The paths to power: How to grow your influence and advance your career | Jeffrey Pfeffer (author of 7 Rules of Power, professor at Stanford GSB)

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:00):
We're going to be talking about how to grow your power.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:00:02):
The reason why you should pay attention to this is because it leads to a lot of good things, salary, getting promoted, being happy in your career, being less stressed.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:11):
You're not describing how the world should work. This is just how it is.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:00:15):
Not only is, but how it was and how it will be.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:20):
The Seven Rules of Power, get out of your own way, break the rules, show up in a powerful fashion, create a powerful brand, network relentlessly, use your power, and understand that once you've acquired power, what you did to get there will be forgiven, forgotten, or both.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:00:32):
This is not about personality. These are skills they can be mastered.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:35):
People might be hearing this and they're like, "I don't want to be this person."

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:00:38):
Well, you already have done a fabulous job of illustrating principle one. That is one way to get in our own way. If I think power is dirty, the first thing that's going to happen is I'm not going to do what I need to do to be successful in my career.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:52):
The opening quote to your book that I have here, if you want power to be used for good, more good people need to have power.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:00:58):
That's exactly right.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:01:03):
Today, my guest is Jeffrey Pfeffer. Jeffrey is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford's graduate School of Business, and teaches one of the two most popular and oversubscribed courses in all of the MBA program, called the Paths to Power. The other class, by the way, is Touchy-Feely, which we dove into last month. In his class and in his recent book, the Seven Rules of Power, Jeffrey teaches the things that you can do in your life and in your work to build your power, and through that get things done and advance in your career. As one student described the class, it's the cod liver oil of the Graduate School of Business. You know it's good for you, but you feel a little nervous about it. In our conversation, we dig into each of the seven powers, why it's important to build these skills even if you feel uncomfortable.

(00:01:48):
We talk through a bunch of examples of the power in action and the impact it has had on people's lives, why it isn't as cringey or scary as you may think. I was actually nervous to have this conversation and I ended up being a huge fan of Jeffrey and the work that he does. We end the conversation with what you can start doing today to start building your own power. This podcast is basically for anyone that wants to advance in their career, whether you're an IC or a CEO, and I'm really excited to bring it to you. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Jeffrey Pfeffer. Jeffrey, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:02:36):
Thank you, Lenny. I am honored that you invited me on.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:02:40):
I'm even more honored that you decided to come on. We're going to be talking about something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I think it's going to make me uncomfortable. We're going to be talking about how to grow your power in life and in business. Let me just start by asking why does this stuff make people uncomfortable, and why is it still important for people to learn how to do this well?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:03:02):
Well, it's important because a guy named Gerald Ferris developed a scale of political skill. And he and a bunch of his colleagues over the years did a lot of empirical research that demonstrates that political skill is associated with a lot of positive outcomes, salary, getting promoted, being happy in your career, being happy in your job, being less stressed. So the reason why you should pay attention to this is because it leads to a lot of good things. The reason why it makes people uncomfortable. You said it made you uncomfortable. Maybe I should ask you the question, why does it make you uncomfortable?

Lenny Rachitsky (00:03:44):
There's a lot of things here that are probably not how people want to live their life necessarily, or want other people to act.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:03:51):
Yeah, so I think it makes people uncomfortable because the realities of what it takes to get power bear almost no resemblance to what you're taught in Sunday school or the mosque or wherever, how your parents raised you. They bear almost no resemblance to how we think the world ought to be. They bear a little resemblance to our aspirations. And I think we look around the world and we see people who have acquired enormous amounts of power and have used it for bad. But I tell people, I see people with hammers hitting other people on the head. That does not mean that a hammer is not a useful tool. You can take a screwdriver and stab it into somebody's belly. I have a very dear friend who we'll probably talk about later in the podcast. Laura Esserman is a breast cancer surgeon, and I tell people, Laura has a knife. She uses it to cure cancer. Muggers have knives. They use it to rob people. So I think we've confused the tool for how it has been used.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:04:56):
You also have this quote that the people who need to understand power and build their power skills are people who come from backgrounds or characteristics who would normally put them at a disadvantage.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:05:04):
I think that's exactly right. I will go this Sunday to Nashville Tennessee to talk to a bunch of people of color in the NFL who are trying to rise up the ranks. Stanford runs a program because the NFL is serious, I think, about trying to make more opportunity for people, underrepresented minorities. But these are folks who will not succeed unless they learn power skills, because the world is stacked against them in lots of ways.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:05:41):
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(00:07:51):
Another element of your course that you try to make clear in your syllabus is to teach people not to be as judgmental. You also have this whole huge bold phrase, "This class is not for everyone." Can you just talk a bit about maybe why it's not for everyone and then why being less judgmental is important?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:08:07):
The class is extremely popular. I have a long waiting list. It's kind of mythical. And because of the principle of social influence, we are influenced by what other people do. We're influenced in our choices of restaurants, we're influenced in our choices of music. I'm not sure I like Taylor Swift, but I certainly want to go see Taylor Swift because everybody else is. And many people sign up for the class. And one year in particular, there were some people who sat in about the third row up, directly in front of me, and they looked every day like they were having some terrible thing put up some horrible orifice or something. They looked literally in pain, and so I decided, and of course they learned nothing. If you come to the class and you're in that much psychological discomfort, you're not going to learn anything.

(00:08:55):
And so what I try to do is tell people that in order to benefit from this class, you have to be open to learning the material. And if you're not, and by the way, this would be true for any class. If you go to physics and you say, I don't like physics, I hate physics, I don't believe in physics, I don't believe in the theory of physics, whatever, you're not going to learn anything. And so I'm trying to get the class, given those huge waiting lists, I'm trying to get the class to have people in it who are in fact going to benefit from it rather than sit there and look like they're in pain. And the judgmental thing, if Matthew 7, "Judge not that ye be not judged." The Koran says, "Only Allah can judge people." The American poet, Walt Whitman said, "Be curious, not judgmental."

(00:09:46):
Mother Teresa said, "If you judge people, you have no time to love them." Judgment, if I need to build a positive relationship with Lenny because you are on my critical path in my job, and jobs necessarily entail a reasonable amount of interdependence, I get things done through and with other people. If I decide that Lenny is whatever set of bad adjectives you want to use, dumb, incompetent, immoral, whatever, my ability to build a positive relationship with you, and you remain on my critical path, becomes almost zero unless you're a better actor or I'm a better actor than I think most people are.

(00:10:32):
So therefore, you should suspend judgment in the sense that if somebody is on your critical path, the only judgment you should make is they're on my critical path. If I want to get something done, I need their collaboration and cooperation, and the fact that I may not like them is in fact irrelevant. And as I have taught senior executives over the years, it is absolutely clear to me that one of the skills that they have mastered is they have a skill that you cannot tell what they think of you. And that's important because I need your collaboration, I need your cooperation. And if I leak out in ways that say I don't respect you or I don't like you, I don't admire you, whatever, my odds of getting you to work productively with me goes essentially to zero. So that's a judgmental story. Does that make sense?

