Executive Chess

Two young men sit sipping their pieluncheon cocktails. They are about of an age, they are dressed much alike. The meals they order won't vary much one from the other. At the office they sit in adjoining cubbyholes, they share a secretary, they call each other by their first names – and yet they are tacit enemies in almost mortal combat. Ten years from now. they both know, one of them will have the private corner office, the five-figure income, the duplex town house or the home in the suburbs, the wife warm and socially secure in mink. One of them will live in confidence and selfrespect, the other one will go to bed to lie silent and awake, prey to the gnawings of fear and failure. One will lose, and one will win.

If it all sounds like something from contemporary fiction – books, movies, TV – that's because the last few years have seen the creation of a new image of the American executive – a schemer, a politician, a manipulator of men, a Machiavelli in a f. Press suit. The board room has become his court of intrigue, the conference table his battlefield. Here he wages the war of personality, jockeys for status, strives for upward mobility, may devote more time to the techniques of interoffice guerilla warfare than to the business which pays his salary.

Such a portrait reflects one of the prime concerns of modern corporate leaders: the state of human, or inhuman, relations within the executive hier-archies. For the giant corporations want to put an end to the growing rate of mental breakdown and conniving among its elite. "If we allow ourselves to cut our own throats," warns one company president, "if we don't channel our ambitions, develop loyal managerial talent and firmly control interoffice conflict, we'll sap our own strength.

"Which," he adds in an aside, "we sorely need to kick hell out of our competitors."

So. at the annual expense of millions, armies of human relations experts are swarming over guinea-pig executives, both junior and senior – examining, analyzing, correlating – all with the express purpose of understanding and controlling the executive. The means, discovered after the smoke from the IBM machines had cleared away, is contained in one ringing word: cooperation. What is needed, say the experts, is the unflinching employment of democratic techniques of leadership, inevitably involving group participation, possibly followed by a game of patty-cake. Management must be democratized, an atmosphere of middle- and upper-echelon Togetherness should benignly prevail wherein superior and subordinate meet as equals, lock arms and whistle while they work jointly for the common good.

To the chagrin of the human relations experts who came up with this solution, the cannier executives have gratefully grabbed the advice and accepted the suggested techniques as a strikingly subtle method of gaining power and manipulating men. The brighter execs have remembered a quote from George Orwell's satire Animal Farm: "All animals are created equal, but some animals are created more equal than others." Chuckling, the big-business Bonapartes proceed to swallow more and more territory and trample over more and more men – by playing the game as directed, with just a few extra flourishes.

The contribution of the pseudo-panacea by the "experts" was predictable. It is a symptom of the day. We live in an era of group-worship and the melonheads on all sides continue to interpret democracy as nothing more than equalitarianism. Because leadership – forthright, imaginative – implies superiority, it is automatically suspect as being antidemocratic. As psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan wrote, we live in an age of disparagement, the motto of which is, "If I am a molehill, then, by God, there shall be no mountains."

It is just this attitude that has allowed a lot of Americans to delude themselves into denying that differences in power exist at all. In such a cloistered climate, the refusal to consider the exercise of power and the struggle for it as natural, legitimate functions of the business executive (or the school principal, or the state senator, or the scientist) is no surprise. After all, the diverse and intricate structure of modern business (or the school system, or the government, or the laboratory)demands organization and direction of its parts. Ergo, it demands organizers and directors.

And they must be of a special breed. The exec on the way up the ladder must, of course, not only exercise control over the physical means of production – but over men. The important implications of this were explored by the author with Dr. Norman H. Martin in the Harvard Business Review: "Knowledge, reason and technical know-how will not suffice as methods of control, but give way to the arts of persuasion and inducement, of tactics and maneuver, of all that is involved in interpersonal relationships. Power cannot be given; it must be won. And the techniques and skills of winning it are. at the same time, the methods of employing it as a medium of control. This represents the political function of the power-holder."

With the acceptance of these corporate facts of life it's about time Business stopped wringing its hands and feeling shocked and guilty over the strivings of executives to get, exercise and increase power. It should rather first concern itself with how it is done – the techniques and tactics, the maneuvers employed to gain and exercise power – and secondly with the "bad" or "good" ends for which such practices may be used, ends which have their source not in the techniques themselves, but in the men who use them.

