Stanford University Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Winter 2021

OB377: THE PATHS TO POWER

Welcome to the COVID-19 pandemic iteration of Paths to Power. In light of the

evolving—and not ideal—teaching and learning environment, I have carefully
gone through the course outline, rearranged sessions, added a new topic,
introduced a new case, added visitors, and dropped some reading material.
Most importantly, I have constructed a greater number of self-reflective
writing assignments and made them more central to the class. The
additional assignments are designed to get you to think about and possibly even
implement more of the material during the quarter in the context of your own life
and career. I have created more opportunities/exercises that will enable you to
develop action plans—and hopefully act on them—that can materially advance
your influence and career during our ten weeks together and at a minimum have
you leave the course with a set of road maps to help you construct your future.
However, achieving all of this requires, even more than in the past, your active
involvement and collaboration. Given the size of the waiting list for the class, I
hope those people who choose to enroll are committed to doing the work that will
permit you to get the most possible out of the course.

This class proceeds from the premise that insufficient sensitivity to, and skill in,
coping with power dynamics have cost Stanford GSB graduates (both MBA and
MSx/Sloan) and many other talented people promotion opportunities and even
their jobs. My objective for this class is simple: make sure this does NOT
happen to you.

The course seeks to ensure that you will learn the social science concepts useful
for understanding power and ways of analyzing power dynamics in organizations.
The course and its project and the various self-reflective assignments require you
to think about and develop your own personal path to power. This is a class not
just about paths to power in general but your path to power, should you choose
to develop and implement one.

A USER’S MANUAL FOR THIS CLASS

This Class Is Not For Everyone. People have different interests, tastes, and
preferences. To benefit from the class and the material you MUST BE WILLING
TO ACCEPT AND WORK WITH THE MATERIAL

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This is an elective! If you aren’t interested in the subject matter or have some
fundamental objections to any aspects of the class, including the instructor or the
focus on applied social science, don’t take it!

One frequent question is whether just reading Power is sufficient and what the
value-add is from taking the class. That depends, of course, on what you do
during the quarter. The book and the other readings in the syllabus provide
much of the social science research, ideas, and examples that will enable you to
cognitively understand power. I certainly recommend the book and the other
readings for everyone. It is vitally important for leaders to understand the social
science of power. The course experience, including the various self-reflective
exercises, individual doing-power project, your interactions with the course
facilitators, and your interactions with the various class visitors are intended to
build your insight and skills in actually doing power and to help you overcome
any personal inhibitions or self-handicapping that are getting in your way.

The Material is “Different”

One comment I often hear is that the material, perspectives, and ideas covered
in this course differ from other classes. I would hope so, as what would be the
point of telling you what you already think you know and have learned in the
many other classes on leadership?

Everything we cover in this class, and I mean every idea, no matter how different
it may at first appear, has ample, sometimes vast, social science evidence to
support it. Some of that evidence is in the text, some we will cover in class, and
some ideas I encourage you to explore on your own using
www.scholar.google.com and searching on terms or phrases that cover the
concepts we discuss. While some ideas may at first seem counterintuitive (for
instance, that nice people, particularly men, suffer (in terms of earning less) from
being too nice), there is evidence to support all that we cover.

“Leadership BS”

Because much of the material in the readings and the class seemingly
contradicts other perspectives and conventional wisdom, I decided to take the
leadership industry head on. The result is Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces
and Careers One Truth at a Time (HarperBusiness, 2015). I encourage you to
read that book, which is a prequel to Power. It includes, among other topics, the
evidence on modesty v. self-promotion, the pervasiveness (and effectiveness) of
lying (sometimes called “strategic misrepresentation”), and why being an
“authentic leader” is almost certainly neither possible nor desirable. The book is
useful reading to resolve discrepancies between what you may have heard and
the material we will be covering.

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Objectives

The objectives of this course are a) to have you see the world differently—to
change what you notice and think about and how you apprehend the world
around you—and b) to also change what you do as you navigate through that
world. If the class is successful, you will be better able to achieve your
objectives, you will have the influence necessary to change lives, change
organizations, and change the world, and we seek to ensure that you will never
have to leave an organization or a position involuntarily.

To accomplish these objectives, we will spend a portion of most class sessions

and the out-of-class assignments helping you focus on building your own action
plan and skills for attaining power.

My Teaching Philosophy and Approach

To accomplish our objectives, we need to be partners in the learning process.

This is particularly the case now given the teaching requirements imposed by the
pandemic.

One way of understanding my job is that I am in the role of your “personal

trainer.” I will do my best to make available to you the tools that I hope will
motivate and encourage you to learn the material and put it into practice. But
learning is your responsibility. Moreover, it is your responsibility to decide what
is important for you to learn and retain, and how best to do that. Research
strongly suggests that the act of taking notes and reflecting on what you are
learning and plan to do with that learning significantly helps with the absorption
and retention of material.

“Role Models.”

Not everyone we encounter in Paths to Power is someone you are going to like
or want to emulate. This is a class about how to get things done, how to build
and wield influence, and the multiple ways to accomplish these objectives. As
former U.S. President Richard Nixon (quoting Bismarck) once wrote, “Those who
love laws and sausages should not watch either being made.” The question is
not whether you do or don’t like some of the people we will encounter, but what
you can learn from them and their experiences.

One of my implicit (now, much more explicit) objectives during the quarter is to
get you to become much less judgmental, particularly about who you like or
don’t like or who you approve or don’t approve of. To paraphrase Caesar’s ex-
CEO and former Harvard Business School professor Gary Loveman, there

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comes a time in your career where you can no longer “afford” to like or not like
colleagues—critical relationships simply have to work, regardless of your
personal feelings. The judgments you should make are whether or not someone
is on your critical path, whether they can be helpful or harmful to your job and
your career, whether you can learn anything from them, and most importantly,
how to get them on your side. If someone is critical to your success and you
have decided you don’t “like” or “approve” of them, you will have
(unnecessarily) created an obstacle to building the sort of relationship with
an individual that you need.

Confidentiality

One of the ways I am able to get some amazingly interesting visitors to tell you
the truth about sensitive situations and their careers is by promising them that
you will abide by the rule that what is said in Paths to Power is treated as
confidential. Should I find that you have tweeted or in any way posted on social
media anything that our visitors have said without their explicit permission, the U
you will receive in the class will be the least of your troubles. If you think you
cannot abide by this rule, please do not take the class. Although confidentiality
has always been a norm, it is particularly important this year given our session
with four people from the world of politics (one of whom served first in a very
senior role in the Department of Transportation and then in the Trump White
House).

COURSE LOGISTICS

Coaching and Feedback:

Every member of the class will be assigned to one of six coaches/course

facilitators (CF’s). Each facilitator is an experienced executive with substantial
coaching expertise. Each facilitator has taken a version of this class, knows the
course material, the professor, and the text, and has worked with me in delivering
a very successful online version of this class in the LEAD program and with prior
on-campus iterations. Most importantly, each CF has the knowledge, skills, and
interest in providing feedback on your self-reflective exercises, coaching you on
your doing power project, and helping you not only master but also implement
the class material in your lives.

We have implemented this arrangement to provide each of you with much more
feedback and substantially more individual attention to ensure that you will
master the ideas and skills of the class and put them into practice. The goal is to
increase your active engagement with the subject matter.

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Feedback

Your CF will provide you individualized feedback on all of your self-reflective

assignments (assuming you turn them in on time) as well as on your proposed
doing power project check-in assignment.

