Jeffrey Pfeffer’s “Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don’t” stands as one of the most honest and research-backed books ever written about organizational success. Unlike feel-good leadership books that peddle comfortable myths, Pfeffer delivers hard truths about how power actually works in organizations. This comprehensive guide distills the book’s most essential lessons into 25 actionable takeaways, each supported by quotes directly from Pfeffer’s research. Whether you’re early in your career or a seasoned executive, these insights will fundamentally change how you approach organizational life.
About the Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer
Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. With a PhD from Stanford, Pfeffer has spent over four decades researching power dynamics, organizational behavior, and human resource management. He has authored or co-authored fifteen books, including “The Human Equation,” “The Knowing-Doing Gap,” and “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense.”
Pfeffer’s work is distinguished by its empirical rigor and willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. He doesn’t traffic in inspirational platitudes—his research examines how organizations actually function rather than how we wish they functioned. His course “Paths to Power” at Stanford has been one of the most popular and influential classes at the business school for decades, shaping how thousands of leaders understand organizational dynamics.
As an adviser to companies worldwide and a sought-after speaker, Pfeffer brings both academic credibility and practical experience to his analysis of power. His research has been published in leading academic journals while remaining accessible and applicable to practitioners navigating real organizational challenges.
What Reputable Sources Say About This Book
Financial Times called “Power” “a provocative and, at times, uncomfortable read that challenges many of our assumptions about leadership and success in organizations.”
The Wall Street Journal noted that Pfeffer “brings a scholar’s rigor to a topic often shrouded in mysticism and wishful thinking. This is the most honest book about organizational success you’ll read.”
Harvard Business Review praised the book for its “unflinching look at how power actually works, backed by decades of research. Pfeffer doesn’t tell you what you want to hear—he tells you what you need to know.”
Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and bestselling author, wrote: “If you want to understand how to navigate organizational life successfully, read this book. Pfeffer’s research-based insights are invaluable.”
Keith Ferrazzi, author of “Never Eat Alone,” called it “the most important book on power and influence. Pfeffer has the courage to tell the truth about what actually works in organizations.”
The book has been translated into multiple languages and remains required reading at top business schools worldwide. Its enduring relevance stems from Pfeffer’s focus on empirical research rather than anecdotal success stories, making the insights universally applicable across industries, cultures, and organizational types.
The 25 Essential Takeaways
1. Performance Is Not Enough for Success
The most fundamental misconception professionals hold is that good work automatically leads to good outcomes. Research shows this is false.
Pfeffer writes: “Job performance is loosely, weakly, and not very consistently related to salary increases and promotions. Research consistently shows that job performance accounts for only about 10 percent of variance in salary.”
Application: Stop assuming your work speaks for itself. Outstanding performance is necessary but not sufficient for advancement. You must combine competence with political skill, visibility, and relationship management.
2. The World Is Not a Just Place
People want to believe that the world is fair and that everyone gets what they deserve. This belief is professionally dangerous.
Pfeffer writes: “The belief in a just world has two big negative effects on the ability to acquire power. First, it hinders people’s ability to learn from all situations and all people, even those whom they don’t like or respect.”
Application: Accept that organizations don’t operate as meritocracies. This isn’t cynicism—it’s realism. Once you accept this, you can develop the skills needed to navigate organizational politics effectively.
3. Stop Self-Handicapping
Many people sabotage their own success to protect their self-esteem. If you don’t try to acquire power, you can’t fail at it.
Pfeffer writes: “People desire to feel good about themselves and their abilities. Obviously, any experience of failure puts their self-esteem at risk. However, if people intentionally choose to do things that could plausibly diminish their performance, then any subsequent performance decrements can be explained away.”
Application: Get over yourself and your fear of failure. The absence of practice or efforts to achieve influence may help you maintain a good view of yourself, but it won’t help you get to the top.
4. Ambition Is Essential
Success requires driving ambition to sustain effort over time and overcome obstacles.
Pfeffer writes: “Richard Daley, former mayor of Chicago and considered one of the 10 best mayors in American history, did not run for that office until he was 53 years old. Daley realized early in life that he desired power, and he was willing to wait patiently for the opportunity to exercise it.”
Application: Clarify what you want to achieve and why it matters. Ambition provides the motivation to persist when the path is difficult. Without it, you’ll give up when things get hard.
5. Energy Gives You a Competitive Advantage
Virtually all powerful people have boundless energy. The willingness to work harder and longer than others provides enormous advantages.
Pfeffer writes: “Laura Esserman, director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the University of California–San Francisco, got her MBA degree while practicing medicine full-time and having her first child. As she once said to me, ‘You don’t change the world by first taking a nap.'”
