ALL ABOUT BUSINESS RELATED FIELDS

Obviously, no employer would have anyone working for him whom he didn’t trust. But I think in any company there are certain employees who are trusted more than others because their judgment and character are so solid. People do not like to feel they are being conned, and no one is going to support the career of a subordinate who is a little too secretive, a little too clever for his or her own good. If you feel the only way to get ahead is to coin the people you work for, then you’d better be very good at covering yourself, because over the long term there are so many different ways you can be found out.

The long haul also means that your big wins and your big losses-any single success or failure-are not nearly as significant as you may think they are. Have you ever heard anyone complain, “The whole attitude of this company is, “What have you done for me lately?”” I think that’s a perfectly legitimate attitude because it is part of a trade-off: if you have a deal that goes sour or even several in a row, you don’t expect to get fired for it. Conversely, if you ride the same winning horse for too long people will start to wonder about the rest of your stable. Within the company, you are also more likely to be ‘found out’. Your real self is likely to emerge, and your weakness as well as your strengths is likely to be discovered. As a result, you must realize that ‘you get along by getting along’.

If you’re an employer, you should be constantly trying to recognize real talent and not to be misled by appearances. If you’re an employee, you must figure out a way to let the true decision-makers know how good you really are, without making enemies of the people in-between. This can get complicated. You have got to be able to jump up several notches, to alert those several rungs above you to your talents. At the same time, you must make the middle guys think that, by supporting you and building you up to the top guy, they will look better as managers. You must also prevent these middle managers from stifling you or from appropriating your contributions as if they were indeed their own. Meanwhile, you must keep your peers as friends and maintain the support of your subordinates. It is not only complicated, it can also get pretty unpleasant, and is one of the big reasons so many people become turned off by working for a company.

There is a wide gap between the number of executives who are street-smart and the number of executives who think they are. Those who account for this numerical discrepancy are often found languishing in middle and lower-middle management, usually blaming anybody and anything but themselves for their lack of advancement. The irony is that many of these executives are quite perceptive, even intuitive. But there instincts are bad. What they pick up perceptively they always manage to misuse. Deep down inside they know what should or should not be said and when or whom not to say it, but they can’t check their need to ‘tell it like it is’, even when they are aware that it is in their own worst interest to do so. This, of course, is business immaturity, and it afflict as many people in their forties, fifties and sixties as it does in their twenties and thirties.

Part of being opportunistic is waiting, like a cat in a forest, for an opportunity to come along. Learning to wait, learning to be patient has so many applications and ramifications it is difficult for me to give one or two examples without trivializing its importance. I would say, however, that in our twenty-odd years in business 90% of our successes have involved in some way the need for patience, and 90% of our failures has been caused in part because of lack of it.

As a general business rule I am dedicated to the importance of acting instead of reacting-and so never over-reacting-to or within any business situation. The one exception to this may be the circumstance in which an edge or opportunity must be taken advantage of immediately or it will disappear forever. The need to be opportunistic, to think on your feet, again underscores the importance of tuning in to people-of hearing not only what they are saying but the larger and underlying meaning as well. This alone can tell you when taking an edge are dependent upon an instant reaction.

You can’t take an edge until you have first taken a look at the facts. Facts alone won’t guarantee you an edge, but they can protect you from handling it over to someone else. Unless you know all or most of the pertinent ‘givens’ that define the situation, you are dealing from a partial deck. Assume that the one fact you don’t know-maybe because it’s a little harder to find out-is the one that will make the difference. There are many shortcuts in business, but this isn’t one of them. Do the necessary spade-work. Take the time and make the effort to learn everything you can about the companies and the people you are dealing with. The operative facts, the ones that define the situation, will start to present themselves.

Taking the edge is the gamesmanship of business. It is taking everything you know about others and everything you have allowed them to know about yourself, and using this information to lead the deck- to tilt a business situation slightly to your advantage. It is winning through intuition. In the beginning it is a matter of doing your homework, knowing the players and all knowable aspects of the game. And in the end it knows how to play the game itself-figuring out what people want or convincing them of what they want and finding a way to give it to them. The idea, of course, is to give slightly less than you get in return. I strongly believe that in any business situation there is an edge out there for the taking. Don’t be greedy, don’t be pushy, don’t be impatient, but keep looking for the edge.

None of us has the luxury of doing one thing at a time, and it is very easy to allow the emotions attached to one activity to spill over into another. If a big deal has just fallen through, it is hard not to convey some feeling of disappointment to the next person you talk to. Or if you are feeling particularly harassed, impatience or irritation can often creep into a phone call or meeting. Compartmentalizing, leaving the emotions of a particular situation locked within the confines of that situation, is one of those things that is easy to advice and very hard to do. I have found that a partial solution is to compartmentalize my day and week functionally. It is also important to force yourself to act rather than to react to situations.

Everyone has, or should have, certain principles by which he or she lives and conducts business. But more sins are committed in the name of ‘principle’ than in almost any other I can think of. ‘Principle’ is too often a convenient cover-up word for bruised ego. There are a lot of insensitive, insulting people out there, and I think there are occasions when it’s perfectly acceptable to take certain actions in the name of bruised ego. But don’t call it ‘principle’ if it isn’t. That’s a dangerous form of self-deception. Speaking of deception, there’s a big difference between playacting and miscasting yourself. The difference should be obvious, but is there’s ever any confusion over when to play a role and when to be you, stick with the latter.