I am the only person who will see (and grade) your doing power project
(unless you decide to voluntarily share them with your CF). Confidentiality of
your written assignments is guaranteed.

Individual One-on-One Executive Coaching Sessions

Every member of the class is eligible to sign up for as many as two 40-minute
personal coaching sessions with your CF. Each of these individuals has worked
with company founders, corporate executives, and non-profit leaders, and has
personal experience with learning AND USING the course concepts.

I URGE YOU TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS RESOURCE, AND TO THE

EXTENT POSSIBLE, TO DO SO EARLY IN THE QUARTER SO YOU CAN
USE THE IDEAS AND PERSPECTIVES GENERATED AS YOU GO THROUGH
THE QUARTER, particularly on your projects. Availing yourself of these
resources is completely optional.

Sessions are student-initiated and can cover topics such as: the dilemmas you
may experience from the course material, the behavioral implications of
decisions to put the course material into practice, and/or helping you commit to
choices to behave differently. Some examples of what past students have
covered include: doing a stakeholder influence (power) map to assess potential
members of a start-up team and the power dynamics in the team, building a
larger and more effective network, creating a stronger personal brand both
internally and externally, and preparing to re-enter a former employer with
greater personal and positional power. Coaching sessions will be more
effective when you come prepared with something reasonably specific that
you want to discuss!

Our course facilitators live literally all over the world and have been carefully
selected because they are unbelievably talented AND committed to your learning
and development. You can interact with them in your coaching sessions by
telephone, Skype, Zoom, or any other platform you both mutually agree upon.

Peer Coaching in Class

This year, we are going to form people into 4-person peer coaching groups. We
will often use your self-reflective exercises as a starting point to have a

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conversation with your colleagues to provide each other coaching and feedback
on your action plans and self-reflections. We have found over the years that
people are often willing to be more candid and open about their strengths and
weaknesses, development plans, and experiences in a smaller setting.

Grading:

Grades will be based on three components: 1) Class participation (25%), 2) your

final individual (doing-power) project (35%), and 3) your individual self-
reflective/action planning assignments (40%).

Please turn the assignments in on time according to the deadline in the

course outline (all assignments are due on or before the start of class). All
assignments should be turned in using Canvas.

Attendance: It is my expectation that you will attend, either remotely or in

person as permitted, all of the class sessions. Given the design of the class, in
which you will be providing a lot of peer feedback to your classmates, being
“present” to share your own ideas and challenges and providing coaching/advice
to others is very important for your learning success and the success of your
classmates. We will take attendance and request that you leave your camera on.
Please let us know if you are unable to attend a session and why.

Individual “Doing-Power” Project: The “doing power” project seeks to have

you put the ideas of the course into practice during the quarter while the course
is going on and you can access resources to help you in your implementation.
Past projects have entailed everything from obtaining investors who are willing to
retain the class member as CEO of their start-up to building a reputation as one
of the top 100 technologists and entrepreneurs in a country. The assignment is
described at the end of the course outline. Individual projects are due by 12
P.M. on Friday, March 12, 2021, the last day of the course. LATE
PROJECTS WILL NOT BE GRADED AND WILL EARN ZERO CREDIT.

As noted in the instructions, ALL assignments must be submitted through

Canvas.

Self-Reflective Assignments. The eight individual self-reflective assignments

(and one doing power check-in with your coach) are specified throughout the
course outline in detail. You are responsible for seeing when they are due
and doing them! You will note that these assignments tend to come
disproportionately toward the start of the quarter. I do this for several reasons.
First, the concluding material—losing power, the price of power, coming into an
organization from outside in a senior position, transitioning into the world of
politics—is not as likely to tap into your experiences or your immediate issues

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and action needs. Second, doing this writing and self-reflection early in the
quarter will give you more to work with as you interact with your coaches and
more to discuss with your classmates. It will also get you in habit of thinking
about how the class material pertains to—and might be helpful—for you.

This year these assignments are particularly important, as they will form the
foundation for much of what will occur during the class sessions. If you do them
assiduously, the exercises/reflections/action planning will provide you, by the end
of the course, with a large number of specific, implementable ideas.

Administrivia:

My Office: Knight Management Center Faculty Office Building, E-235.

Phone: 723-2915
E-Mail: [email protected]

Course assistant: Preeti Srinivasan ([email protected]) is a third-year

organizational behavior doctoral student with a substantive interest in power and
other concepts relevant to the class. You should consider her as another
resource available for your learning and development.

I do all of the grading of the doing power project, and am the only human
being who will read it. Preeti’s job is to handle the various logistics that are
more complicated this year because of the changes necessitated by the
pandemic.

Faculty Assistant: Stephanie Freedman; Phone: 725-4877; Office: Knight-

Management Center Faculty Office Building, E-324; email:
[email protected]

Office Hours: By appointment made directly with me. This year poses many
challenges in facilitating student-faculty interaction. I hope we can do whatever
is possible to build a more personal, less Zoom-like relationship during the
quarter. This includes phone calls, Zoom meetings, or anything else that is
permitted and you find useful, including possibly meals together (we live in
Hillsborough so Burlingame is a preferred venue, and San Mateo County has
consistently been one of the more “open” during the pandemic—and it has for the
most part much better food than Palo Alto-Menlo Park).

Required Materials:

Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don’t, by Jeffrey Pfeffer, New
York: Harper Business, 2010.

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The Seven Rules of Power. I will be distributing some chapters for this new
book I am writing throughout the quarter.

Course reader, available online. The reading materials have been carefully
curated. Please read them!

COURSE OUTLINE AND SCHEDULE OF SESSIONS

I. THE PATHS TO POWER: FINDING YOUR WAY

AND PREPARING YOURSELF
This first part of the course asks you to set some personal development
objectives for yourself, in the context of thinking about the individual qualities that
have been and will be important as you build influence over the course of your
career and what habits of thought might be getting in your way of being even
more powerful than you are.

January 4. Session 1. Introduction: What Is Power and Why Is It

Important?

Reading: Power, Introduction, “Be Prepared for Power” and Ch. 1, “It Takes
More than Performance.”

7 Rules of Power, Opening, “Why This Book, Now?’, and Introduction, “Power,
Getting Things Done, and Career Success.”

Matthew Hutson, “Life Isn’t Fair: So Why Do We Behave As If It is?” The

Atlantic, June, 2016, p. 22.

We will be joined for the class by a person mentioned in the assigned readings.
She will explain how and why you need power if you are going to make positive
social change, or for that matter, accomplish anything. For background, please
read:

https://mmt.org/about/team/rukaiyah-adams
https://wweek.com/news/city/2020/09/12/civic-leader-rukaiyah-adams-turns-
down-effort-to-recruit-her-to-run-for-portland-mayor/

FIRST SELF-REFLECTIVE ASSIGNMENT (in two parts): Please write a

short (a couple of pages or so) essay on these two topics:

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1) “Why I’m taking this class.” One way of thinking about this task is to
consider the following: It is the end of the quarter and you have achieved
your goals for taking the course. What are you celebrating? What have
you accomplished? What does success, in the context of this class, look
like? Be as specific as possible as research shows that specific goals are
much more effective in generating goal-achieving behavior.

2) Coming into the class, what are your thoughts and feelings about terms
such as “power,” “organizational politics,” “influence,” “persuasion,” and
so forth? How have those thoughts and feelings affected your behaviors—
what you are willing to do, what strategies/tactics you have shied away
from using, what sorts of work (and other) environments you have
embraced or avoided? What are the consequences of these choices—both
positive and negative—for your path to power?