Lenny Rachitsky (00:11:21):
Absolutely. And I have a quote from your syllabus along these lines, "Not everyone we encounter in Paths to Power is someone you're going to want to emulate. This is a class about how to get things done, how to build and wield influence, and there are multiple ways to accomplish these objectives." So I've had two friends actually go through the course. One I asked about the course of the impact it had on her. She's actually a founder now. And she told me that your class was her single most favorite class at all of Stanford Business School, because it was realistic and applicable to life as a founder. Because it didn't sugarcoat business, didn't sugarcoat life. It told her how the world really works and it is helping her succeed with her startup right now.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:12:00):
Thank you. There's no higher praise than that. I actually don't read, I shouldn't probably say this on the public, but I don't actually read my course evaluations because the impact I want to have is not to have people like me, but to have that kind of impact. To make people more successful, more effective in their lives.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:12:22):
That is a good segue to one of your rules of power. So let's just talk about your Seven Rules of Power. I actually have your book right here and if folks want to learn more, here it is, Seven Rules of Power. This is your fourth book about power, and this is your best book about power, because it basically summarizes everything you've learned in a really cohesive way. So let me first share the Seven Rules of Power and then I'm going to dive into a few of them. Does that sound good?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:12:44):
That sounds perfect.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:12:45):
Okay, so the seven rules, one, get out of your own way. Two, break the rules. Three, appear powerful. Four, build a powerful brand. Network relentlessly. Use your power, and success excuses almost...

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:13:01):
Everything, correct.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:13:02):
Okay, success excuses everything almost. Got it. Okay. So let me start with power four, which is around personal brand. And the reason I want to start here is I have a friend that's actually in your class right now, Ralph, and I saw that he started a podcast. And he told me that he did it because it was part of the homework that you give students. You call it Doing Power. Is that the name of the homework assignments?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:13:25):
Yeah, I have. So we give them a bunch of assignments throughout the class, which are self-reflective assignments, but their big thing for the class is they have to do power. They have to do something during the quarter to take the principles of the class, and what they're learning, and put them into practice. And that is because everything I do, I do for a reason. That is because if you don't use what you learn, the learning will disappear. So if you go to a French class and you learn French, and you never speak French, in about a relatively short period of time you'll forget everything you learn. And so I want the learning to stick with them, so I try to get them to do something with it.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:14:06):
While we're on this tangent, I wanted to talk about this whole, you have a book, the Doing Knowing Gap.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:14:10):
Knowing-Doing Gap.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:14:11):
The Knowing-Doing Gap. So let's just spend a little time there. I think that's really important. What are some examples of things that have come out of people doing these homework assignments, things that maybe led to something interesting?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:14:22):
Let me take my most extreme example. My most extreme example is probably Derek Kan, K-A-N. And Derek Kan was a little bit older when he went through the MBA program. And in 2012, his Doing Power project was to get appointed to be Mitt Romney's, it was Mitt Romney was running for president, to be head of economic policy for the Romney campaign. Believe it or not, he was offered the job. Believe it or not, he turned it down for reasons which we could go into if you want, but aren't that interesting. He wound up relatively soon thereafter as number three in the transportation department, working for Elaine Chao. And I have a picture of him when he comes to the class, I introduce him. I tell students, I give them a trigger warning and I introduce him. He wound up, at the end of the Trump administration, as the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. And since typical of the Trump administration, by that time there was no director. He essentially ran the $6 trillion US budget. This is six years out of business school.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:15:35):
I was thinking whether he got that during his class. Amazing. Okay, so this is a success story of Doing Power. Let's talk about this first power of building brand, and I think this is where people start to feel uncomfortable. They're going to be like, oh no, I don't want to be doing this. This doesn't feel good to me.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:15:51):
Why?

Lenny Rachitsky (00:15:52):
So let's talk about it.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:15:53):
Okay.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:15:54):
Let's see. So talk about this power of building a personal brand.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:15:58):
There are by definition fewer positions at the top than at the bottom. The world, we might not like this, and I know people, the late Tony Hsieh, the Zappos tried to do holacracy or whatever, but the world is essentially hierarchical. The animal kingdom is hierarchical. It is better to be at the top than at the bottom for a number of reasons. Okay. If that is true, if there are fewer positions at the top and then at the bottom, then your job to advance your career is to figure out how to get promoted. There are many ways to get promoted, but I will guarantee you one thing, no one is going to promote Lenny if they don't know who the hell you are. So it is not sufficient for them to know who you are. They have to know that you're smart and personable and have whatever skills you've got, but they have to know you.

(00:16:52):
If they don't know you, you cannot choose what is not in your head. You know that better than I do. So therefore you have to do something to differentiate yourself. You have to build a brand. So when I think of Lenny in your podcast, I think of something. Not just 25 billion podcasts. When I think of somebody in McKinsey or Bay or BCG, one of the consulting firms, a gazillion people start off as front-line consultants. What are you going to do so that somebody knows who you are? What are you going to do that creates value for the firm and for you? So my friend Keith Ferazzi, when he started at Deloitte Consulting, did not do the spreadsheet stuff that he was, by the way, not very good at and didn't like. He started the Lincoln Quality Award. He decided to try to take Deloitte's brand recognition from about one or 2% to 30%.

(00:17:54):
He was appointed, though he left before he actually took the job, to the position of partner and the first chief marketing officer at Deloitte. I have another friend, Tristan Walker, who wanted to get hired at Foursquare. He sent emails to the founder. The founder ignored him. So Tristan Walker did something I think very bold. Tristan Walker began signing up partnerships. So one day the founder says, holy God, he signed up Starbucks. Maybe I ought to hire this guy. So you have to do something that causes people to know who you are, and that is what building a brand is about.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:18:36):
It sounds very benign put that way. When people hear, I need to build a personal brand, it sounds like I need to post on LinkedIn, I need to post on Twitter, start a newsletter, start a podcast, which I know is kind of a part of it. But what are some examples you've seen of ways to build a personal brand that are effective?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:18:50):
So I have a friend who I bring to the class, a lovely tall Asian woman named Laura Chau, who made partner at a venture capital firm after four years, which is fast. Laura works for Canaan Partners, C-A-N-A-A-N. Laura said, I do not work for Andreessen Horowitz, I do not work for Sequoia, I don't work for Greylock, I don't work for any of these very visible large VC firms. So if I am going to get deals in the consumer space, that's her domain of expertise is consumer and consumer tech, somebody is going to have to know who Laura Chau is. Because again, you're not going to get the deal if nobody knows who you are. And so she basically did everything you talked about. She did writing. She started a podcast in which she invited influential people on. She contributed to a book. She helped people out.