Cagey execs who have been around know full well that getting power is not simply a matter of the inevitable rise of the "best qualified." Nor is it, as the envious would insist, a matter of dumb luck, except possibly in the case of the boss' son succeeding to the office with the Bigelow on the floor. The seasoned exec is aware that his job is a brutal one: it requires dedication, imagination and skill, almost around the clock. He also knows the headaches involved in maintaining a position of power once it has been achieved.

Though the intrigues and techniques of the executive are endlessly subtle and intricate, a look at the six basic executive ploys common to effectiveness in all areas of activity will provide us an index of action in the game of Executive Chess:

The creation of alliances. Like the man says, "It's not what you know, but who you know." A business organization – any business organization – is made up of a series of sponsor-protégé relationships. The fellow on the way up – the mobile protégé – digs the fact that his rate of advancement depends heavily on these relationships. The sponsoring exec – the one who already owns a key to the private washroom – reaps benefits too: he's got a loyal and protective subordinate who serves as a communication system through which the exec can sense the political piilse of the organization.

In the establishing of such mutually beneficial alliances, the psychological process of upward identification is involved. The successful protdge is one who takes his superior as a model. He grows closer to him in tastes, interests, values, philosophy. In a sense he strives to become like him, to become one with him. In this way he prepares himself for upward mobility, he is Ready When Called. At the same time, he has escaped intellectual commitment to, and emotional involvement in, that level of society he wishes to leave.

The sophisticated protege is aware that what he is socially will partially determine his "promotability." His preference for golf or bowling, bridge or canasta, Vivaldi or Rachmaninoff, all help his superiors judge whether he "fits," if he is "one of them" – considerations at least as important as his ability to do the actual work.

Increasingly, the company wants to know the young executive's wife, it wants to observe the couple together over cocktails at the club or dinner in the home; for in such situations the intangible of "class" is most clearly marked. The small behaviors and atti-tudes by which the promising executive is located in the hierarchy that-is social class cannot be simulated, but emanate from his being a member of the class. And it is through identification with his superiors, with the class to which they belong, that the aspirant executive becomes a member of that class, and thus eligible for promotion.

The ambitious young executive may concentrate hardest on alliances with his superiors, but he does not confine himself to them. He may have fruitful alliances on his own level, and on levels beneath him. For example, two or more young men may band together for common protection and advancement, splitting apart only when they have gone so high that they are forced into conflict with each other. They may demonstrate remarkable loyalty to each other for a long time. Until one of them died a few years ago, two of the country's leading book-publishing executives were comparatively young men who had allied themselves in their first $45-a-week jobs. Each served as an extension of the other, in information-gathering, in alliance-making, in working; and the reaction of each of them to attack on the other was instant and brutal. One was an upward-striver, specializing in alliances with his superiors; the other, whose work-performance was more striking, concentrated on alliances on his own level and below. Object: information. It was rare that a top policy decision, however secret, was longer than 24 hours in coming to them, from one area or the other. Thus their own plans were always in stream with the organization's, and their progress was commensurately rapid.

The dog-eat-dog motif of business life today may appear to have been overemphasized in some popular treatments, but any young executive will know a good deal of the seamy side of things long before he moves into the corner office with the liquor cabinet in the wall. The seduction of the boss' secretary has opened many a gate for ambition. The risks are great, but so are the rewards. Many a competitor has been taken out of play by the judicious use of carbon paper: memoranda of mild rebuke, inquiry or surprise at a task undone are addressed to the victim but he never receives them because only the carbons are sent to his superiors and the originals are destroyed as soon as typed. The boss soon begins to wonder if he has not, perhaps, overestimated someone. Satirist Shepherd Mead wrought wry humor out of this and related ploys in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and he did it without exaggerating overmuch – without really trying, one might say. A refusal to produce corroborative information in conference is also common and wickedly executive Chess effective: Executive Jones, woefully watching his brain child take a beating from his superiors in conclave assembled, turns to Smith, who had privately promised to support him. Says Smith: "Seems a kind of oddball idea to me. I don't think I like it."

