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Tips for the top

Once you have chosen the right department three things matter more than anything else. The first is the ability to “manage upwards”. This means turning yourself into a supplicant: Barack Obama asked about a third of his fellow senators for help when he first arrived in the institution. It also means mastering the art of flattery: Jennifer Chatman, of the University of California, Berkeley, conducted experiments in which she tried to find a point at which flattery became ineffective. It turned out there wasn’t one. The second is the ability to network. One of the quickest ways to the top is to turn yourself into a “node” by starting an organisation or forging a link between separate parts of a company. The third, more admirable, quality is loyalty: Booz, a consultancy, calculates that four out of every five CEO appointments go to insiders. Those insiders last almost two years longer in their jobs than outsiders.
And what happens if all this loyalty and networking pays off? How do you keep power once you win it? The old saw about power corrupting has been laboriously confirmed by academic studies of everything from risk-taking to cookie-eating (powerful people are more likely to eat with their mouths open and to scatter crumbs over their faces). The key to keeping power is to understand its corrupting effects. Powerful people need to cultivate a combination of paranoia and humility—paranoia about how much other people want them out and humility about their own replaceability. They also need to know when to quit. People who do not know when to leave an organisation frequently crash and burn. People who jump before they are pushed have a good chance of leaping to yet another aphrodisiacal throne.

A. 어휘
Tips 助言(조언), 정보.
supplicant 懇請(간청)하는 사람, 탄원자, 부탁하는 사람.
senators 상원의원. institution 기관, 단체.〈여기서는 미국 상원을 가리킴〉.
flattery 阿諂(아첨), 아부, 알랑대기. “node” 매듭, 집합점, 交點(교점).
forging a link 연결점을 형성하다. admirable 훌륭한, 감탄할만한.
loyalty 충성. consultancy 컨설팅회사. appointments 任命(임명).
insiders 내부사람. pays off 바라던 성과가 나타나다.
saw 속담, 격언. power corrupting 부패(쇠퇴)하는 권력.
laboriously 힘들게, 열심히. confirmed 확인하다. scatter 흩뿌리다.
crumbs (빵, 과자의) 부스러기. cultivate 陶冶(도야)하다, 경작하다.
paranoia 편집병. humility 겸손, 卑下(비하).
want them out 그들을 쫓아내기를 원하다. replaceability 대체가능성.
crash 추락하다. quit 사임하다.
jump before they are pushed 떠밀리기 전에 미리 뛰어내리다(쫓겨나기 전에 사표 내다.) aphrodisiacal 최음제의, 媚藥(미약)의. throne 王座(왕좌).
aphrodisiacal throne 여기서는 최고경영자 자리를 의미.