January 8, Session 2. The Personal Qualities that Bring Power

Power skills, like most skills and behaviors, are learned/acquired. In our second
session, we want to consider what personal qualities seem to produce power,
what leadership attributes may not be useful, which of those qualities you have,
and thus, what personal development “plan” you want to make for yourself to
guide your activities during our quarter together.

Our case readings are about two women, Tina Brown who rose to media
prominence more than three decades ago (and continues to be prominent), and
Arianna Huffington, whose ascent to power is more recent.

Reading: Power, Ch. 2, “The Personal Qualities that Bring Influence”

Adam Grant, “Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice,”

The New York Times, June 4, 2016. (Grant is a famous Wharton
academic. A similar theme on the problematic aspect of authenticity is
developed by London Business School professor Herminia Ibarra. If
you are enamored with the idea of authenticity as it is typically defined, I
HIGHLY recommend you find Ibarra’s amazing YouTube video on
authenticity and watch it).

Charles A. O’Reilly and Jennifer A. Chatman, “Transformational

Leader or Narcissist? How Grandiose Narcissists Can Create and
Destroy Organizations and Institutions,” California Management
Review, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0008125620914989 (This is a
long article reviewing the extensive and growing literature on why
narcissists are often so often successful in attaining high-level
positions and often doing well in them, at least by some measures.

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 Given the example of many prominent business and political leaders, it
is very worthwhile reading to understand the dynamics that make
“modest behavior” often counter-productive and grandiose behavior
individually useful).

Case: Elizabeth Rubin, “Arianna Huffington: The Connector,” Vogue,

September 19, 2011.
https://www.vogue.com/article/arianna-huffington-the-connector

Luke O’Brien, “How to Lose $100 Million,” Politico Magazine, May/June,

2014. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/01/tina-brown-
how-to-lose-100-million-105907

1. What attributes/characteristics do these two women possess? What

are their strengths? Their weaknesses? What do they have in
common? In what ways are they different?
2. What has made them successful, notwithstanding often not great
financial performance of their businesses?
3. What have they more or less intentionally done to enhance their
influence?
4. What can you learn from Huffington and Brown about building your
path to power and what personal qualities you might want to work on
developing?

During class we will see a segment from 60 Minutes (CBS) with Tina Brown early
in her career that shows her “in action.”

SECOND SELF-REFLECTIVE ASSIGNMENT. Although we often talk about

personal qualities and attributes as if these were somehow inherent, these
dimensions of people are not fixed. Things like energy, the ability to
tolerate conflict, the empathic understanding of others/ability to see other’s
perspectives, and so forth can be developed with practice and effort.

Write a short (1-2 page) essay in which you briefly address the following
developmental question: based on the readings, including the text and the
examples of the two protagonists, 1) what personal qualities do you want
to work on developing/expanding/improving during the next ten weeks? 2)
As specifically as possible, describe what you are going to do to develop
those qualities, with whose assistance, and what actions you are going to
take.

January 11. Session 3. Breaking Some Rules: Asking for Things and Not
Obsessing About Being Liked

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The Stanford culture, and certainly the GSB culture, at least on the surface, is
one of being polite, nice, and not being too pushy, competitive (at least with your
classmates), self-promoting, or aggressive. Much research and many case
examples should throw these ideas into question as being useful for obtaining
influence or career success.

Readings: Sam Borden, “Where Dishonesty Is Best Policy, U.S. Soccer

Falls Short,” New York Times, June 15, 2014.

Gerben A. Van Kleef, Astrid C. Homan, Catrin Finkenauer, Seval

Gundemir, and Eftychia Stamkou, “Breaking the Rules to Rise to Power:
How Norm Violators Gain Power in the Eyes of Others,” Social
Psychological and Personality Science, 2 (2011), 500-507.

Malcolm Gladwell, “How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break

the Rules,” New Yorker, May 11, 2009,
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/11/how-david-beats-
goliath
(This is one of the most interesting and important readings of the quarter,
as it provides examples of why rule-breaking can lead to success).

7 Rules of Power, “Rule 1, Get Out of Your Own Way,” and “Rule 2:
Break the Rules.”

Case: Keith Ferrazzi

Keith Ferrazzi is a graduate of Harvard Business School who has enjoyed a

meteoric career trajectory. The case explores his first 10 or so years after
business school, before he opened his own marketing and organizational
consulting firm, Ferrazzi Greenlight (that employs MBA graduates).

1. Describe Keith Ferrazzi, in terms of a) the personal qualities that

distinguish him, and b) the strategies and behaviors he has used to
build a successful career.
2. Why do you think these qualities and strategies and behaviors have
been helpful for Ferrazzi? Or if you think he has succeeded in spite of
some of what he has done, provide an argument as to what about his
activities have been detrimental to his success.
3. What “rules” or “precepts of leadership” does Ferrazzi seemingly
violate? With what effect?
4. Keith is, by his own admission, a consummate networker and someone
who is ambitious, who wants to make a big difference and have a big
impact on the world. Why hasn’t this ambition and networking activity

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 (which is often quite visible to others—for example, at one event in San
Francisco, an assistant with a clearly visible list on a clipboard
“escorted” Keith around the room as he chatted up the people on the
list he had pre-selected as being important) created more problems for
Ferrazzi?
5. Could you do what Ferrazzi does? Why or why not? Should you do
more of what Ferrazzi does? Why or why not?
6. If you encountered someone like Ferrazzi as an organizational peer,
what would your reaction be? What would you do? Would this be
helpful? Why or why not?
7. Do you like Keith Ferrazzi? Is this a relevant question?
8. What lessons are there for you in the Keith Ferrazzi case? What might
you think about doing more of, less of, or doing differently?

During class, we will see a video of Ferrazzi when he visited an earlier iteration of
this class. Ferrazzi himself may or may not join the class. We will also hear from
Christina Troitino, a recent graduate (2020) on her ability to be, to use her term,
“shameless” and an example or two of her rule-breaking behavior, used to great
effect.

THIRD SELF-REFLECTIVE ASSIGNMENT: Early during the quarter, it is

important to accomplish one of the most important objectives of the
course: helping you get yourself out of your own way on your path to
power. Write a short, but thoughtful, 1-2 page essay reflecting on the
following questions:

1. How do you describe yourself to yourself and to others? What

adjectives do you use? What traits and identifiers do you associate with
yourself? Which of these adjectives are positively associated with status
and power? Which are not? What do you need to do, in how you think
about yourself and how you present yourself to the world, to project a more
powerful image?

2. How frequently do you begin interactions, particularly with more

powerful others, with some form of apology for interrupting, or by asking
permission to offer your views and insights? How often do you begin an
interaction with a form of self-deprecation, as in “I don’t know if this will be
useful….” or “I am not sure about this…” or similar types of language?
Why do you do this? What would it take for you to stop?

3. One way in which we get in our own way is being too obsessively
concerned with whether or not other people like us. How worried are you
about being liked? Why? Think of an instance (or instances) in the past
where your desire to be liked has interfered with your ability to be

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effective/influential. What might you do to let go of at least some goal of
being liked?

4. In what ways do you, or have you, constrained what you are willing to do
in order to advance your interests and career, particularly when you
compare yourself to others similarly situated? What have you been
unwilling to do in order to get ahead? Why? What might you do to expand
the range of behaviors/strategies you are willing to use?

