Useful advice ... follow it
Psychology's 150-year scientific history has taught, among other things, that people don't follow advice. When people change their behavior, it is because they have learned something new, or relearned something they should have remembered. They have persuaded themselves to change their own behavior. Pfeffer knows all this very well. Why then does he fill his book "Power: Why some people _____________________________________________________________________________________
Pfeffer, Jeffrey Power: Why some people have it - and others don't 2010, HarperCollins Publishers, New York NY, ix + 273 pages
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have it - and others don't" with advice? The answer: because Pfeffer expects his readers to be seeking insights about how to guide their own career into positions of high influence and high reward. His readers want to learn and, thus, may learn. The book is a-reproduction-in-print of the elective course Pfeffer teaches at Stanford University called "The Paths to Power." The virtues of Pfeffer's advice are that (a) he warns readers (correctly) that, for the most part, books and courses offering secrets of leadership are hazardous to one's career, concealing much, much more than they reveal and falsely understanding the causes of success, (b) he closely links his advice to credible research evidence, a rare but vital feature of valid counsel about how-to-help-your-career, and (c) he recognizes (correctly) that we live in a mixed-up and unfair world and are primarily responsible for our own career progress. Further, (d) Pfeffer is understandable, down to earth, very practical, very realistic, while advising from an evidence-based background about how people behave in organizations and how organizations go about their business.
Pfeffer opens his advice with a list of rewards for having power, closes it with a list of the costs when one has power. He advises (correctly) that "it takes more than performance," noting the evidence that gaining the top spot is not closely correlated with being the top performer. We receive much instruction in world cultures that self-promotion is injurious to oneself, but Pfeffer teaches (correctly) that self promotion is necessary. He teaches appropriate ways for accomplishing being noticed and achieving influence. He examines how and why people lose power. Knowing that every career experiences setbacks, Pfeffer considers how one deals with defeat, with being fired.
Pfeffer's book displays an important oversight. Citing evidence that is solid, Pfeffer advises that "it takes more than performance" to get ahead. Having understood this, the reader has the responsibility to learn and do the things that are needed to win leadership roles and influence ... not simply perform well at his/her job and expect to be noticed. Pfeffer's advice seems to be "If you want leadership, take it." That idea implies that the individual taking leadership is the only one who has a stake in who leads. That can't be right!
This reviewer knows, as does Pfeffer, that job performance as routinely assessed in business, government, and non-profits today has much too little impact upon career outcomes for individuals. Many excellent performers are not recognized and rewarded. Is that as things must be? Is job performance assessment as practiced seeing what it should and could be seeing? I think not. We have as leaders only those without knowledge of the behavioral and management sciences ... and so are using almost none of the knowledge from those sciences. The research I've seen and done in a five-decade career in North America's Fortune 50 corporations urges that job performance can be measured, even in executive and professional jobs, that it can be measured much more usefully than any organization is doing it today, and that job performance measurements should provide guidance in determining who is invited to take more responsibility. There is evidence enough that many, many mistakes are made in selecting leaders (or allowing a person into a leadership role ... depending on how one construes what happens). Failures we've seen in top leadership in the first decade of the twenty first century have been dramatic. The sad truth is that poor leadership exists not just at top levels. I admire Pfeffer's advice (reach out and take leadership), think it enormously practical, think it fits the world as it is ... but also think the world needs some significant changes in order to make it better than it is. Measuring job performance well and then being guided by these measurements in choosing leaders are some of the important improvements needed in organizational life as we know it. Science knows how to make the measurements. The role of leader belongs to the leader not only for what it will do for the leader but also for what it will do for the organization being led and for all of society's stakeholders as impacted by that organization.
Yes, make Pfeffer's Power a book you keep at hand for frequent rereading. Yes, give this book to offspring, colleagues and friends for their reading. For completeness sake, stick a copy of this review in the book that you pass along.
Bellevue, Washington
3 October 2010
Paul F. Ross, Ph.D., Industrial and Organizational Psychologist (retired)
Career experience at Exxon, Arthur D. Little Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation, Texas Instruments, The Prudential, Imperial Oil Ltd. of Canada, The Ohio State University, Harvard University, State of California, Commissioner of Higher Education for The Netherlands, and with other clients
Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don't
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