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Executive Warfare: 10 Rules of Engagement for
Winning your War for Success THERE is an identity between principles of war and principles of business management, though with subtle difference. In war as well as in business, one must acquire thorough knowledge of adversary or competitors within and outside and handle/manage them appropriately. Success or failure is the result of many battles an executive has to fight to win the ultimate war of reaching the very top. It is about being hit and being able to stand up again.
The book has 10 chapters that explain 10 different rules for wining the war for success. In introduction, David says, "If you are not interested in success, put down this book and buy a latte." Most of the readers would be glad to have passed on the offer of latte. The first chapter is about how right attitude, some risk and a bit of luck can work for you. Having natural attitude for a particular type of job is enormous advantages and those without it have to work three times harder to be even counted. The author advises the ambitious to keep their personal lives private and handle risk intelligently. He feels that "there is no such thing in this world as pure meritocracy" and nobody gets to the top without being lucky, but luck has to be made by the ambitions. One chapter each has been devoted to bosses, pears and rivals. The author calls the relationship with boss as a ‘business transaction’. At senior position, you are expected to assemble a team which is like a vital organ and you risk your reputation with every hire and fire. Since you will be judged on the quality of your team, you must insist on your own pick. Motivating your team is the subject matter of another chapter. This is perhaps the biggest challenge as there is no mathematical matrix intricate enough to clearly define the problem. There are many different departments of different type of specialised skills and you don’t know everything about their work. Taking them along on your way to the top is an extremely difficult thing to do. And then there are outsiders like clients and donors, venders, outside board members and others who have some influence with powerful people in your organisation. Handling them right may also decide where you land up on the route. Also, where you are positioned now may decide where you go. The author gives the examples of ‘Hunter’ who generates the revenue and converts them into profits, ‘Skinner’ who manages finances and the ‘Diner’ who acts as public relation officer and uses the profits. Unless you are able to move from the position of a Skinner or Diner to that of a Hunter, the chances of going to the very top are extremely slim. In essence, a new world is emerging for executives, which is more analytical, more numbers-focused, more aggressive, more skeptical and more enforcing than ever before, but if you are alert, you can still win. Though the author claims that he does not advocate playing politics, the reader is bound to conclude after reading the book, that manipulation and harboring ulterior motives are an essential part of going places.
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This
book is by David F. D’Alessandro who has seen and experienced all that
make one survive on the executive route and reach very top in the
ever-changing world of business and enterprise. The author’s Career
Warfare, published in 2003, where he shared rules to stand out from
the crowd by developing one’s own ‘personal brand’, was a runaway
success. He has repeated his ‘10-rule’ formula in the present book,
too. In this management skill book, he provides 10 rules for reaching
the top rungs of the corporate ladder and surviving the ascent. He
spells in a no-holds-barred style, a new set of unwritten rules which
govern an executive’s rise and fall which most people are shy of
talking about. Since the book is free from business jargon and uses the
language actually used by business people in informal conversation, it
makes the book immensely readable.