(00:19:55):
She did networking dinners. She did everything she could so that people would recognize and know Laura Chau. And one of the things she did was she's tall. In general, Asian women are not tall. She decided to play up the fact that she was, in the words of some people, the tallest Asian woman they'd ever seen. She wears heels. In her heels she's six feet one inches tall. She also, when she comes to my class, many people come to my class with hoodies, God knows what. She has style and it's a unique style. So she thinks about very strategically, how am I going to dress? How am I going to look? How am I going to show up? How am I going to do what I need to do so that people know who I am? Obviously there's substance. If you have visibility without substance, people will know you're useless. But if you have substance without visibility, no one will know the substance that you got.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:20:56):
You also talk about how you can reframe this idea of not being self-promotional, but it's amplifying the impact of the team that I work with, or it's me scaling myself by sharing things I know and pointing people to it.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:21:11):
Absolutely, absolutely.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:21:11):
Awesome. Okay, let's move on to a different power. Let's talk about power one, which is getting out of your own way. Talk about what that means and how someone can work on that.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:21:20):
Well, you already have done a fabulous job of illustrating principle one by talking about how this is the topic that makes people uncomfortable. And when something makes people uncomfortable, in general, they're going to shy away from it. So if I think power is dirty, if I think power is evil, if I think power is something I want nothing to do with, the first thing that's going to happen is I'm not going to do what I need to do to be successful in my career. So that is one way in which we get in our own way. Another way in which we get in our own way, many people suffer from what is called in the psychology literature, imposter syndrome. They believe that they were the admissions mistake at Stanford. They were the hiring mistake in whatever company they're working for. That somehow they got to this job, but they don't really deserve to be there because they're surrounded by people who are smarter and better than them, and therefore they will do things.

(00:22:18):
I can't even believe that this goes on. So I will have students, not many, but a few. Now raise their hand, I'll call them, and the first things out of their mouth will be, I don't know if this comment is going to be useful. This is called pre-emptory apology. If the comment is not going to be useful, don't say it. That's number one, but number two, don't apologize. Pardon me for interrupting. Pardon me for taking up your time. Stop all this apologizing. If you got the job you're in, you probably are not only qualified, you're probably overqualified. So don't use descriptors of yourself that disempower you. Don't think of yourself as not deserving of the job that you hold, because that attitude will leak out and other people will say, if Lenny doesn't think he deserved the job, then maybe I shouldn't think he deserves the job either.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:23:19):
So basically the first power is you're shooting yourself in the foot by worrying too much about whether people like you. This friend of mine who's now the founder that I read some quotes from, she said her number one takeaway from your class is if you want to be liked, get a dog.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:23:32):
That's correct. That is a quote from my dear friend Gary Loveman, who for many years ran Harrah's, which then became Caesars, the casino company.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:23:43):
You also talk about this. Yeah, there's this quote I have. "Acknowledge that others are often no better than you, because that makes you feel better about the story." So for people that actually want to be liked, I like being liked. I don't know if it's a flaw in my upbringing. Is the lesson you're capped on your power if you worry about if you want to be liked?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:24:05):
At the end of the day, you don't want to be intentionally disliked. You don't want to violate my dear friend Bob Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule and gratuitously be an asshole. But you are hired to get a job done. It's interesting. I unfortunately am now too old. In the words of my chiropractor, I'm suffering from too many birthdays. So I have a lot of doctors who are doing a great job. Trust me, when I choose a doctor, I have a, unfortunately he retired, a neurosurgeon who did two surgeries on my spine. He's considered to be one of the top 20 in the country. If you go on Yelp, you read about his personality and his office furniture. As I said to somebody, he's doing microsurgery on my spine, I can wind up permanently paralyzed. I really don't care about his personality. I don't care about his office furniture.

(00:25:01):
That's an extreme example, but it makes the point. When you are put in a role, you are put in a role because presumably you are supposed to perform in that role. If you get appointed to be a head coach, if we make you a quarterback on an NFL team, or we make you center on a National Basketball Association team, you did not get that job because people thought you had a cute personality. You got that job because you have the skills to make your organization successful. And if you do not use those skills because you're worried about what everybody else is thinking, you are not only harming yourself, but you're harming them because you are not doing what you were hired to do.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:25:46):
So a simple way of thinking about this, which makes me feel better about. As we talk through this, I'm becoming less uncomfortable with these, which is a good sign. It's don't actively try to be disliked. Don't prioritize being liked, prioritize competence and respect.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:25:59):
Correct, absolutely.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:26:01):
And doing the thing that needs to be done.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:26:03):
Absolutely.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:26:04):
Okay, great. Let's talk about rule number two, which is break the rules. So basically again, these powers are ways to grow power, and you're saying that if you break the rules, you get more power. Talk about why that's the case, what that looks like.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:26:18):
Well, for many reasons, number one, when you break the rules, you stand out. You become memorable when you do something that's unexpected. And being memorable is of course important, as we've already discussed. That's number one. Number two, the rules were made mostly by the people who are favored by the rules in place. So if we were talking about business strategy, we would talk about a word that is probably now overused. We would talk about being a disruptor. That you would disrupt an industry. And how do you disrupt an industry? By doing something that is different from the other industry incumbents. In Southwest Airlines, you don't do hub and spoke. At Amazon, you provide an incredible level of customer service. Whole Foods, you don't optimize on the cost of the stuff in your store, but you optimize on fitting local taste, whatever. You would be a disruptor, you would do things that are different.

(00:27:14):
The same principle holds for you, that if you are going to be successful, you have to do what number one, plays to your strengths, to use the title of a Gallup book. Number two, you have to do things again that cause you to stand out, and you have to do things that basically will make you more successful. One of the conventional wisdoms that people I think adhere to way too much, is don't ask. Don't ask, don't ask for help. You need to show self-sufficiency. So my colleague, Frances Flynn, Frank Flynn, wrote an article with Vanessa Lake entitled, If You Need Help, Just Ask. And it turns out people overestimate how many people they're going to have to ask to get help, and it turns out that asking for help makes people uncomfortable.

(00:28:03):
I was married, if you read the acknowledgments in Seven Rules of Power. For more than 35 years I was married to Kathleen Francis Fowler, who I could send you a picture. She looked literally like a supermodel and I never have been any particularly better looking than I am now. So somebody said to me, how'd you get her to go out with you? And the answer of course is, I asked. I asked, I asked, I asked. No one, well, maybe not no one. But few people are going to go out with you if you don't ask them out. Few people are going to marry you if you don't ask them to marry. Few people are going to do anything if you don't ask. And what is the worst that could happen? If you ask and they say, no, you are no worse off than had you not asked in the first place. If you don't ask, you're not going to get it. If you ask and they say, no, you're not going to get it. Get over your ego, ask.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:28:59):
Is there another example that comes to mind of someone breaking the rules say in business, that ended up being really successful as a result, or just someone that is really good at this in business?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:29:07):
I can give you many examples. One of my favorite examples would be Jason Calacanis. I don't know if you know Jason.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:29:14):
Oh yeah, I know you did a case study on him. I know him well. Yeah.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:29:18):
So I think Jason, I think consistently breaks all kinds of rules. First of all, when he comes to my class, nobody likes him, but that's okay. Almost nobody likes him. But...

Lenny Rachitsky (00:29:30):
That's power number one. He's not worried about.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:29:33):
Yeah, that's number one. But also I think there's a conventional wisdom in the venture capital industry which he defies almost completely. He makes a lot of little bets, not a few big bets. He runs a very lean operation. He doesn't have a lot of partners. He doesn't have actually any partners, so he can't be fired by his partners. He began his career in journalism, which is interesting. Being a journalist is a wonderful job because you get to ask people all kinds of questions. And if you ask smart people questions, and you have some reasonable level of intelligence yourself, at the end of that process, you're going to wind up incredibly smart and incredibly insightful. And he wound up incredibly smart and insightful around aspects of the internet industry.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:30:23):
And he definitely has a lot of power. I think I am going to link to the case study in our show notes where you basically walk through how he went from nothing to a very powerful person.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:30:31):
And by the way, a very rich person as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:30:34):
Let's talk about another power, power five, networking relentlessly. What does that look like and how do you get better at this?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:30:42):
Well, I think there's research that shows that many people find networking dirty, and that's because I think they think about it in the wrong way. My friend John Levy, who has written a fabulous book, You're Invited. Which is a book about how to put on events that people want to come to. Is a fabulous human being. Will tell you that the first principle of networking is in fact generosity. It's generosity. What can I do for you? How can I be helpful? Who can I introduce you to? Either a company or a product or a person who can be helpful to you in your career.

