activity, enabled by technologies that are global in reach, whose practical effect is to put every corporation or enterprise into competition with every other throughout the world. Faced with this anarchy of discordant polities and competing interests, and with the near impossibility of their rational delineation, Machiavellis answer was to focus instead on the elemental truths and norms of human behavior that motivated and explained the leadership and the practices of statecraft in his own time. It is to that end and in this spirit that we here offer the canny reader Machiavelli On Business.

For five hundred years now, Niccol Machiavelli has gotten a bad rap. So much so that we have come to regard one who we call Machiavellian , at least in common parlance, as one who is ruthless and devious, immoral and without conscience. The conqueror-despot Napoleon Bonaparte cited him frequently, the fascist Mussolini dubbed him his muse, and Stalin is said to have heavily annotated his own bedside copy of The Prince. For half a millennium Machiavellis writings are said to have inspired all manner of political atrocities; power grabs; and oppressions, and their analysis, famously, a parlor game for tyrants.

In his own lifetime Machiavelli was pretty much unknownexcept in Italy where he had some small fame as a very funny playwrightand it was not until a regime change in his hometown of Florence forced him into retirement (he had served as a diplomat and as Secretary to the Chancery of the Republic of that city) that he even began to pen the great works of political philosophy The Prince and the Discourses on Livy by which we best know him today. Indeed, neither of these masterworks was even printed in his lifetime. But when they were finally published in 1532oh boy, look out!then everybody piled on. The church fathers, hiking their skirts, shrilled Antichrist! and banned his books. In both France and in the German states, then convulsed by religious reformation and bloody counter reformation, he was widely excoriated: one side condemning him as an atheist and virulent anticleric, the other denouncing him as the faithful son of a corrupt ecclesiastical hierarchy. At the same time, the newly Protestant Elizabethan English attacked his Catholicism and hypocritically (Elizabeth herself was a practiced Machiavellian if ever there was one) deplored his wickedness . Even Shakespeare, getting in on the act, coined the phrase murderous Machiavel. One Tudor Court wag went so far as to suggest that the Devil had taken the handle Old Nick in a kind of homage to the name Niccol.

But all this high-moral dudgeon and outraged disapprobation has only served to obscure the real meaning and intention of Machiavellis work, which was to see clearly, to look humanity straight in the eye, and, drawing on his own experiences and his reading of the Classics, meditate upon those timeless and universal rules by which people manage and prosecute their affairs. Machiavelli was well aware of the difference between right and wrong, but he was not a moralist (It is, though, a bridge way too far to say that his work promotes immorality.). His method was to take no moral position either way. Instead he put good and bad aside, and concerned himself only with expedience and with what was effective in the getting, the employing, and the keeping of power. This exercise provides much food for thought for todays businessman or woman.

I know a guy who told me this story. Seems he worked in an office with this other fella, and one day the Guy suggested to the Fella that they ought to form a little syndicate or business. They would take the moneyall the small amountsthat they would ordinarily fritter away, combine it, and buy lottery tickets together. Should lightning strike they would split their winnings. The Fella gave it to him straight: I cant do that, he said. I consider you a friend, I like you, but if we ever won any real money I would have to kill you. You cant expect that I would give up thousands of dollars, maybe millions, just for friendship. Business is business, after all.

Stephen Brennan

New York City, 2014

CHAPTER 1

STARTUPS

New businesses are the lifeblood of all economies, and successful startups are justly celebrated, however a large majority of new ventures ultimately fail. There are many reasons why this is so. Most often the reasons are insufficient capitalization of the enterprise in the first place or failure to identify and access its target customers.

Nothing is of greater importance than knowing how to make the best use of a good opportunity when it is offered.

The Art of War

There is no substitute for experience. A great idea is only just that, unless you have the knowledge and ability to carry it out.