II. CREATING YOUR PATH TO POWER

The second section of the course covers a number of specific strategies and
tactics people can use to build a power base. It represents the core of the
material that explains how to become more influential.

January 15. Session 4. Creating a Reputation and a Brand and Gaining

Visibility

Reading: Power, Ch. 8, “Building a Reputation: Perception is Reality.”

Case: Tristan Walker and Walker and Company Brands (OB-#93).

Tristan Walker graduated from the GSB in 2010. Even before graduation and
subsequently, he built a powerful network and, even more importantly, an
enormous amount of external visibility in various media and a unique, well-
defined personal brand (I recommend you do a Google search and read some of
the enormous amount of publicity he has generated). Walker used his
connections and his reputation to launch Walker and Company Brands, now a
part of Procter and Gamble. Walker is basically an introvert. Notwithstanding
that, he has done an extraordinary job of being visible and out there in numerous
ways. The importance of building a reputation to take advantage of the dynamics
of the self-fulfilling prophecy and confirmation bias is a recurring theme in the
class. This case should give you some ideas about how to build your own
brand—your assignment for today.

As you think about Tristan Walker and his trajectory, consider the following
questions:

1. In what ways did Tristan Walker leverage his time at Stanford?

2. How did Walker, while at Stanford and immediately after, go about building
visibility with and connections to the media?

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3. What qualities/attributes and strategies did Walker employ—that we have
discussed during this course?

4. What lessons are there for you in the Tristan Walker case? And more
importantly, how, specifically, are you going to put these lessons into practice
during your remaining time at the GSB?

FOURTH SELF-REFLECTIVE ASSIGNMENT: When I interviewed Jeff

Jordan, former CEO of Open Table and now a partner at Andreessen
Horowitz, Jordan said this [about deciding which entrepreneurs to back].
“One of the things we value really highly is a founder-product fit where you
look at the founder and you say, ‘You know, this could be the only person
in the world who’s had the life experiences to work this idea.”

What is true for entrepreneurs is true in general—you are more likely to

acquire power and success if you build a powerful personal brand where
your narrative makes you a compelling choice for an organizational
position or financial backing. That task (brand building) has two subtasks.
1) Figuring out the one or two sentence (3 at the most) elevator pitch for
who you are and why you are singularly qualified/suited to be pursuing
whatever specific job/objective you are pursuing—how the various
elements of your life and background fit together; and 2) disseminating
that messaging as much as possible.

Write a short (1-2) page essay in which you: 1. Create a short description
of how you want to be known—your brand. It needs to combine some
(although not all) elements of your life and goals into a coherent narrative
(that can include some exaggeration and leave some things out). 2. Next,
think of what you are going to do to make your story—your brand—“go
viral.” Think of as many approaches as possible. Also, think of ways of
fitting/building congruence between the story you are telling and the
media/outlets in which you seek to tell it.

During class, some of you will have the opportunity to share your
submissions (or summaries thereof) with Tristan Walker and get his
feedback.

January 20. Session 5. Finding the Right Place

Reading: Power, Ch. 3, “Choosing Where to Start”

Case: Sadiq Gillani’s Airline Career Takes Off: Strategy in Action

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Within 12 years of graduating from Harvard Business School, Sadiq Gillani had
achieved quite a bit. He had achieved partner status in a boutique airline
consulting firm, head of strategy for Lufthansa Group (and youngest senior vice
president ever at that company), run network planning for Eurowings, taught a
class at Stanford’s GSB, been chosen as Young Global Leader by the World
Economic Forum, and been recognized by the Financial Times and Forbes. In
short, he had made a series of career (and other) moves that exemplify the
principles of this class.

1. What principles do Gillani’s job choices seem to illustrate/exemplify?

2. What trade-offs and choices has Gillani apparently been willing to make
to enhance his career trajectory?
3. What about Gillani’s first job at Lufthansa made it such an attractive, and
at the same time, risky move?
4. How and in what ways has Gillani’s positions been good places to
“start?”
5. What qualities/attributes does Gillani seem to exemplify?
6. What lessons are there for you from Sadiq Gillani’s career as you think
about your next move(s)?

January 22, Session 6. Acquiring and Creating Resources

Reading: Power, Ch. 5, “Making Something Out of Nothing: Creating

Resources.”

Case: Jason Calacanis: A Case Study in Creating Resources

Jason Calacanis exemplifies many if not most of the principles of power from this
class. He rose from a financially-stressed background to become a central
player in the startup ecosystem, where today he has a position that gives him
access to an enormous funnel of investment opportunities. Interestingly, he
began his rise to power by publishing a “magazine.” As you read the case and
think about the principles it illustrates, consider the following questions:

1. How did Calacanis create resources that were of value to powerful players in
the startup and venture capital world?
2. What behavioral science principles did Calacanis employ, and does he still
use to build power in the worlds of investing, entrepreneurship, and startups?
3. Is there anything Calacanis has done or is currently doing that you see
yourself as unwilling or unable to do? Why?
4. What lessons are there from the case that you can apply, either now or on
graduation?

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FIFTH SELF-REFLECTIVE ASSIGNMENT: You will be “at” Stanford (part of
the MBA program) for just a few more months. As the Calacanis case
nicely illustrates, you don’t even need to have the world’s most prestigious
pedigree to create a powerful ecosystem for yourself. Write a short (one or
one and half) page essay in which you reflect on the following:

1. What can I do to leverage my association with Stanford, the GSB, and

for that matter any other affiliations I have during my remaining time here?

2. What resources, of any kind, might I create in the next few weeks or
months that would help me on my path to power? Resources that are
useful, preferably scarce, and most importantly, that I have some control
over? How am I going to do this? Groups? Awards? Events?

January 25. Session 7. Building Efficient and Effective Social Networks

Readings: Power, Ch. 6, “Building Efficient and Effective Social Networks”

Jennifer Miller, “Want to Meet Influential New Yorkers? Invite Them

To Dinner,” New York Times, October 9, 2013.

Richard Feloni, “A Master Networker Shares a Simple Trick to

Connect with Anyone in a Matter of Minutes,”
https://www.businessinsider.com/master-networker-explains-how-to-be-
memorable-2015-5

1. What “value” does Jonathan Levy provide to his dinner party attendees?
2. Why do people, even relatively high status people, come to his dinner
parties?
3. How are Levy’s activities helping his career? How much are they
helping?
4. Why don’t more people do some version of what Levy is doing?
5. What lessons are there for you from the articles about Jonathan Levy?

Case: Ross Walker

Ross Walker is a 2005 graduate from the Stanford Graduate School of Business
who obtained an alumni position on the Stanford University Board of Trustees
(he was the youngest person to ever serve on the Stanford trustees and, given
changes in the rules about eligibility, is likely to retain that distinction). Walker
has established himself with a good position, excellent network, and a stellar
reputation in the real estate and hospitality industry. He currently has his own,
very successful (in terms of both investment returns and fundraising) real estate
investment firm, Hawkins Way Capital. He is far from flashy or pushy. He

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shares some similarities but also has some important differences from Keith
Ferrazzi. The case provides us the opportunity to consider some of the issues
and principles in not only building networks, but in getting what you want for
yourself.