(00:31:20):
But in order to be able to introduce you to someone who's going to be useful to you, I have to know people. If I don't know anybody, I can't introduce you to anybody. And the more people I know, the more likely it will be that if you say, I need to know somebody in X, I will know that person. So the broader your social network, the more people and the more things you will know. If knowledge is power, networking is a fabulous way to get knowledge about people and about ideas.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:31:53):
It's funny to hear this where it's like, yes, obviously this is right, but connecting it to if you want to become more powerful, more successful, you need to do this. I think that is a powerful point that we're all making here, is just like this actually is necessary if you want to acquire more power.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:32:10):
Of course. I have a funny story about networking. So we have a thing in Stanford called View From The Top, in which these fancy people come in and give a talk. And one of the people came in and give a talk and made my class instantly popular, because he's an extraordinarily wealthy person. His name is Omid Kordestani, and so I reached out to him and I said, "Omid, let's have breakfast." So I can understand because during the thing, when somebody asked them what class was the most important in his success, he said mine. So I said, "Tell me your story." He said, "Well, I graduated from Stanford. I'm Persian in background, immigrant background. An engineer, HP, all the things that would make you kind of a nerd or something." He said, "I went to work for a couple of startups that didn't do well. Then I found myself in the mid-nineties at Netscape." The browser company, big deal. Anyway, Marc Andreessen.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:33:07):
Oh yeah.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:33:08):
Okay. "So I found myself in Netscape in marketing and business development. I was not making any progress. One day I decided to take your class to an extreme. I decided to stop doing my job." So I said, "When people gave you projects to do or assignments or tasks and you didn't do them?" He said, "It turns out that I spent my time, not obviously at the bar, but in networking first with people inside of Netscape. And it turns out if you're well-connected to the senior leaders, they don't really care if you do your job or not. That's number one. Number two," he said, "oftentimes I can find other people to do the work I was doing. So instead of basically spending time doing my job, I networked first within Netscape." But Netscape was not that big of a company. So after a while he decided to go through, which is by the way, his job anyway, in marketing and business, he decided to basically drive through the Silicon Valley talking to people. And this is the rest of the browsers are just beginning.

(00:34:14):
Nobody knows what a browser is, nobody knows what the internet is going to become. So he's having all these fabulous conversations. All right, so he now knows basically everybody. It's 1998 and a little tiny company decides 10 engineers, typical Silicon Valley company. 10 engineers, all engineers. I have a friend who went to work for a company, run a company that had 26 people. He didn't have one sales and marketing person. Anyway, the company now has 10 engineers. They decide they need to hire their first business person. Being an analytically oriented company, they say, we're going to do this very analytically. We are basically going to ask everybody we can think of, and a few people we can't. Give us a list of the best technically oriented business people that you know. And there is of course one name that appears on every list. It is Omid Kordestani who becomes employee number 11 at Google and makes two and a half billion dollars.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:35:13):
Great success from networking. Well done. When people hear about networking, it just feels like you said, very cringe. I don't want to go to these networking events and try to pretend to talk and care about people. Do you have any advice for just how to make networking feel less cringy?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:35:28):
One of the exercises I give my students is I say, write a list of 10 people who, if you knew them and if they knew you, would be important for whatever you're trying to accomplish in your career. So maybe you're trying to get into biotech, you need to know 10 executives in biotech or whatever. Make a list of 10 people. Then for each person figure out how you are going to meet them. By the way, not necessarily in a network event. Maybe you want to do what John Levy does, which is hold dinners. In which by the way, the guests do the cooking, which is a very interesting idea. That of course taps into the IKEA effect. You always like something better if you participate in creating it. Maybe you want to hold dinners, maybe you want to try to reach out to them at lunch.

(00:36:21):
Maybe you want to reach out to them and say, here's an article I think you'd be interested in. Here is somebody who I think you'd benefit from meeting. So recently, I'm not a particularly good networker, though I'm better I guess than some people. I recently met Esther Wojcicki, I'm sure I killed her name. She's considered the grandmother of Silicon Valley. She's Susan Wojcicki's mother. And she is interested in depression, particularly depression among teenagers. And I said, you should know Leanne Williams, who's in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Science Department, who has done probably 300 articles on depression and has invented something which is called Precision Psychiatry. So I connected them to each other. Just send an email. I think you ought to know each other. They got together. I get credit for knowing people and connecting them, but I also benefit them. Leanne needs to raise money. Esther's got money. Esther needs to understand the cutting edge research in depression and biomarkers of depression, which is what Leanne's specialty is, so they benefit. So this is not some icky thing. This is connecting people who benefit from being connected.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:37:38):
That touches on something you teach in the book is, in your networking you want to become a broker, you want to be central. That's kind of what you want to work on. Can you talk a bit about what that means?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:37:47):
Well, that means you want to connect people. So many people with benefits, and many groups with benefits for being connected, and they're not connected. What does a venture capitalist do? Connects people with ideas to people with money, and takes a fee for doing it. What does an investment banker do? Connects people trying to sell businesses or raise capital with people trying to buy businesses or who have capital. What's a real estate agent do? Connects buyers and sellers of houses. There are all kinds of examples where the person's entire job is connecting people. But even for the people whose job it isn't, you benefit from knowing people. The more people you know, the more things you know. As I sometimes say in my class, if leadership management, call it what you will, is getting things done through other people, it seems like common sense that the more other people you know, the more you'll be able to get done.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:38:45):
As someone that has become central to a lot of things in the product world, and has built a large network as a result of this podcast newsletter, I can tell you a thousand percent. This creates a lot of opportunity and power, you could say in quotes. So I've seen it happen.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:39:00):
Of course.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:39:03):
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(00:40:10):
Another lesson I guess you teach is to pursue weak ties. Talk a bit about what that means. What do you mean by that?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:40:14):
Well, the people to whom you are strongly tied, your family, your spouse, significant other, your friends, the people who work with you at work will probably, because they are close to you, know the same things and the same people that you do. So to the extent that you build ties with people who are more different from you in every dimension, you are more likely to learn non-redundant information, and come in contact with people that you don't already know. This again seems common sense. There's a lot of research behind it. Mark Granovetter, a sociologist who still teaches at Stanford, wrote a book entitled The Strength of Weak Ties.

