CHAPTER 1

Get Ready for a Potent Mix of Brilliance and Drive

Tenacity and perseverance are the way to success.

—Ted rogers, founder and CEO, Rogers communications

If you want to learn how to influence powerful people, you must first understandwhere their power comes from. It is way too simple to assume that power issimply conferred by position. Within any business organization or government,there may be people with impressive-sounding titles who are mere figureheads.Others may hold unassuming positions yet wield great power; you must have themon your side if you want to get anywhere or move ahead with your priorities.

In that regard, there is much to learn from larger-than-life characters who didnot simply have position bestowed on them, but made it to the top whileothers—who might have had equal potential—fell by the wayside. Whenyou then deal with the powerful person in your specific circumstance, it will bewise to assume that these qualities are present at least in some measure.

Brilliance

A few years back, I worked with a senior political staffer who was incrediblyadept at making things happen through influence. His first insight to help himdo his job was that his boss, a U.S. governor, was smarter than he was. Thatassumption served him extremely well. It reflected great humility and unbiasedassessment of reality.

A review of the accomplishments of larger-than-life characters easily revealsthat many of them are indeed brilliant and that this quality has contributed inno small measure to their rise to power. What makes these "geniuses" especiallypowerful is that they have much more than just technical or subject-matterexpertise. From the basis of knowing their business inside and out, they areable to derive unique insight and intuition regarding the development of anentire industry. This insight can even extend further to become a catalyst forchange that affects global business, society, and culture at large. Thefollowing are but a few examples:

>> Ferdinand Piëch, the chairman of auto giant Volkswagen, may not have inheritedthe last name of his famous grandfather Ferdinand Porsche, but he is nonethelessan exceptionally gifted car designer. From a very early age, his life revolvedaround automobiles. Piëch can sketch a complete engine or drive system infreehand, and his design innovations on a napkin are reported to be many. Unlikemost engineers and designers today, he certainly does not need a CAD (computer-aideddesign) workstation. Piëch is equally skilled at orchestrating the high-stakesacquisition and turnaround strategies that have propelled Volkswagen tobecome one of the world's largest car companies with the ongoing ambition totake the top spot from rival Toyota.

>> Steve Jobs, cofounder and chief executive of Apple, is, of course, thebrilliant inventor of Apple's many computers and gadgets, the latest revelationof which is always a highly anticipated occasion. Jobs is a master at design andhas an incredible ability not just to package products but also to reinvent theway they are used—the ultimate fusion of form and function. Beyond that,the business press around the world ascribes huge cultural influence to SteveJobs, as when Fortune crowned him CEO of the decade. The German weeklyDer Spiegel writes that, as the "philosopher of the 21st century," Jobshas convinced humankind that Apple products make their lives (and modern life atlarge) cool and easy. In fact, he has made us "want to need" his products. Weneed an iMac desktop for the office, a MacBook for the road, an iPod forjogging, an iPad for education, and an iPhone to stay connected. We couldn'timagine life without these devices.

>> In the world of publishing, Rupert Murdoch, the creator, chairman and managingdirector of media juggernaut News Corporation, perfected the art of tabloidjournalism and knows how to make newspapers profitable. While being incrediblyhands-on, Murdoch also was the first to develop the vision for expanding newsdelivery beyond a single medium (in his case, the newspaper) and created amultisource news corporation. The takeover of the venerated Wall StreetJournal was probably his most triumphant achievement as a deal maker.Lately, Rupert Murdoch has taken the lead in revisiting the practice of freenews content delivery over the Internet.

>> Conrad Black, whose media empire once included the Chicago Sun-Times,Britain's Daily Telegraph, and the Jerusalem Post and whoremains embroiled in an epic battle with the U.S. judicial system, remains knownfor his tremendous intellect. His command of the English language is legendary,as is his incrediblle on-the-spot brilliance and encyclopedic knowledge of worldhistory and current affairs. His biographer Richard Siklos wrote of a mmmmeetingwith British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at which Lord Black was easilyable to enlighten the head of the Tories on the nineteenth-century history ofher party. He did it without any sort of preparation and simply based on hisvast knowledge at hand, all the while conversing in a pleasant and fascinatingmanner. That was no easy feat at all and left an impression on Thatcher.

>> Frank Stronach, the Austrian-Canadian chairman of auto parts powerhouse MagnaInternational, proves that innovation and change leadership can be just aseffective in established (some may say old) hardware-oriented industries. Atool-and-die maker by trade, he built his auto parts empire outward from itsNorth American roots and continued to thrive while the former Big Threecarmakers found themselves mired in a fight for survival. Most notably, heunderstood early on that automotive industry leadership was not just a matter ofracing to lower costs; rather, the industry needed low cost andinnovation. Therefore, Stronach continued to invest in research and developmentwhile others only cut costs. His simple yet extremely powerful mantra is todeliver "a better product at a better...