1. Describe Ross Walker. What personal qualities does he have that have
contributed to his success.
2. One concern with networking is that takes too much time and encroaches
on people’s personal lives. How has Walker handled this trade-off?
3. How has Walker balanced the activity of meeting new people and
maintaining relationships with the technical aspects of his work in the real
estate and hospitality industry?
4. In what ways is Walker different from Ferrazzi? In what ways is he
similar?
5. What about Ross Walker’s path could you emulate? What do you think
you couldn’t do? Why?
6. In what ways is Walker’s strategy consistent with the principles of Chapter
6? Do you see any inconsistencies or discrepancies?

We are fortunate to have both Ross Walker and Jon Levy joining us for the
session. They will provide feedback to some people on the assignment
described below.

SIXTH SELF-REFLECTIVE ASSIGNMENT. It is useful to think about how we

spend our time, with whom, and how our contacts and networks are, or are
not, consistent with the social relations we might need to build our power
base. It is even more useful to begin to do what you need to do to create
the social networks and relationships that will make you even more
successful and influential. Write a short (2-3 page essay) in which you
briefly address the following questions:

1. How much time do you spend with people that you already know well?
How much time do you spend meeting new people and being in novel
situations—in other words, making “weak” rather than strong ties? What
might you do to expand your number of weak ties and diversify your social
network?

2. Given your career objectives, list some (at least 10 preferably more)
specific people and/or companies and roles within them that you would
benefit from knowing that are:
1) in the company you are going to work for (if you know that)
2) in the industry in which you plan to begin your career
3) in the geography (country, state, and city/area) where you
contemplate living

17
For each individual, and the list should include at least 10-20 individuals,
by when, and how, are you going to actually meet them?

3. If effective networking is based on the principle of generosity (what you

are providing the other), in each instance, for each individual that you want
to meet, what can you provide the individual you want to connect with? Do
not underestimate the importance of being able to provide information, the
ability to feel useful and helpful, the ability to give back, the importance of
social similarity, and the idea that by helping you the person might
enhance their own feelings of self-worth.

4. What can you do to make yourself more central in networks that are
professionally important to you?

5. What can you do to put yourself in more of brokerage roles where you
can connect groups or individuals that might benefit from being
connected?

January 29, Session 8. Getting Others on Your Side

Reading: Jerry M. Burger, Nicole Messian, Shebani Patel, Alicia

Del Prado, and Carmen Anderson, “What a Coincidence!
The Effects of Incidental Similarity on Compliance,” Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30 (2004), 35-43.

Benedict Carey, “You Remind Me of Me,” The New York Times,

February 12, 2008.

Case: Lucinda Stewart: Creating Allies & Supporters

Lucinda Stewart, although not having the strongest quantitative background or

interests, succeeded in the world of venture capital and private equity (and
investment banking beforehand), mostly because she has an uncanny ability to
get people to know and connect with her and, more importantly, to support her.
She has succeeded in environments in which she was gender-untypical (at the
time she was in them), so obtaining allies was possibly an even more difficult
task. The question: how did Stewart do it and what are the implications for you
in how you might obtain backers?

1. What qualities, and more importantly, behaviors, does Stewart have and
engage in that creates allies and supporters?
2. How intentional/strategic do you think Stewart has been throughout her life?

18
3. How has Lucinda Stewart turned what might be a disadvantage—being a
woman in industries that were (and are) enormously male-dominated—into an
advantage?

Lucinda Stewart will join us for the class session.

REQUIRED: SUBMIT A ONE PARAGRAPH DESCRIPTION OF WHAT YOUR

“DOING POWER” PROJECT WILL BE. WHAT IS YOUR FOCUS/TOPIC?
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO (OR ARE DOING) TO INCREASE YOUR
POWER DURING THE QUARTER?

February 1, Session 9. Acting with Power.

In many situations, how much power you actually have is ambiguous and
uncertain. Therefore, how you conduct yourself, what emotions you display, how
you come across all affect how much power you have and will be granted by
others. Moreover, research shows that your “power pose” affects your
physiological and psychological responses. Leadership is about “acting with
power.” Andy Grove of Intel, in a session with Clayton Christensen from Harvard
Business School, said this about managing oneself and one’s emotional displays:

“I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as
if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very
quickly…And try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a
professional responsibility. If you are depressed, you can’t motivate your staff to
extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even though you well
understand that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

This class session will involve a tutorial on “acting with power,” presented by Bill
English, co-founder and artistic director of the San Francisco Playhouse, and
Susi Damilano, the other co-founder of the SF Playhouse and winner of
numerous Bay Area Theatre Critic’s awards for her acting. In 11 years,
Damilano won the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle award for best actress five
times. The syllabus includes their biographies as well as an article about
Damilano and an article about the SF Playhouse.

The idea of “acting,” displaying emotions or ideas that you may not be feeling,
seems contradictory to the idea of being “authentic,” a concept I have come to
loathe. The readings suggest how and why successful leaders are invariably
great actors, the importance of body language in conveying power, and the
usefulness of being able to display emotions strategically.

Readings:

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Harriet Rubin, “Shall I Compare Thee to an Andy Grove,” Strategy + Business,
Issue 49, Winter, 2007, pp. 26-31.

Larissa Z. Tiedens, “Anger and Advancement Versus Sadness and

Subjugation: The Effect of Negative Emotion Expressions on Social Status
Conferral,” J. of Personality and Social Psychology, 80 (2001), 86-94. (As you
read this paper, you may want to consider the Brett Kavanaugh hearings—I
received numerous emails from former students who remembered this reading).

Dana R. Carney, Amy J. C. Cuddy, and Andy J. Yap, “Power Posing: Brief
Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance,”
Psychological Science, 21 (2010), 1363-1368. (Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk on power
posing is the second most-viewed TED talk and her book, Presence, was a best-
seller. You might consider watching the TED talk at some point. This article is
foundational to her book).

Dana R. Carney, “The Nonverbal Expression of Power, Status, and Dominance,”

Current Opinion in Psychology, 33 (2020), 256-264.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.12.004

Karen D’Souza, “Megawatt Director/Actress Susi Damilano Powers One of San

Francisco’s Hottest Small Theaters,” San Jose Mercury News, September 24,
2011.

Chloe Veltman, “A Small, Young Theater Company Aims High,” The New York
Times, November 25, 2010.

February 8, Session 9. Speaking with Power

In advance of this class session, please watch the public testimony

of Tony Hayward, at the time the CEO of BP, testifying about the oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico, and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, testifying about
Goldman's actions during the financial crisis and specifically allegations that it
traded against its customers. Watch both of the people first without sound, then
with sound. Consider the advantages of showing up as forceful or remorseful.
The videos (including versions without sound) will be available on the course
website.

Reading: Power, Ch. 7, “Acting and Speaking with Power

SEVENTH ASSIGNMENT: Your task is to, using the lessons from the prior
Acting with Power session and the materials for today, develop a better
version of a short (60-120 second) opening statement as if you were Tony

20
Hayward, CEO of BP (you do not need to try and imitate a British accent).
Whose support do you need, and how are you going to get it—quickly?
How are you going to convince the people whose support you need that
you are the individual best capable of stewarding BP through the crisis?
As an aside, the current CEO of BP, Bernard Looney, was an MsX (Sloan)
student in this class.

Please submit your videos to your course facilitators and be

ready to share them, and the lessons you learned creating them,
during the class. You are, of course, certainly welcome to do “drafts”
and get comments/feedback from your classmates but the final version is
due at the start of class.

February 12. Session 11. Using the Lessons of Power in Your Life and
Career: Alumni Panel.