(00:40:59):
And basically, no, actually, pardon me. He wrote an article called The Strength of Weak Ties. His book was called Getting a Job. And he did a study, I guess it was at that time in Boston. He did a study of job seekers in Massachusetts, and he looked at people who got jobs through applying to ads, through more formal means. And then he looked at people who got jobs through referrals from their network. And it turns out, of course, the jobs that you get through your network referrals are much better jobs. And oftentimes the best jobs that people got were referred to them by people that were not particularly close to them. Because they had a view, that's the word I was looking for, a view into the ecosystem of the Boston labor market, that the other people didn't have because they weren't in the same place as the other people.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:42:00):
I love that lesson. Let's talk about another power, which is using your power. So when people think of using your power builds more power, that's not intuitive. You talk about how it creates this self-perpetuating growth of power the more you practice power. Can you talk a bit about that?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:42:16):
Sure. So when you are given, it's interesting, my friend Deborah Gruenfeld, who wrote a book called Acting with Power, talks a lot about people's ambivalence to power. So sometimes people are put in a job. Herminia Ibarra who teaches now at London Business School, at one point taught in Seattle, at one point taught at Harvard, has an article in the Harvard Business Review in which she talks about a woman in a drug company who gets a promotion, and says to her colleagues, to whom she's now overseeing, that she's not sure why she got the job. She's not sure she deserves the job. Needless to say, she didn't do very well in this job because she got in her own way. But part of this is you are put in a position of power. You're put in a position of authority in order to make things happen. So to the extent you mobilize your resources and get things to happen, you'll get more resources.

(00:43:14):
People want to be associated with success. To the extent that you become successful, more people will want to work with you. To the extent that you get more stuff done, you'll get more promotions, more opportunities. Nobody's going to give you a job to do if the last five jobs like that they gave you, you couldn't get done. So the more you are able to do, which oftentimes of course requires power and influence, the more you're able to do, the more you'll be asked to do. But better yet, the more resources you'll be given to help you get things done.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:43:48):
And I think there's interestingly you teach that just showing that you have power creates more power. People see that you have this power and they start to follow your lead more, right? That's a part of this.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:43:57):
Yep. I just saw over the weekend the movie, the latest movie in the franchise of the Planet of the Apes. When Jim Collins left Stanford, he gave me a book called Chimpanzee Politics, which is of course not based on the Planet of the Apes, but it's based upon the study of chimpanzees. We are the same. People are attracted to power, you know that. By the way, that will account for a lot of what is going to happen in the presidential election.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:44:26):
Let's save that for the end, because I think that's an interesting piece of your book, of the connection to Trump. So let's save that for a bit. I think that'll be really interesting. Kind of along the same lines of the area we're just talking about. And another rule of power is to show up in a powerful fashion. So look powerful, talk about what that looks like.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:44:43):
So my colleague at Berkeley, Dana Carney, C-A-R-N-E-Y, is writing a book called Tell, which is about the importance of body language and how to master body language. There is some evidence that suggests we respond mostly to how people look, secondarily to how they sound, and by far the least important to the content of what they say. You can see this by turning on your TV and turning off the sound. Watch the presidential debates with the sound off. They'll be much better. I have another colleague in marketing by the name of Baba Shiv, who talks about people's freaky mind, or the idea that we are in fact descended from primates, and that we are controlled in lots of ways by our emotions. And so we respond affectively to other people. We respond to how they look. There's evidence in economics that suggests tall people earn more salaries, control, earn more money, controlling for lots of things, attractive people.

(00:45:46):
As long as you're not too attractive, you earn more money. Optimal level of attractiveness because people respond subconsciously to how people look, how they sound, how they show up, how they present themselves. In my class, I take the example of Tony Hayward of BP, the Macondo oil spill, and Lloyd Blankfein who was accused of shorting the securities that he was selling, which by the way, Goldman did. And before I let them hear Tony or Lloyd, we show about 60 seconds. And Lloyd's case 34 seconds with no sound. And even if you did not know who these people were and I asked you to make a bet, who's going to keep their job and who's going to lose it? You would know just from their physical appearance.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:46:37):
I love that.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:46:39):
And by the way, what Dana Carney will tell you, and what common sense will tell you, is that these are skills that can be mastered. Robert de Niro was not born Robert de Niro, in the sense of acting skills are learned. How you show up, how you command the room. There's a guy named Regis McKenna who is older than God, who's famous for running a very, very, very fancy public relations firm in the Silicon Valley. And his biggest contribution to life, as well as by the way to his personal wealth, is that he made Steve Jobs Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs began, Steve Jobs couldn't convince you to buy water if you were dying of thirst. He could not give a presentation to save his life. And Regis McKenna and his team took Steve Jobs under their wing and created Steve Jobs, a man who could sell anything to anybody. These are skills. This is not about personality. This is not about undergoing some kind of cosmetic surgery or whatever. These are skills, everything we've talked about, networking, showing up, all these things. These are skills that can be learned.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:47:55):
I have a list of some of the stuff you actually recommend for looking and appearing powerful. So I'll read a few and I'm curious what else comes to mind. So do not read from notes. Make eye contact. Keep it brief. You say that anger can be a signal of power because it's outside the norm. It's kind of breaking the rules. Don't apologize. It's kind of the opposite. More gestures, which is interesting. Open body posture. Louder voice. Okay, I'm going to speak louder now. I like this. Okay, what else comes to mind as ways to appear powerful?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:48:26):
Invading people's personal space. So gentle touching, standing close to someone. We're not talking about sexual touching, we're talking touch on the arm or the shoulder, shaking people's hands. That's a way of I think being more powerful. But you've covered the main ones. Eye contact. One of the problems with Tony Hayward of BP is that he's been given a statement to read. You cannot read something in front of you and make eye contact at the same time. So he looks like he's scripted. He looks like he's insincere. Jack Valenti, who I had the privilege of knowing, who for 38 years was the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, and typically rated one of the number one or number two most effective lobbyists in Washington DC, said to my class when he came to my class, which he did, "I never appeared before Congress with notes. I wanted them to believe, which was by the way, true, that I was in complete control and complete mastery of the material, and that I did not need notes or a bunch of assistants around me to help me.

(00:49:40):
That I, as the head of the MPAA, understood the motion picture industry." And then he would give you a little aside about how it was the one industry that consistently had a budget surplus in trade. He would talk about how many jobs he created and he had all this stuff at his fingertips. But basically his command of the material made him more powerful. It's interesting, Jack Valenti was five foot two inches tall and he came, talked to my class, and the next class I said to people, "What are your reactions? What are your thoughts?" And a woman raised her hand and said, "He feels taller than he is." And I thought that was an assessment that was both true and insightful. When the five-foot-two Jack Valenti appeared, because of his presence, because of his body language, because of his Texas drawl, because of how he moved on the stage, he felt bigger. You would not say he did not feel five-foot-two.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:50:54):
Let me read a couple more because this is a good example of stuff he did. Other ways to appear more powerful is more speaking time, longer gazing time, more disinhibited laughs. Is that just you laughing and feeling like you're just...

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:51:08):
Well, humor. Humor. The famous author, Salman Rushdie said, and I quote Salman Rushdie, it's a fabulous quote. "If you can get people to laugh, you can tell them anything."