Flexibility. The clever executive strives to maintain his flexibility. Decisiveness in action is balanced by caution in future commitment. He has minimum and maximum goals, and alternative courses of action ready to carry him toward those goals. And if forces beyond his control block him, he is able to retreat without loss of face.

An oil company executive, just before the recession and war threats assumed full stature, urged an elaborate program of expansion in the Near East. He appeared to have staked his professional future on it, and when economic and political conditions made it not only inadvisable but impossible, his rivals in management sat back happily and waited for him to squirm. He came up immediately with a fully worked-out program for new-product research, ideal for a battened-down economy. He'd had it in reserve all the time.

The same flexibility shows itself in the executive's interpersonal relationships. His alliances with those above him are marked by limited loyalty and attachment. He does not want his career to depend entirely on one man, for no one is indispensable, not even the boss. For the same reasons, he provides himself with interindustry connections, so that he will be able to move elsewhere should it become advisable or necessary.

The technique of delayed timing. no matter how powerful an executive, there are times when he is urged to do things he doesn't want to do. The will of his colleagues and subordinates, the demands of his superiors, the political pressures of his enemies may set up a total of forces which the executive dare not ignore. If he yields, he relinquishes his authority; if he refuses, he risks offering dangerous offense. The clever executive masters such situations by delayed timing. He takes the matter under advisement, he studies it in detail, he plans for it, he discovers difficulties that must be overcome and possible consequences that must be taken into account; he is always in the process of doing something but he never quite does it. He cannot be accused of negligence, but the undesirable program dies on the vine.

When it's possible, the really masterful executive takes full charge of a scheme to which he is in opposition, if it shows any likelihood of succeeding in spite of him. An advertising director found his company taken over by the young son of the founder, and the boy's first idea was that the major product of the house should be radically reoriented to appeal exclusively to women. It had two major drawbacks from the adman's viewpoint: it was a lousy idea; perhaps more importantly, it emanated from a threatening source – but there was no simple arguing against it, for that very reason. So the ad director simply took it over, not enthusiastically, but willingly, for "investigation and implementation." He hired a leading – and very expensive – firm of market analysts to make surveys. He engaged researchers to look into similar policy-switches in the past. He kept the thing going for nearly nine months. By that time the unimplemented proposal had consumed a depressing amount of money and time – as the adman had hinted it might. The boy president discovered he had other irons in the fire, and was willing to listen to reason.

The grapevine. the trend among "experts" in industrial relations is to urge that the channels of communication be opened wide. The theory is that subordinates should be aware of what is going on in management – and vice versa. If everyone knows everything, the argument goes, destructive scuttlebutt will be killed. The skillful executive, however, realizes that knowledge is indeed power, and as such he is not eager to relinquish it. He finds it to his advantage to withhold information, temporarily or permanently. He determines who gets to know what, and when.

This often involves using the grapevine, the informal communication system built into every office, like its electrical system. For example, a vice-president may be concerned by the increasing tardiness of his executive staff. The starting hour of the work day has been progressively pushed back from 9:30 to 10 o'clock. The freedom accorded executive status has been abused. The vice-president must pull his men into the office earlier, but he must do it in such a fashion that they will not lose face. It's easy: he tells his secretary that he is thinking of setting up a spot-check on morning arrival times. He can be sure that she will gab it to the other secretaries before three hours have passed, and they in turn will loyally tell their bosses, the tardy executives. They will be more prompt in the future, and they will still have retained their conviction that they are self-regulating.

The grapevine is a two-way street. A good secretary can produce incredible amounts of information once she has been trained. Two things are necessary: she has to be taught to tell her employer everything she hears, without attempting to evaluate it, and she has to be made completely loyal. The loyalty is easy. All it takes is kindness, consideration (don't dictate any letters at 4:30 in the afternoon, don't ask her to do your shopping on her noon hour, etc.) and on top of that, a mild course of straight courting – but omitting the last step, no matter what the temptation.

The executive as croup leader. The successful executive uses the group to further his own ends, but he does not allow it to use him. He never relinquishes his authority, and he concentrates on resisting the powerful psychological phenomenon of group pull, wherein the group takes on a life of its own, becoming more important than any of its individual members, including the leader. The successful executive does not "go along with the gang." For example, he will take advice, but only when he asks for it, and he will not allow it to be forced upon him. And he is wary as to how he asks for it. He does not innocently ask, "Well, what do you think ought to be done?" He knows that men are likely to interpret such an approach as a delegation of power, and to answer it with decision rather than counsel.