We are just past the half-way point in the course. If you are going to make a
significant power play (as suggested for your Individual Project) or, for that
matter, if you are going to become more comfortable with and use the material in
the future, you need to be at ease with power and also develop some specific
guidance on how to use it. The purpose of this session is to provide you the
opportunity to ask questions of a panel of people each of whom has, in his or her
own way, experienced setbacks or challenges of varying kinds, learned the
power material, and incorporated it, in varying ways, into their strategies and
actions for their careers.

The panel has been chosen because they are similar to you, albeit some years
farther along—and because they are a) willing to be completely candid in
answering questions that you may be wrestling with about how they used the
course material in their careers, and b) they are on excellent career trajectories..

The four panelists are Daryn Dodson, Omid Kordistani, Deborah Liu, and Robin
Lumsden. Their biographies are included in the course website materials.

Your “assignment” is to come to class prepared to ask questions about

how to use the course material in your life, and how these individuals have
used concepts from the class to build their power. What do you want to
know from them about how to actually implement the material we have
been studying?

Nothing that is substantive is off the table, and certainly no question should be
considered politically incorrect. Consider this an opportunity to access the
experience and expertise of some amazing people who have given a lot of
thought about how to be more powerful and are here to tell you how they did it.

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 III. COPING WITH CONFLICT, OPPOSITION, AND SETBACKS

Regardless of the wonderfulness of your objectives or your motives and talents,

people invariably encounter opposition and setbacks in their career. This third
section of the course has sessions on coping with conflict and opposition and
building resilience, as well as a panel to talk about overcoming stereotypes and
prejudice—in this instance, against women, but the principles apply quite
generally to underrepresented groups.

February 17, Session 12. Dealing with Conflict and Opposition

Reading: Power, Ch. 9, “Overcoming Opposition and Setbacks.”

Case: Gary Loveman and Harrah’s Entertainment (Case #OB-45)

William D. Cohan, “Losing Las Vegas,” Fortune, June 15, 2015.

Kate O’Keefe, “Caesars CEO Loveman Leaves Divided Legacy,” Wall Street
Journal, June 29, 2015.

The case provides a nice overview of Loveman’s career and the opposition he
confronted as he left his position as a professor at HBS to become COO (and
then CEO) of Harrah’s Entertainment (now called Caesar’s).
1. How did Loveman attract support inside the company for his very non-
traditional appointment?
2. How did he cope with opposition?

During class, we will have the opportunity to interact with Gary Loveman, who
after he left Caesars, became a president of a large division of Aetna, the health
insurer recently acquired by CVS and now teaches occasionally at HBS.
Loveman is today leading a startup in the health care space called Well. The
Wikipedia entry on Loveman (https://en.wiipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Loveman)
provides an excellent and brief overview of his career.

Loveman is one of the most thoughtful and insightful individuals I know on the
topics of “likeability,” using analytics in management, coming in and building a
power base as an outsider, managing relationships with important stakeholders,
and most recently, coping with the intellectual and emotional challenges that
arise from the substantial financial problems of the company he was running.
Always insightful, I eagerly await his thoughts on how he has learned to deal with
difficult people (e.g., some private equity people) and conflict.

22
EIGHTH SELF-REFLECTIVE ASSIGNMENT. This section of the course is
about overcoming obstacles and coping with setbacks. It is important to
integrate this learning into your own life and experience. Write a brief, one
to 1 ½ page essay in which you:

1. Describe an organizational situation in which you faced substantial

difficulty (for example, you were fired (not laid off, fired), you were
demoted, you failed to get a job or a promotion you wanted and
thought you deserved, you were embarrassed or lost face because of
some situation, etc.).
2. What did you do that contributed to the problems you experienced?
To what extent were the obstacles and difficulties the result of
chance events over which you had no control?
3. Most importantly, based on the course material, what would you do
differently if you encountered the same situation today? In other
words, what is the learning or what are the ideas that have emerged
in the class that you would use to help you in similar situations?

February 19. Session 13. Surmounting Prejudice and Stereotypes: Women

& Power

Reading: Jeffrey Pfeffer, “Women’s Careers and Power: What You Need to
Know,” OB-86 Note, 10/09/12.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, “Asians in America: What’s Holding Back the ‘Model
Minority?’” http://www.forbes.com/sites/sylviaannhewlett/2011/07/28/Asians-in-
america-whats-holding-back-the-model-minority/

One of the questions that frequently arises is whether the tactics and approaches
that work for men are equally effective for women. Throughout this class we
have seen (and will see) numerous female protagonists and I would ask you to
reflect on the extent to which they used strategies that were similar or distinctly
different from their male counterparts. But it is also useful to review the
extensive and growing literature on women and power and consider how to
navigate what is clearly a more difficult path to power for many women and for
that matter other minorities.

Contrary to what some may wish to believe, there is no evidence that the path to
power for women has gotten easier over the past several decades or that power
dynamics are fundamentally different in high technology. For those interested in
the facts and in even more background on this issue, data on women’s careers in
business can be found at the Catalyst website (www.catalyst.org) and both the
Kauffman Foundation (www.kauffman.org) and the Diana Project
(www.dianaproject.org) provide information documenting the absence of senior

23
women in the venture capital industry and the disadvantages women confront in
obtaining financing for start-ups.

The readings for this class include a) a teaching note I wrote that summarizes the
social science research on this topic and b) an article on the barriers facing
Asian-Americans in their careers, which are, in many ways, quite similar to those
confronting women.

During the class, a panel of four women will speak about their perspectives on
women and power and lead a discussion with the class about what men and
women might do to ensure greater success for women. The panelists have been
chosen for their insight and candor on these important issues. The women who
will be joining us are Laura Chau, Tosin Joel, Dafina Toncheva, and Arielle Ziv,
Their biographies are available in the course website on Canvas.

February 22. Session 14. Developing Resilience

No career, no individual, unless unusually lucky, goes through life without facing
setbacks and reversals. After all, Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, successful
San Francisco politician Willie Brown lost his first election for the California
Assembly and badly lost his first attempt to become Speaker, and Martha
Stewart went to jail.

Success depends, then, somewhat on being able to avoid career reversals, but
mostly on developing the persistence and resilience to bounce back. Some
portion of resilience comes from not worrying too much about what others think
and say, and also, as in the last case, maintaining a strategic focus on what you
are trying to achieve and not getting diverted. Developing that skill and the
personal psychological resources to do so is the topic of this class session.

Reading: Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Andrew J. Ward, “Firing Back: How Great
Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters,” Harvard Business Review,
January, 2007.

Ann Friedman, “Martha Stewart’s Best Lesson: Don’t Give a Damn,”

New York Magazine, March 14, 2013.

Case: Laura Esserman (A)

Katie Hafner, “A Breast Cancer Surgeon Who Keeps Challenging the Status
Quo,” The New York Times, September 29, 2015.

24
Lisa Cisneros, “American Cancer Society to Honor Breast Cancer Specialist
Laura Esserman,” March 18, 2013.
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/03/13683/american-cancer-society-honor-
breast-cancer-specialist-laura-esserman.

Deborah Franklin, “Esserman: On the Front Lines Fighting Breast Cancer,”

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm1005/feature-esserman.html.

This case describes the efforts of a physician who also has an MBA from
Stanford, to change a number of aspects of medicine and the treatment of breast
cancer at the University of California, San Francisco. At the time the case was
written, Dr. Esserman, a former student in Paths to Power, had learned all of the
material from the class but felt uncomfortable about applying it. As nicely
described in the case, she believed she should be who she was and that her
intelligence and honorable, even noble, objectives would win others over. The
case describes the interpersonal challenges she was facing in making progress
on her ambitious agenda.