Lenny Rachitsky (00:51:20):
Yeah, stand-up comedy is a great example that. So again, I think here people might be hearing this and they're like, I don't want to be this person. I don't want to be talking all the time. I don't want to be pretending like open posture. Is the advice here just you don't need to do all these things. Just know this makes people more powerful. Don't necessarily judge people, do some of these things maybe because it'll add to your power? How do you think about just people that are turned off by this sort of thing?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:51:45):
That's a wonderful question. So I say to my class, on the very first day of class, that we will go through four stages. We'll go through the stage of denial. It doesn't work in my culture, it doesn't work in my organization, doesn't work for me, it doesn't work in my religion, whatever. Then we'll go through anger. When they get angry at me, how can you teach us this stuff? Then they'll go into sadness. I actually believe this and I'm depressed. And if we're successful, they will go through acceptance. And the process I have, again, I do not have the most popular class at Stanford Business School because I am good-looking, because I'm the smartest person at Stanford or anything else. I am strategic about thinking about if I have someone who's going to come into this class, I have to get them from denial to acceptance in 10 weeks.

(00:52:38):
And how are we going to do that? The easiest way to do that, if I said, Lenny, I want you to become a better tennis player, or a better roller blader, or a better ice skater, whatever, a better piano player in 10 weeks, what would we do? If we have practice and coaching. And that's what I do in the class, practice and coaching. I have executive coaches who work with the class and I give them assignments that ask them to practice what they're learning. And therefore, by the end of the class, most people have made this transition because it is true. If you've never... I had a dinner the other night, this Israeli woman who's like, I've done amazing stuff. Amazing. Which is fabulous. And she said at the dinner, she said, "I would've never done this before taking your class." And the way you get them to do this is I don't say, Lenny, you're going to swim the English Channel tomorrow.

(00:53:38):
If I want you to swim the English Channel, we're going to start by swimming in pools and make every day a little bit more challenging. That's what we do. I don't start by saying, you're going to network like Keith Ferrazzi or John Levy, or you're not going to be as bold as Jason Calacanis, who trust me is extraordinarily bold. You're not going to necessarily do what I did. You're going to begin where you can begin, and push yourself out of your comfort zone. Because, and again, this is common sense.

(00:54:13):
There's also a ton of research behind it. If you always stay in your comfort zone, you'll never do anything different or better than what you're currently doing. This is true. If I said to you, I want you to, at the end of 10 weeks, lift a hundred pounds, I can't do that by on the last day saying lift a hundred pounds. We have to work up to it. And that is, it's the same principle here. So don't do something that looks so off the wall or so out of character for you that you can't conceive doing it. Push yourself a little, push yourself a little.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:54:49):
There's an interesting connection here too. What some say is kind of the opposite of your class at Stanford, which is Touchy-Feely. We had Carole Robin on the podcast and she has a framework, the 15% rule where you push yourself 15% beyond your comfort zone. Where it's just a little bit, but it's not too far, and it feels like you try to do a similar thing.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:55:07):
Yeah, absolutely. So you begin by doing what you don't think you can do.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:55:12):
Let's spend a little more time here around the homework assignments, and this kind of Knowing-Doing Gap that you talked about. So you shared a couple of homework assignments you give already, find 10 people, think of 10 people you want to meet that'll help you with your career and then try to meet them. And then there's this, I guess my friend started a podcast, I don't know which homework it was. What other homework assignments do you give?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:55:30):
So we begin, there's a literature on goal setting that says if you set goals, you're more likely to achieve them. This is, again, not some huge insight, but there's an enormous scientific literature about this. And so I begin the very first homework assignment is, which is by the way, on the very first day of class, why are you here? Why are you here? It is now the end of this class. What would success look like to you? What would you like to accomplish in our 10 weeks together? Second assignment, I give them a reading from the Power book, which is the book before Seven Rules, which talks about the seven attributes of power. Go out and get people to rate you on these or rate yourself. Set for yourself a development plan, energy, focus, being willing to tolerate conflict, all these qualities. What are you strong on? What are you weak on? What do you want to build during our time together, and how are you going to do it?

(00:56:35):
So we begin with goal setting. One of the assignments I give them, which is the class that Jason comes to, what resources can you create? You're at Stanford Business School, elite, fancy Stanford. What can you do in your 10 weeks here? I have people who created awards. A woman who created an award gave it to Karlie Kloss, the model. Got in trouble with the school. It turns out it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. So what can you do to create resources that will give you some leverage? That would be a third assignment. The networking is a fourth assignment. The acting with power. I show them the videos and I tell them in advance of the class, and I tell them they need to become Tony Hayward. They need to do a better job, which is, by the way, a low bar, representing BP. And give me a 60 to 90 second video and then share it with colleagues and get feedback on it. And then we're going to call on people in the class.

(00:57:47):
In other words, for every idea, I try to think of something. And this is all, by the way, this is all front-loaded. And by the end of the class we're not doing this so much. But I try to give them an exercise that causes them to actually take that idea and implement it. Find people, oh, for branding. Write a personal brand statement, get some feedback on it, then write it again. How do you want to be known? Which is by the way, useful to you because you're a second-year MBA, you're going to go in the job market. What do you want people to think about you? How do you want people to respond to you? How do you want to be known? So I basically take for every topic and have them do it. And then the coach, their person, their coach, who is responsible for 23 of these people, give them feedback on this.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:58:44):
I could see how this makes a big impact on someone's life.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:58:49):
Yeah. And so at the end, I had a student a couple years ago said to me, "It is not that I got more feedback and more useful feedback from your class than I did in any other class. I got more useful feedback in your class than I did on every other class I took combined."

Lenny Rachitsky (00:59:09):
I can see why. Let's talk about the last power. So we've talked through six already. We have only one more to go, which is maybe the one that probably upsets people most, which is that once you have power, people will forget what you did to get there. Talk about what that looks like and is that a power or is it more just like this is what you should know about.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (00:59:28):
And I put in rule seven for the following reason. In spite of everything that you and I have been talking about, many people in a stage of, I don't know, denial or something, say, I'm worried that if I do this, at the end... People believe that the world is homeostatic. It is not. That it's going to adjust, but whatever. At the end I will be brought low. They have the myth of Icarus in their head. You fly too close to the sun, your wings are going to melt, you're going to be brought down. And so I try to convince them, partly through a lecture and partly through rule seven. And some of the principles that I talk about in rule seven. That, in fact, life is not homeostatic at all. That life is actually self-fulfilling. If I believe you're powerful, you will become more powerful.

(01:00:26):
If I believe you have no power, you will wind up with almost no power, and that therefore it is all forgotten and forgiven. And I begin, I believe I begin. But if not, I could begin with the story of the South Carolina Senator who says nasty things about Trump, and then Lindsey Graham, and becomes Trump's biggest acolyte. And the New York Times, of course, is fascinated by this. How can you say all these horrible things about Trump and now be his, basically have your lips affixed to some part of his anatomy? And Lindsey's answer is, I want to be relevant. He's the President of the United States. This goes back to the judgment. I like him, this, that, the other thing. He's the president. If I want to get legislation passed, he, by the way, has taken over the Republican Party.

(01:01:22):
If I want to get stuff done, I need to have him on my side. And like many narcissists and egomaniacs, it is not a good way to get them on your side by saying nasty things about them. So this is the pragmatics. People forget that Bill Gates stole the code on which Microsoft has built. People forget that Jeffrey Epstein, after being convicted of sex offenses, was still having dinners with members of the royal family and members of the New York media elite. People forget that Martha Stewart, who served time in jail, has a brand that's never been more valuable. People forget all this stuff.

