RULE 53

Cultivate those in the know

Always remember it’s not who you know, but whom you know. And in business there are movers and shakers and there are worker ants. You need to know who the movers and shakers are – and cultivate them. Often senior management have PAs that act as guards – you don’t get to talk to God but you do get to be brushed off by God’s right-hand PA. You have to get on the right side of the PA and that means charm and politeness, tact and discretion, gamesmanship and ruthless cunning.

I once worked for a boss who used a business consultant as his sort of unofficial PA – she shielded and protected him from having to talk to his staff. Her surname was Burton and everyone called her Mrs Burton except those in the boss’s inner circle who called her JB.

I started to call her JB also and the first few times she looked at me quite horrified – I was only a junior manager and not entitled to do so. But I got away with it. After a few weeks the boss heard me call her JB and assumed I had been accepted into her inner circle of close chums and colleagues. He started to give me more responsibility, which meant she started to give me respect as I was obviously one of his favourites – and they bounced off each other, each believing me to be the other’s accepted one and I got preferential treatment from both.

Lots of people think that (a) the ‘old school tie’ system is dead, or (b) if it ain’t dead it ought to be, or (c) it is dead and therefore a new system has taken its place and having to know those in the know no longer counts, and/or (d) raw talent will always shine through.

Some of the above may be true. The old school tie thing will never be dead because those in the know are the ones who still run that particular club. It might not be school any more, instead it might be the golf club, charity work, breakfast clubs, university, family, previous places of work, old friends, whatever. People in the know like to collect round them people they also know and therefore can trust. You have to get to know those around those who need to be known: cultivate them, then become one of those around those in the know – and then become one of those in the know. What you do then is entirely up to you.