The assigned articles describe some of what has occurred in the ensuing years,
as Dr. Esserman has become more willing to employ and more skilled at using
the material you are learning in the class. She has accomplished an enormous
amount and has achieved a great deal of visibility and power. In 2015, Laura
Esserman received the Arbuckle Award, the highest honor given to alumnus of
the GSB, and was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential
people in the world.

Although the particular situation is health care, the task that Dr. Esserman
confronts is similar to many situations where there is dispersed power, conflicting
objectives, and entrenched interests in a setting populated by highly educated
professionals.

1. What are Laura Esserman’s strengths?

2. What are some of her weaknesses, of difficulties?
3. What about the situation makes changing things difficult? What about the
situation makes it political?
4. What do you think Esserman has done well so far in her efforts? What do
you think she has done less well?
5. What should she do now? Be specific, so someone could actually
implement your suggestions. Provide a rationale for why you think the
suggestion will work and how it will help her accomplish her objectives?
6. Why would you place a bet (in terms of hiring or supporting her) on
someone like Esserman? Why might you not?

25
 7. What similarities and differences do you see between Laura Esserman
and an earlier case, Nuria Chinchilla, in their approach to attracting
support and overcoming opposition?
8. What lessons do you draw from this case for your own efforts to get things
done in organizations?

IV. WHAT HAPPENS ONCE YOU HAVE POWER

The penultimate part of the course permits us to consider the price of attaining
powerful positions, how and why people lose power, and what it means and why
people move on to alternative careers, in this case, in politics.

February 26, Session 15. Moving On To Different Things: Becoming

Involved in Politics

Once people are successful in one domain, they often become interested in other
spheres. For instance, former Microsoft CEO (and Stanford MBA) Steve Ballmer
now owns a professional sports team, the Los Angeles Clippers, of the National
Basketball Association. Bart Giamatti transitioned from being president of Yale
University to Commissioner of Major League baseball. Gary Loveman went from
being a Harvard professor to a corporate executive and now to a founder of a
healthcare-related start-up.

Some Stanford GSB alums have become actively engaged in the world of
politics, both elective and appointive, at very senior levels. They can offer us a
perspective on what’s different—and similar—between power and politics in the
world of private enterprise and the world of electoral politics. They can also
speak to why they have done what they did in terms of making this move, how it
fits in their life trajectory, and their learnings from their political experiences.
Particularly at a moment when everything seems to be all politics, all the time,
and politics and business, particularly technology businesses, seem to be
increasingly interdependent, our panelists have much to offer and to think about.
I personally believe that Stanford GSB graduates have the ability to make a
profound difference in the world through their incredible skills and energy, and
that politics is one such avenue through which people can change lives and
change the world. I am more than thrilled that we have been able to attract such
interesting people to be with us (virtually).

The people joining us are Fritz Kaegi, Derek Kan, Nicolas Shea, and Steve
Westly. Their biographies are part of the course website. To remind you of
something I emphasized at the beginning of the course, anything and
everything they say should be treated as confidential and NOT posted on
social media!

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March 1. Session 16. How (and Why) Power is Lost and Kept

Reading: Power, Ch. 11, “How—and Why—Power is Lost.”

Case: Connie Bruck, “The Personal Touch,” The New Yorker, August 13, 2001.

Arshad Mohammed, “Valenti’s Credits Keep on Rolling,” The Washington

Post, February 3, 2006.

Tom Foster, “Fired From the Company That Made Him Famous, An
Entrepreneur Seeks Payback,” Inc., June, 2016.
(https://www.inc.com/magazine/201606/tom-foster/george-zimmer-mens-
wearhouse.html)

Jack Valenti, in theory, existed in a very tenuous position. He served always at

the pleasure of the motion picture studio heads, serious egomaniacs.
Nonetheless, Valenti was able to maintain his position as head of the MPAA for
almost four decades. How was he able to do this? (It is possibly instructive to
note that his first successor, former Kansas Congressman and Secretary of
Agriculture under President Clinton, Dan Glickman, held the job for only one,
five-year term). George Zimmer, by contrast, was not only the founder and for
decades the CEO and advertising face of TMW, he had hand-selected the
board and chosen his successor who would eventually oust him from his
position as chair of the board. Prior to class, you might want to look up the
stock price and current market capitalization of Tailored Brands (TLRD), the
name of the company he once led.
1. Contrast Zimmer with Jack Valenti. Why is it possible that Valenti was
better able to maintain his position?
2. What lessons do you take away from these examples for your own
behavior, both early and late in your career?

During class, George Zimmer will be with us to talk about the lessons he has
learned from being ousted from The Men’s Wearhouse. He is a particularly
important and appropriate visitor as our class nears its conclusion. He has
become a good friend. When I gave him the Power book, the next time I saw
him, he said, “Had I done what you recommend, I would have kept my job but I
would not be able to look at myself in the mirror.” George and I (and you) will
enjoy a lively discussion of Machiavelli’s dictum that the first job of a leader is to
keep his job. By the way, after ousting Zimmer, The Men’s Wearhouse took over
a competitor, Joseph Banks, and changed the company name to Tailored Brands
(TLRD). A company worth about $2 billion on the day they ousted Zimmer, in
2020 went into bankruptcy, with the equity now worth nothing. My general advice
is when ego conflicts with money, bet on ego.

27
March 5. Session 17. The Price of Power.

Reading: Power, Ch. 10, “The Price of Power.”

Dr. Rudolph Crew has done heroic work in American education. He led the New
York City school system, which had a budget of more than $13 billion, more than
100,000 teachers, and served a million children at the time he held his leadership
position under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He subsequently was named the best
school superintendent in America while in charge of the Miami-Dade County
school district and its $4.5 billion budget—and was fired six months later. Crew
is personally close to a large number of prominent and powerful people including
Richard Parsons, the former chairman of Time Warner and the Clintons (had
Hillary Clinton won the presidency, he was on a very short list to be Secretary of
Education, as one example). He has wielded and still has enormous power, not
just in education but in government and the nonprofit world. The readings for this
class are selected newspaper articles that describe his career, including the
scrutiny, criticism, and even death threats and epithets he has received. During
class, Dr. Crew will be with us (virtually) to discuss his views on being “in the
arena,” what is required, the price it extracts, and why he continues to give so
much of himself.

Background Readings:

Jacques Steinberg, "Schools Chancellor Reflects on the Job, and the Rift That
Helped End It," New York Times, January 6, 2000, p. A20.

Matthew Pinzur, "School Chief Wins Support With Words and Actions," Miami
Herald, October 10, 2004.

"Crew's Blues," Administrator Magazine, November-December, 2008.

"Mimi-Dade's School Superintendent Receives Death Threats,"

http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MI57639, August 8, 2007.

Nancy McCarthy, “Crew’s Debut Speech Demands Change,” The Daily Astorian,
June 25, 2012.

“CUNY Board Appoints Rudolph Crew President of Medgar Evans College,”

CUNY Newswire, June 24, 2013.

Hannah Hoffman, “Kitzhaber Knew Risks with Rudy Crew Hire,” Statesman
Journal, July 31, 2013.