(01:02:19):
I still remember sitting in the office of someone whose name I won't use, but I'll use enough that if somebody wanted to search it out, you could. So I am sitting in this guy's office and he's, by the way, a Jewish man. He's got pictures of him with the Pope, he's got pictures of him with Ronald Reagan. He's got pictures with him, with all these people. What is his secret? He, by the way, took a company into bankruptcy. People lost literally billions of dollars. He was fined. He lost money, but he walked away with about $700 million. It turns out, $700 million makes you a big deal. Lives at the biggest house in Los Angeles or one of the biggest houses in Los Angeles. I can't keep up with the construction of the big houses. People want to be close to money, power, and success, and they will overlook your flaws to be close to you.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:03:18):
And again, you talk about this in the book. You're not describing how the world should work. This is just how it is, and this is how you can be successful in the world that we live in.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:03:28):
And by the way, this is how the world not only is, but how it was and how it will be. Because these ideas are not something that I sat down one day and made up or something. These ideas, everything that I talk about, including this last one, has social science and logic behind it. So you can explain not only what is, but why it is.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:03:58):
So, let's talk about Trump for a bit. At the beginning of your book, you say that basically you were going to write a book about why Trump is so successful and what he's done so well. And your realization is no one's going to pay attention if here's how to be like Trump. And essentially, if you think about all these rules, it's clear he is very good at all of these things.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:04:16):
That's correct. By the way, not because he read the book, but because he does it through trial and error or something.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:04:22):
So when people hear that, they're like, I don't want to be Trump. I don't like how Trump is. I don't want to be seen that way. Do you have any thoughts on just how to make people feel comfortable following some of these powers and building power, knowing that, oh wow, maybe he's the epitome of some of this stuff?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:04:38):
I will tell you a story. In 1993, a woman named Laura Esserman, who's a doctor, took my class. She claims publicly that this is the only class at Stanford for which she did all the reading. By the way, while she was getting her MBA at Stanford, she was having her first child and practicing medicine full time. Laura Esserman said to me one day, "You have a case. You have cases on all these people doing evil things. Why don't you ever write a case about somebody doing good things?" And of course, I wrote a case about her. So she comes to the class. Case was published in probably 2003, 2004.

(01:05:31):
She comes to the class and the students are, what is the right word? Hard on her? That would be a modest thing. The students eviscerate her because she is incredibly smart, incredibly well-intentioned, but she will not network. She says, "I don't have time for schmoozing." She will not do almost any of the stuff that we talk about today. So she and her husband, Michael Endicott, two of my closest friends in the world, and I go out to lunch afterwards. And smoke is coming out of her ears and she is pissed off. And this is a very accomplished woman and a very smart woman. And she's pissed. I said to her, "Laura, you have boundless energy and boundless intelligence. You're a force of nature. Let me discuss something from the past subject of physics.

(01:06:39):
You are creating friction. With enough force you can overcome the friction. If you reduce the friction, just think how much more you could accomplish." And she looked at me and changed. And I will tell you, and I've said this publicly, because I get to introduce her for all the awards she's won, and she's now won a ton of them. Including Time Magazine 2016 list of a hundred most influential people in the world. And I say to people, and I say it with pride, that of all the things I've done in my life, the thing I'm most proud of and most proud of is creating Laura Esserman.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:07:20):
That is an awesome story and a really good way of thinking about this from a different angle.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:07:24):
Yeah, no, and I said to Laura, I said, "You want to make profound changes in the drug development process. You want to make profound changes in whether or not we learn from the treatments that are being given to people. You want to make profound changes in the connection between research and teaching, research and practice. You want to do all these things. If you are going to accomplish any of these things, you need to cross the bridge." And she hasn't crossed the bridge completely and she and I joke about it. But she crossed the bridge a lot and she has accomplished incredible things. She's won every cancer award that can be given. And by the way, she's won all these awards for the American Cancer Society, who she fought with. She's won these awards from the Susan Cohen Foundation, who she fought with.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:08:20):
This is an incredible example of the opening quote to your book that I have here. "If you want power to be used for good, more good people need to have power."

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:08:28):
That's exactly right.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:08:30):
And I like the, it's like a quote attributed to me, is how you...

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:08:34):
Yeah. Well, I don't remember saying it, but somebody said, I said it. I'll take credit for it. I said to Laura, "You want to change medicine? Medicine is not going to change without the application of power and influence." If change was going to happen, it would've happened already. You have to take on entrenched interests. She has a whole thing, which we need not go into because it's pretty technical, on screening. She said, everybody's getting a mammogram every year beyond a certain age, which is stupid for a variety of reasons. You can read, she was on the PBS NewsHour about this. This is what got her in trouble with the radiologists. The radiologists, of course, are selling screening. She said, there's some people that need to be screened every month, and there's some people that need to be screened never because of their genetics. She wants custom tailored screening or precision screening. Anyway, she fights everybody.

(01:09:29):
Richard Blum, Dianne Feinstein's husband, both Dianne and Richard Blum are now deceased, was at a thing where she launched the Athena Project. The Athena Project, she's now, with her collaborators, collecting data on the diagnosis and treatment and outcome for 150,000 patients in the University of California Healthcare System. So I'm supposed to give some opening talk to provide entertainment. And Dick Blum is there. Dick Blum, of course is wealthy. He's Dianne Feinstein's husband. I said to him, "Dick, how did Laura get you here?" And I still remember, I think this is a quote in one of the books I wrote. He said to me, he said, "Look." He said, "I've learned that at the end of the day when Laura asks you to do something, you may say no, but at the end of the day, you're going to do it anyway. Save yourself the aggravation."

Lenny Rachitsky (01:10:20):
Oh man, I feel like you're just endlessly full of good stories that we could just keep going on and on. Let me try to summarize the rules of power real quick and see if anything else emerges. And then have just a couple more questions. So the Seven Rules of Power, get out of your own way, break the rules, show up in a powerful fashion, create a powerful brand, network relentlessly, use your power, and understand that once you've acquired power, that what you did to get there will be forgiven, forgotten, or both. Let me ask you a question, maybe half in jest. You teach people how to acquire power. Why aren't you the most powerful man in the world?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:10:57):
Ah, that's a very good question. To which I have a very good answer. I have a colleague who's unfortunately now deceased, by the name of James G. March, who was a very, very distinguished scholar. And James March said to me many, many years ago, something which is completely true. You can have power or you can have autonomy, but you cannot have both. And I have chosen to live a life of freedom, autonomy. I could tell you stories that would bring tears to your eyes. I'll tell you one. We had a dean of the Business School whose wife was dying of cancer, and she was projected to die in the fall. So the Business School goes to him and says, we'll give you the fall off to be with your wife. She lives until June. It's now winter.

(01:11:46):
You have responsibilities as the Dean of the Business School. You have to meet with alumni. You have to go around and raise money. You have to show up at events, university events. I do not necessarily think that is how he wanted to spend the winter and spring quarters, but that's what you have to do. When I wanted Jack Valenti to come to my class, I did not call Jack Valenti. I called Judy Dickey. Judy Dickey was his assistant. Judy Dickey controlled his schedule. I meet Jack on such and such a day. He can't make it on that day. Fine. I can adjust the schedule. Can he make it on this day?

