“There’s a thing you learn at Data General, if you work here for any period of time,” said West’s lieutenant of hardware, Ed Rasala, “that nothing happens unless you push it.”¹

Women with breast cancer are taking a lesson from AIDS advocacy groups and using political action to urge the Federal and state governments to pay more attention to their disease. “They showed us how to get through to the government. . . . They took on an archaic system and turned it around while we have been quietly dying.”²

Even the brief triumph of the Model A did not halt the downward spiral of the company. Henry Ford remained locked in the past. He grew more erratic and finally senile. At the end of his life he believed that World War II did not exist, that it was simply a ploy made up by the newspapers to help the munitions industry. . . . It was a spectacular self-destruction, one that would never again be matched in a giant American corporation.⁴

By the time of World War II, the federal government actually considered taking over the company, because it was in such desperate managerial and financial condition that it could fail at any time, and the government badly needed its wartime production capabilities. In 1943, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox discharged a 26-year-old Henry Ford II from the Navy. He had a bigger, more important job to do—to take over and then save the Ford Motor Company. Henry’s father, Edsel Ford, had died of stomach cancer that same year at the age of 49. Although described as both gentle and brilliant, he had been totally dominated by the elder Ford, and had never played a major role in the company. The company had destroyed the second generation of Fords, and there were people who would have been quite happy to do the same thing with the third generation.

As Ford had grown older and more senile, effective control of the company had passed to the hands of Harry Bennett, head of the dreaded Ford Service Department, which was effectively a secret police force of hoodlums, gangsters, and ex-policemen, who exercised control through physical force. One story had it that when an employee violated the company’s policy against smoking, Bennett personally shot the cigar from the man’s mouth. With Edsel gone, and Henry Ford increasingly infirm, the only thing keeping Bennett from control of Ford was Henry Ford II.

Although Ford was in the company, with the title of vice president, Bennett constantly belittled him (as he had his father, Edsel). Moreover, the elder Ford had drawn up a codicil to his will, which stipulated that at his death, control of the company would pass to a 10-person board of directors, not including Henry Ford II, for 10 years. Henry was incensed, and threatened to resign unless the will was changed. He also warned that he would inform the company’s dealers about the firm’s sorry condition. Henry’s mother (Edsel’s widow), Eleanor Clay Ford (related to the Hudson department store family), insisted that Henry II be given control of the company or she would sell her stock. Henry’s grandmother (and the elder Ford’s wife), Clara Bryant Ford, backed Eleanor. On September 20, 1945, Henry Ford II became president of Ford Motor Company. The next day this decision was ratified by the board of directors.

Henry Ford immediately fired Bennett—after 29 years in the company, much of it as its effective boss, he was out. Inheriting a company with no financial controls and in managerial disarray, losing $10 million a month, Ford hired financial experts, including Arjay Miller, to straighten out the company’s books and records, and Ernie Breech, from Bendix, to help with the management. In the first several months in control, Ford fired more than 1,000 executives, including many of Bennett’s cronies. By 1949, Ford had instituted a pension plan with the United Auto Workers Union, the first in the industry, and brought out an all-new automobile. In 1950, the company earned a profit of $265 million. Ford and his recent hires had turned the company around, but it had taken courage and a willingness to take on some pretty tough people inside the organization to do it. Henry Ford II had managed with power.

What does it mean, to manage with power?

First, it means recognizing that in almost every organization, there are varying interests. This suggests that one of the first things we need to do is to diagnose the political landscape and figure out what the relevant interests are, and what important political subdivisions characterize the organization. It is essential that we do not assume that everyone necessarily is going to be our friend, or agree with us, or even that preferences are uniformly distributed. There are clusters of interests within organizations, and we need to understand where these are and to whom they belong.

Next, it means figuring out what point of view these various individuals and subunits have on issues of concern to us. It also means understanding why they have the perspective that they do. It is all too easy to assume that those with a different perspective are somehow not as smart as we are, not as informed, not as perceptive. If that is our belief, we are likely to do several things, each of which is disastrous. First, we may act contemptuously toward those who disagree with us—after all, if they aren’t as competent or as insightful as we are, why should we take them seriously? It is rarely difficult to get along with those who resemble us in character and opinions. The real secret of success in organizations is the ability to get those who differ from us, and whom we don’t necessarily like, to do what needs to be done. Second, if we think people are misinformed, we are likely to try to “inform” them, or to try to convince them with facts and analysis. Sometimes this will work, but often it will not, for their disagreement may not be based on a lack of information; it may, instead, arise from a different perspective on what our information means. Diagnosing the point of view of interest groups as well as the basis for their positions will assist us in negotiating with them and in predicting their response to various initiatives.

Third, managing with power means understanding that to get things done, you need power—more power than those whose opposition you must overcome—and thus it is imperative to understand where power comes from and how these sources of power can be developed. We are sometimes reluctant to think very purposefully or strategically about acquiring and using power. We are prone to believe that if we do our best, work hard, be nice, and so forth, things will work out for the best. I don’t mean to imply that one should not, in general, work hard, try to make good decisions, and be nice, but that these and similar platitudes are often not very useful in helping us get things accomplished in our organizations. We need to understand power and try to get it. We must be willing to do things to build our sources of power, or else we will be less effective than we might wish to be.