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 V. SUMMING UP

Our last two sessions permit us to see what we have learned and what has
changed, or not, during our time together. At the very beginning of the class, I
asked you to think about what “success” from taking this course would entail, and
what personal development goals you wanted to set for yourself. We want to
revisit these reflections to consider your learnings during the class. The final
class session could serve as a final exam as well as a practical implication of the
principles of power: how to take charge when you come into an organization as
an outsider.

March 8. Session 18. What Have We Learned, and What Will You Do With
What You Have Learned?

Reading: Power, Ch. 13, “It’s Easier Than You Think.”

Herminia Ibarra, “The Authenticity Paradox,” Harvard Business Review,

January-February, 2015.

During this class session in the last week of the quarter, I ask you to reflect on
how your thinking about power has changed during the quarter, what you have
learned, what you have done and are going to do differently, and possibly most
importantly, how you will build on and maintain your learning and development
momentum from this quarter. We will be joined for this session by Tadia
James. James is a recent GSB graduate who has given a great deal of thought
about how to build on the class and take its lessons forward.

1. How have your ideas and feelings about power changed during the course of
our quarter together?
2. What did you do during the past ten weeks to implement some of the
concepts and ideas you were learning? How did it work—not only in terms of
its effectiveness, but in its effect on your own thinking and feelings?
3. In the beginning of the quarter, you set some goals around why you were
taking this class and about the qualities/characteristics you were hoping to
further develop during the quarter. How well did you achieve those
objectives? What worked and what didn’t?
4. Going forward, what are you going to do even slightly differently as a result of
having taken this class? Why?
5. What plans, activities, and ideas do you have about how you are going to
maintain the learning and the momentum from the class after you leave the
GSB?

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March 12, Session 19. Leading with Power: The Dynamics of Taking
Charge

Case: Amir Dan Rubin: Success from the Beginning

If I were giving a final, this case would be something I might use as it permits us
to pull together/integrate much if not all of the material from the course. I usually
teach this case during the second-to-last session. This year it is our final class so
that we can have the protagonist with us for both sessions.

As Harvard Business School professor Rakesh Khurana documented in his book,

Searching for a Corporate Savior (Princeton University Press, 2004), companies
more frequently hire senior executives, including CEOs, from outside the
company today than in the past. But these outside hires often end badly for both
the individual and the company. One reason is that the outsiders do not have
enough firm- and industry-specific knowledge to do a good job. But another
problem is that outsiders often face resentment and resistance from insiders—
executives already in the company—who believe they are more qualified for the
job the outsider now fills and who sometimes see the outsider as an interloper
and as someone “different” from them and their colleagues.

Many GSB graduates will at some point in their careers move to a new company
and/or a new industry, sometimes at very senior levels (for example, from a
position in a management consulting firm to a senior operating or strategic role
inside an organization). Some GSB graduates will move to companies that are
not filled with other MBAs and/or where inside succession is more the norm.
Success in these new roles depends on being able to get company insiders to
respect and accept you. Simply put, you aren’t a leader if others don’t agree that
you are and willingly follow you. Hence, the relevance of this case for your
subsequent careers in which you will need to turn skeptics and possible rivals
into at least grudging allies, and also possibly make important changes in
strategic direction to enhance the organization’s performance.

1. What qualities and attributes does Rubin have that have made him a
success?
2. How, and why, did he get the job at Stanford?
3. What did Rubin do to help overcome the resentment that might
accompany his arrival as CEO?
4. Why was SMC, at the time of the case, a good fit for Rubin’s skills and
capabilities? Were there ways in which it wasn’t a good fit?
5. What did Rubin do to make himself successful at SMC?
6. What lessons are there in this case for you as you think about starting
your job after you complete business school?

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31
 INDIVIDUAL “DOING-POWER” PROJECT ASSIGNMENT
INSTRUCTIONS

Due by 12 P.M. Friday, March 12, 2021.

If the material from Paths to Power is going to stay with you and be useful, it is
imperative that you use it during our quarter together. The individual doing
power project, therefore, asks you to take the material and put it into practice.
Learning by doing is one of the best ways to master both subject matter and
skills. And while you are still a student at Stanford, you have the potential to
learn by trying things out in setting where if you fail or suffer setbacks, the
consequences are much, much less severe than they will be later on. Also,
trying out behaviors that you have not done before or that you think you won’t
enjoy permits you to test your assumptions. This individual project asks you to
get a little outside of your comfort zone (which is why we have coaching
resources available) and push yourself to build power and use the ideas of the
class as you are learning them.

In an organization where you currently work or are volunteering—such an

organization could be a nonprofit, a for-profit company, a student government
organization, a social club or religious organization, a start-up team, or any other
formal or informal organization in which you are currently involved—or in an
organization that you are planning to join upon graduation, during the Winter
quarter, try to exercise influence over some specific issue, using the concepts
from the course. Write up your experience and what you learned. You should
keep notes throughout the quarter, with new entries every time something
important happens. NOTE: FINDING A JOB IS NOT THE SAME THING AS
USING INFLUENCE ON OTHERS INSIDE AN ORGANIZATION. NOR IS THIS
ASSIGNMENT ABOUT YOUR DOING SOME SELF—REFLECTIONS ON
WHAT YOU LEARNED FROM THE CLASS. THE PROJECT REQUIRES
THAT YOU ATTEMPT SOME INFLUENCE EFFORT IN A CONTEXT IN WHICH
YOU CONFRONT OPPOSITION OR RESISTANCE TO YOU OR YOUR IDEAS.

In order to do this assignment, you will need to: a) begin with some specific
objective. What are you trying to change? What are you trying to accomplish?
Such an objective could involve either changing a policy or practice in the
organization or advancing your position to one of more power, or both; consider
how you might know if you have successfully achieved your objective--how are
you going to assess your progress (as objectively as possible)? b) outline a set
of things you are going to do to try and influence the situation; c) describe what
you did, what worked, and what didn’t, and why. Compare this to what was in

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the literature and what we have discussed in class (i.e., integrate what you
learned through your experience with what you learned conceptually); d) What
were your personal lessons in power from this experience. YOUR WRITE UP
COULD FOLLOW THIS FORMAT AS JUST DESCRIBED.

This exercise is distinct from although congruent with the self-reflective exercises
you will do over the course of the quarter. Those exercises ask you to focus on
past experiences and what you might do differently, or to assess yourself and
design a personal development plan. This final individual project asks you to
actually do something during our quarter together--not just think or write about
it.

EXPERIENCE SHOWS THAT THERE IS A REASONABLY HIGH

CORRELATION BETWEEN WHEN YOU START ON THIS PROJECT AND a)
YOUR GRADE AND b) HOW MUCH YOU GET OUT OF IT. IF YOU BEGIN
EARLY IN THE QUARTER, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DO SOME AMAZING
THINGS AND REALLY BUILD YOUR POWER SKILLS. IF YOU BEGIN IN
THE LAST WEEK OR TWO BEFORE THIS ASSIGNMENT IS DUE, YOU WILL
GET MUCH, MUCH LESS BENEFIT FROM IT.

There is no page limit. I will read as much as you submit. Typical papers
in the past have been 6-7 pages long.

Submitting Your Project:

SUBMIT YOUR PROJECT BY THE DEADLINE (LATE PROJECTS EARN NO

CREDIT AND ARE NOT GRADED), USING THE CANVAS SYSTEM.

PLEASE BE SURE TO PUT YOUR NAME ON YOUR PAPER!

ALSO, PLEASE PROOFREAD YOUR WORK FOR TYPOGRAPHICAL AND

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS

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