The best path to power combines two things: 1) a path that not many are taking and 2) something that you are capable and comfortable with doing.
Jeffrey PfefferLying is common in social life, often done for benign purposes, seldom draws severe sanctions, and many of the most notable leaders, including the late Steve Jobs, were consummate prevaricators. Told with enough persistence and conviction, what was once untrue can become true, in a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way.
Jeffrey PfefferTypical pay increases are not enough to motivate employees, but they are enough to irritate them. โฆ Even when companies create seemingly significant pay differentiation between low and high performers, the actual cash increase is insufficient to sustain performance โ or it drives the wrong behaviors. โฆ Effective management is a system, not a pay plan. The mistake is that companies try to solve all their problems with pay.
Jeffrey PfefferPeople who don't have as much power as they would like often begin by attributing their difficulties to the environment - competitors, bosses, economic circumstances, and so forth. But in reality people are customarily their own biggest impediment to being as powerful as they would like.
Jeffrey PfefferThe single biggest barrier to effective leadership is, in my view, the leadership industry itself. Instead of telling people the skills and behaviors they need to be effective in getting things done, we tell them almost the opposite - blandishments about how we wish people would be, and how we wish workplaces were. That information is worse than useless as, to the extent people believe it, they often wind up losing their jobs.
Jeffrey Pfeffer