Fourth, managing with power means understanding the strategies and tactics through which power is developed and used in organizations, including the importance of timing, the use of structure, the social psychology of commitment and other forms of interpersonal influence. If nothing else, such an understanding will help us become astute observers of the behavior of others. The more we understand power and its manifestations, the better will be our clinical skills. More fundamentally, we need to understand strategies and tactics of using power so that we can consider the range of approaches available to us, and use what is likely to be effective. Again, as in the case of building sources of power, we often try not to think about these things, and we avoid being strategic or purposeful about employing our power. This is a mistake. Although we may have various qualms, there will be others who do not. Knowledge without power is of remarkably little use. And power without the skill to employ it effectively is likely to be wasted.

Managing with power means more than knowing the ideas discussed in this book. It means being, like Henry Ford, willing to do something with that knowledge. It requires political savvy to get things done, and the willingness to force the issue.

For years in the United States, there had been demonstrations and protests, court decisions and legislative proposals attempting to end the widespread discrimination against minority Americans in employment, housing, and public accommodations. The passage of civil rights legislation was a top priority for President Kennedy, but although he had charisma, he lacked the knowledge of political tactics, and possibly the will to use some of the more forceful ones, to get his legislation passed. In the hands of someone who knew power and influence inside out, in spite of the opposition of southern congressmen and senators, the legislation would be passed quickly.

In March 1965, the United States was wracked by violent reactions to civil rights marches in the South. People were killed and injured as segregationists attacked demonstrators, with little or no intervention by the local law enforcement agencies. There were demonstrators across from the White House holding a vigil as Lyndon Johnson left to address a joint session of Congress. This was the same Lyndon Johnson who, in 1948, had opposed federal antilynching legislation, arguing that it was a matter properly left to the states. This was the same Lyndon Johnson who, as a young congressional secretary and then congressman, had talked conservative to conservatives, liberal to liberals, and was said by many to have stood for nothing. This was the same Lyndon Johnson who in eight years in the House of Representatives had introduced not one piece of significant legislation and had done almost nothing to speak out on issues of national importance. This was the same Lyndon Johnson who, while in the House, had tried instead to enrich himself by influencing colleagues at the Federal Communications Commission to help him both obtain a radio station in Austin, Texas, and change the operating license to make the station immensely profitable and valuable. This was the same Lyndon Johnson who, in 1968, having misled the American people, would decide not to run for reelection because of both his association with the Vietnam War and a fundamental distrust of the presidency felt by many Americans. On that night Johnson was to make vigorous use of his power and his political skill to help the civil rights movement:

As he left the chamber after making his speech, Johnson sought out the 76-year-old chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Emmanuel Celler:

Getting things done requires power. The problem is that we would prefer to see the world as a kind of grand morality play, with the good guys and the bad ones easily identified. Obtaining power is not always an attractive process, nor is its use. And it somehow disturbs our sense of symmetry that a man who was as sleazy, to use a term of my students, as Lyndon Johnson was in some respects, was also the individual who almost single-handedly passed more civil rights legislation in less time with greater effect than anyone else in U.S. history. We are troubled by the issue of means and ends. We are perplexed by the fact that “bad” people sometimes do great and wonderful things, and that “good” people sometimes do “bad” things, or often, nothing at all. Every day, managers in public and private organizations acquire and use power to get things done. Some of these things may be, in retrospect, mistakes, although often that depends heavily on your point of view. Any reader who always does the correct thing that pleases everyone should immediately contact me—we will get very wealthy together. Mistakes and opposition are inevitable. What is not inevitable is passivity, not trying, not seeking to accomplish things.

In many domains of activity we have become so obsessed with not upsetting anybody, and with not making mistakes, that we settle for doing nothing. Rather than rebuild San Francisco’s highways, possibly in the wrong place, maybe even in the wrong way, we do nothing, and the city erodes economically without adequate transportation. Rather than possibly being wrong about a new product, such as the personal computer, we study it and analyze it, and lose market opportunities. Analysis and forethought are, obviously, fine. What is not so fine is paralysis or inaction, which arise because we have little skill in overcoming the opposition that inevitably accompanies change, and little interest in doing so.

Theodore Roosevelt, making a speech at the Sorbonne in 1910, perhaps said it best:

It is easy and often comfortable to feel powerless—to say, “I don’t know what to do, I don’t have the power to get it done, and besides, I can’t really stomach the struggle that may be involved.” It is easy, and now quite common, to say, when confronted with some mistake in your organization, “It’s not really my responsibility, I can’t do anything about it anyway, and if the company wants to do that, well, that’s why the senior executives get the big money—it’s their responsibility.” Such a response excuses us from trying to do things; in not trying to overcome opposition, we will make fewer enemies and are less likely to embarrass ourselves. It is, however, a prescription for both organizational and personal failure. This is why power and influence are not the organization’s last dirty secret, but the secret of success for both individuals and their organizations. Innovation and change in almost any arena require the skill to develop power, and the willingness to employ it to get things accomplished. Or, in the words of a local radio newscaster, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.”