What Can Machiavelli Teach You About Business?

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3- Don't let others know what you're thinking
Once you become predictable, your power decreases significantly. To succeed in business, as in a poker game, you must hide your true thoughts. If people see you coming, you give them time to prepare to outdo you. Catch them off-guard with your actions. In The Godfather , Don Corleone was right to admonish Sonny for revealing an interest in Virgil "The Turk" Sollozo's proposition. It messed up a deal that eventually led to Corleone's attempted assassination.

Think Steve Jobs in a real-world, less deadly scenario. When computers were becoming dull, beige and predictable, he launched the diminutive and colorful iMac, which became a bestseller.

4- Appeal to people's passions
To gain loyalty, a leader must often appeal to passion over reason. Politicians know this, it's why they resort to emotionally-charged concepts like liberty and patriotism. In business, this is called marketing. Successful products use publicity, which appeal to emotions, using happiness, security and acceptance as their main selling points. Once a customer associates your product with something fundamentally good, you have gained a loyal consumer.

Why do you think chewing gum sells so well? Its ads promise fresh breath and therefore social acceptance, playing on two fundamental human traits: vanity and fear of being rejected.

5- Assume your competitors want to take your place
Machiavelli said that rulers must always watch their backs. Even the person closest to the king should be viewed with a skeptical eye. Anyone who climbs the ladder of power, the diplomat believed, is ambitious and should be presumed to covet the top job.

In business, this applies not only to competing companies, but to rising managers and major shareholders. To keep your position, you have to anticipate the actions of those around you and work to disarm them. But here's the clincher: your countermeasures must be subtle, understated. Being seen as a tyrant can unravel all your hard work.

This is exactly what got Machiavelli thinking about politics. He'd observe power aspirants wooing and befriending the king, trying to win favors while being gracious and polite to other courtiers. In fact, they were plotting against each other to rise as the king's favorite so that one day, they might take the highest position they could. While you needn't be paranoid about it, the failure to observe others can result in unpleasant surprises.

6- Associate yourself with smart people
A good prince, wrote Machiavelli, must have wisdom in order to recognize wisdom. That means before taking advice, you have to know everything about your dominion.

All leaders count on advisers. But no good leader counts only on them. He has to be the top expert in his industry before he can consider the opinions of consultants. Only then will he know if the advice is sound or a shortcut to failure. Word has it that GE's Jack Welch was surrounded by advisors. He knew when to heed their advice and when to ignore them. That's because Welch honed a businessman's most important companion: his gut instincts, refined with knowledge of the business.

Work the field, don't work alone and be a legend...


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