The executive as performer. Some executives can walk into a staff meeting and dominate it from the start. They are at ease, they speak well, they win the arguments. Others, equally or even more capable, are less fluent and consequently lose themselves and their ideas in self-conscious mumbling and throat-clearing.

There are men who have an innate dramatic talent, of course. But the expert executive is not merely naturally eloquent, he is artfully eloquent. He thinks of communication as much more than just a means of conveying ideas; he thinks of it as a tool that can arouse, convince and produce. He knows that communication is an art, and therefore that it requires the substitution of the deliberate, the conscious, the planned, for the spontaneous. He knows the effect he wants to produce, and he determines in advance what he will do to produce this effect. Once his choice is made, he rehearses his presentation so that it will appear natural. The advantage is his: he has mapped what to most of his associates is an uncharted piece of ground.

The practice of maneuver and intrigue in these major areas, the utilization of these principles, demands a certain type of man.

A description of the successful executive must begin by emphasizing his high level of drive. The executive who wants executive chess and gets power is literally a powerhouse. He can't afford the luxury of having bad days, but performs constantly at peak level. His energy is not only mobilized, but sharply focused. He has a set of clearcut goals, and he moves toward them with a singleness of purpose which rejects all extraneous interests as wasteful expenditures of time and energy. This is not to say that he is monomaniacal. The women in his life, children, friends, outside interests all have their legitimate claims. But he takes the phrase "on the job" literally, and he takes another maxium seriously, to: "Out of sight, out of mind." His life is, in a sense, a planned series of rooms, and upon entering one he is carefull to close the door to the others behind him.

Perhaps the single most distinguishing characteristic of the successful exective is his ability to look at a man impersonally. He realizes that effective relationships with colleagues and subordinates require sensitivity to their individual needs, and even demand a certain degree of intimacy; but he never becomes emotionally involved to the point of allowing his personal feelings to act either as a basis for or a deterrent to action.

The excutive possesses a well-defined self-structure. He knows who he is, where he's going, and he believes in both his personality and his goal. He can control others because he controls himself. He thinks for himself, speaks for himself, and is for himself.

This is the personality which can best employ the tactics and maneuvers that make up the game of Executive Chess. The rewards are power, prestige and property. But there is a price to pay for such profits: the necessity to be ever vigilant and on guard, the denial of every impulse to full trust of others. And then there are the severe limitations on the executive's emotional life: his friends cannot be freely chosen. Subordinates must remain subordinate, colleagues remain subordinate, Intimacy is always potentially dangerous. And to all this we may add the propability of ulcers.

Whether the rewards of the executive role justify the price is a relative matter: the decision must be a personal one. In the same way, the economic and personal ends to which the executive may employ his power and its accompanying instrumentality of maneuver and technique will depend upon the value system of that individual, limited always by the ideology of the society within which he operates. It is here that references to "good" and "bad" business practices are relevant: the ends to which power is put. But it is pathetic joke to object to political practices per se; indeed, their neutrality is proven by the utterly oppose moral ends for which they have been used.

We have suggested that there is a correlation between the ability to employ political maneuvers successfully and a particular personality structure. Does this mean that the successful executive is a "born" executive, a "natural" leader, that he practices these echniques intuitively?

The answer is not simple. Talent, flair, gift – all "natural endowments" – are terms which are applied to abilities which are not quite understood, the supposition being that those who possess them don't quite understand them either, and that they act out of instinct rather than on the basis of knowledge.

To some extent this is undoubtedly true. Executives sometimes speak of feeling their way, and are occasionally surprised by an analysis of what they have unknowingly done. But this is exceptional. The successful executive puts his faith in intelligence and hard work. There are no substitutes for strategies that are a result of deliberate calclation. Business politics is as much a science as it is an art, and consequently the skills of its execution are acquired through application. The politically able executive is very much aware of what he's doing. In the playing of Executive Chess, as in any game which sets one man's wits against another's the gifted amateur buckles under the conscious control that is the mark of the professional.