BNet has a great interview
with Jeffrey Pfeffer,
a Professor of Organizational Behavior
at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
He talks about power and success.
“Keith Ferazzi, the famous marketing guru,
told my class once—and he’s right—
you are not responsible for your own success.
Your burning ambitions,
or even your hard work,
won’t make you successful.
What will make you successful
are those people higher up
who have power over your career.
Your job is to make them want to make you successful.
And part of that is hard work and good performance,
but part of that are the relationships
that you build with them.
That’s why hard work isn’t enough.”
My latest story,
under one of my pen names,
is flying off the virtual shelves.
It is a good story.
I’m marketing it hard.
It is tapping into a few reader needs.
But what is REALLY helping sales
is that a major author likes me
and likes the story.
She is going out of the way
to pimp the story.
Hard work is necessary
but it isn’t enough.