Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don't

One implication of this phenomenon for you is that the specific organization or domain in which you rise to power may matter less than the fact that you manage to achieve high-level status someplace. The prestige and power that come from achieving a senior position will generalize to some extent to other contexts, providing you with status there as

If hierarchy is a fact of organizational life and, in fact, apparently preferred by people, then hierarchical arrangements will be omnipresent.

People—and companies—fall into competency traps. They are successful because they do certain things in a certain way.

So don’t worry about how your efforts to build your path to power are affecting your employer, because your employer is probably not worrying about you. Neither are your coworkers or “partners,” if you happen to have any—they are undoubtedly thinking about your usefulness to them, and you will be gone, if they can manage it, when you are no longer

We seem to like markets and democracies for societies, but prefer more dictatorial arrangements inside organizations.

If you feel yourself getting tired or burned out and you hold a position of substantial power, you might as well leave. There are going to be others who will be willing to wrest your position from you. With reduced energy and vigilance, you won’t be able to resist very well in any case.

Companies and leaders can fail to see the changes in the social environment that can make old ways less successful than they once were. The tendency of power to diminish the power holder’s attention and sensitivity to others with less power compounds this problem. The combination of diminished vigilance and changed circumstances often leads to the

It’s easier to lose your patience when you are in power—power leads to disinhibition, to not watching what you say and do, to being more concerned about yourself than about the feelings of others. But losing patience causes people to lose control and offend others, and that can cost them their jobs.

In spite of many studies showing the superior performance achieved through delegating decision-making authority, little devolution of power has occurred inside companies in the last 50 years.