(01:12:24):
When I wanted my friend Gary Loveman, who ran Harrah's and Caesars and then was the number two executive at Aetna, I want him to come to my class. I called Reggie Kirk. I didn't call Gary Loveman. And that's all you need to know. I do not have an assistant who controls my schedule. I control my schedule. You will not find my Outlook calendar on any website, on any computer. I want autonomy. If I said to you, "Lenny, I will give you $1 billion, or for that matter, $10 billion if you can buy-"

Lenny Rachitsky (01:13:01):
Yes.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:13:02):
Wait, if you can have last week again. You can't. You can't. Time goes in only one direction. I want control of my time. It is much more important to me, being a Dean or an Associate Dean, a job that I was asked to do. I took one academic administrative job. I'm actually memorialized, believe it or not, in the Stanford Record, as having led, and this is according to my expenses, the Nobel Prize winner who was Dean at the time, that I led the biggest and most successful transformation in the history of higher education. I did it. I did it once. I didn't like it. Life is too short. I want to do what I like.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:13:52):
That's a really profound point that I think people don't think about, is there's always this drive to acquire power. And your point is that there's a big downside, which is a lack of autonomy. Yeah. You think about the, as I was trying to get Satya Nadella on the podcast, and I talked to his comms people, and they're like, every hour for the next three months is booked already. We know what he's doing. He's extremely booked. And you think about the president, obviously at Elon. I totally get what you're saying.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:14:17):
It is true, and I don't want to do that. And by the way, power also comes with enormous visibility. Donald Trump has done, for 40 years, what he's now being accused of doing, the tax stuff, all this stuff. He's been a grifter all his life. But when you become President, people are going to look at things that in the past they would not have looked at. You become president of a university, you're going to have scrutiny as the President of Harvard Law and the President of Stanford Law, when they both had to resign, in one case because of plagiarism, in another case because of research misconduct.

(01:14:55):
Power comes. You're going to be put under a microscope. People are going to look at what car you drive. They're going to look at who you go out with. They're going to look at how you spend your time. They're going to look at how you associate with, you'll have no privacy. You'll have very little control over your life. Everybody will feel completely free to dissect you in public, in private, whatever. And you'll face the trust dilemma. When you are rich and powerful the question will be, are people praising you, are people associating with you because of you or because of the position you hold?

Lenny Rachitsky (01:15:41):
Yeah. Do you spend any time, just to follow this thread in your class, convincing people stop being so obsessed with power, stop being so obsessed with becoming the top of everything? Is that a part of the class?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:15:52):
No.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:15:52):
Or is it just...

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:15:53):
No. I teach them, they see we have a class on the price of power. I bring out Rudy Crew. Rudy Crew was the New York School's Chancellor under Rudy Giuliani. By the way, he tells many interesting stories about Rudy Giuliani, who did not just become the joke that he is overnight. He's worked hard to become that. But in any event, he tells. And one year, one year, because his daughter at that time was living in the Bay Area, when I asked him about the effect of the positions he held, Head of Miami Dade County Schools, Head of New York City schools.

(01:16:29):
Had Hillary ever won, he would've been Secretary of Education. Literally. There's Lauren in the room. And he said to the class, Jeffrey asked me the question, "Why don't we let Lauren answer it?" By the time she was finished, there was not a dry eye in the room. What is it like to be the child? What is it like to be the significant other of these people? And you know the answer to that because you can see the suicides, the divorce rates. There is a price that not only you pay, but a price that your family pays.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:17:09):
I think that's a really good balance to the entire conversation. Maybe just as a last question, what if we give the audience a homework assignment to work on these power rules? What's something that you'd recommend someone try to do? I know it's probably dependent on what they're good at, not good at. What's something that they could do to start moving towards one of these rules?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:17:28):
So what I would say, and it comes from something that you talked about in our conversation at several times, which is this is uncomfortable. Okay. So if I want you to do something uncomfortable, I could say, "Lenny, go do this uncomfortable thing on your own." Or I can say, "Lenny, I want you to do this with help, with social support." And so the first thing I would say to someone is, if you think this is uncomfortable, or if you think you're not skilled at this, get coaching. Get a coach.

(01:18:03):
I send out regularly the list of the coaches who work with my online and on-campus classes. Happy to do it. And they're happy to have the business. Get a coach. Get a personal board of directors like they talk about in the Wall Street Journal. In other words, get people who will give you advice, give you social support, and hold you accountable. That's the very first thing I would tell people to do. It's hard to do anything on your own. If I said to you, "Lenny, I want you to start an extraordinarily successful podcast and I want you to do it without any help." You would not be where you are today. So that simple principle, get help.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:18:48):
It feels like a part of rule number one. Get out of your own way. Ask for help. Jeffrey, I was nervous for this podcast because I thought this was going to be super uncomfortable stuff. It turns out all of this makes so much sense, and there's a really nice way of framing all of these rules, and there's so much reason to actually invest in these skills. So I really appreciate you putting in the time being here, sharing all these stories and insights. Is there anything else you want to share as a kind of a final note or something to leave listeners with before we wrap up? We did it. We covered everything?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:19:19):
No, I'm happy. I'm happy you're a very good interviewer, which is why your podcast is so successful.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:19:24):
I appreciate that.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:19:25):
I'm happy to spend the time with you, and I hope whoever listens to this will, I hope, first of all, there'll be a lot of listeners, but I also hope that they will find it useful.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:19:32):
I know they will. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they, or find your book, I guess, if they want to learn more? And then how can listeners be useful to you?

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:19:41):
So you can find my book anywhere where books are sold. Don't look at a physical bookstore because nobody carries it, including actually Stanford bookstore, where they run out of it if people... And you can find it on Amazon. Seven Rules of Power. So that's how you can find the book. By the way, at the end of the book I talk about, I have a personal website, jeffreypfeffer.com. If you go to that website, you can find my course outline. So you can take the course on your own if you want, or get somebody or take it in a group of people.

(01:20:13):
You can find research, you can find articles, you can find columns. You can follow me on LinkedIn or I don't do Twitter anymore, but you can follow me on LinkedIn. So there are a lot of resources available for this. A company was once thinking of hiring me to give a talk in their organization, and the woman who wound up hiring me said, "When I was discussing you and arguing that we should hire you for this presentation, one of the people in the committee said, is he a good presenter?" And her answer, I love this. I remember this. Her answer was, "He's a fabulous educator." My job is to educate. That is why I have done what I have done for now more than 50 years.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:03):
Holy moly. I didn't even realize that.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:21:06):
For more than 50 years, I have been in the business of education. Not just about power, but about many other things as well. But I'm in the education business, so I'm happy to provide people with the resources, with the readings. The Seven Rules of Power is well footnoted. It talks at the end about we could reach out for the coaches. You can go to the website and get the book. But I think consistent with what you and I have talked about, if all you do is read, you're not going to make very much progress. You have to do it. You cannot learn tennis by reading about tennis, or by watching a movie about Serena or Venus Williams. You have to actually get out on the court and do it.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:51):
Which is a good plug for your other book, the Knowing-Doing Gap, which actually helps you with the skill, which you can also find all your finer retailers. Jeffrey Pfeffer, thank you so much for being here.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (01:22:04):
Thank you for having me on your show.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:22:06):
Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at LennysPodcast.com. See you in the next episode.