Application: Energy is partly innate but largely a choice about how you invest your time and attention. Powerful positions require sustained effort. If you’re not willing to work significantly harder than average, don’t expect above-average results.
6. Focus Multiplies Your Efforts
Scattering your attention across too many domains dilutes your impact. Concentration of effort builds power.
Pfeffer writes: “Power and influence are built through concentration of effort on a limited number of activities and relationships. Most people dissipate their efforts, working on too many things and building too many relationships without depth.”
Application: Say no to opportunities that don’t align with your path to power. Every yes to something is a no to something else. Choose where to focus and commit fully.
7. Self-Knowledge Is Power
Understanding your strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots is essential for development.
Pfeffer writes: “Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem: get advice from others who are more skilled than you and will tell you the truth about yourself. Unfortunately, asking for this sort of help sometimes feels like weakness and people are reluctant to admit what they do not know.”
Application: Seek honest feedback from people more skilled than you. Admit what you don’t know. Those who acknowledge ignorance are more likely to improve than those who pretend competence they lack.
8. Confidence Creates Power
Acting confident makes others perceive you as powerful, which becomes self-fulfilling.
Pfeffer writes: “Power often comes to those who act as if they already have it. Confidence is a key to success because when you encounter a new situation, people in that setting are unfamiliar with you and need to figure out if they should take you seriously or not.”
Application: Project confidence even when you’re uncertain. How you present yourself influences how others assess your capabilities. Coming across as confident and knowledgeable helps you build influence.
9. Empathy Advances Your Agenda
Understanding what others want and need allows you to build coalitions and gain support.
Pfeffer writes: “One of the sources of Lyndon Johnson’s success as Senate majority leader was his assiduous attention to the details of his 99 colleagues, knowing which ones wanted a private office, who were the drunks, who were the womanizers, who wanted to go on a particular trip—all the mundane details that permitted him to accurately predict how people would vote.”
Application: Pay attention to what motivates the people whose support you need. Far from diverting you from accomplishing your objectives, putting yourself in the other’s place is one of the best ways to advance your own agenda.
10. Tolerate Conflict
Most people are conflict-averse. If you can handle difficult situations, you have an advantage.
Pfeffer writes: “Most people are conflict-averse, they avoid difficult situations and difficult people, frequently acceding to requests or changing their positions rather than paying the emotional price of standing up for themselves and their views.”
Application: Don’t back down when it matters. The discomfort of conflict is temporary; the cost of constantly yielding is permanent. Learn to stand your ground when pursuing important objectives.
11. Get Noticed or Get Passed Over
Your boss doesn’t know everything you’re accomplishing. You must make your contributions visible.
Pfeffer writes: “People in power are busy with their own agendas and jobs. Such people, including those higher up in your own organization, probably aren’t paying that much attention to you and what you are doing. Your first responsibility is to ensure that those at higher levels in your company know what you are accomplishing. And the best way to ensure they know what you are achieving is to tell them.”
Application: Document your accomplishments and communicate them strategically. Create opportunities for visibility. Ensure the right people know about your contributions.
12. Familiarity Produces Preference
The mere exposure effect means people prefer what they’re familiar with. Being memorable increases your chances of being chosen.
Pfeffer writes: “Research shows that repeated exposure increases positive affect and reduces negative feelings, that people prefer the familiar because this preference reduces uncertainty, and that the effect of exposure on liking and decision making is a robust phenomenon that occurs in different cultures and in a variety of different domains of choice.”
Application: Increase your face time with people who control your advancement. Find reasons to interact. The more they see you, the more they’ll like you and think of you when opportunities arise.
13. Define the Performance Dimensions
Don’t accept others’ definitions of success. Influence what gets measured and valued.
Pfeffer writes: “Tina Brown served as editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker before founding Talk magazine and more recently starting the popular website The Daily Beast. A great editor and arbiter of popular culture who was able to garner tremendous amounts of publicity, Brown increased Vanity Fair’s circulation fourfold to almost one million during her eight-year tenure. But Brown apparently never earned a profit at any of these magazines. Did that matter? It depends entirely on what people chose to measure.”
Application: Identify which dimensions of performance matter most to decision-makers and excel on those dimensions. If you can’t control what matters, at minimum understand it and deliver results on those metrics.
14. Make Your Boss Feel Good
People are motivated to self-enhance. Making those in power feel better about themselves is crucial for your success.
Pfeffer writes: “Most people, not just those who are somewhat insecure, like to feel good about themselves. They are motivated to self-enhance—to seek out positive information and avoid negative feedback—even though, objectively, people may learn more from mistakes and learning what they have done wrong.”
Application: Never criticize your boss in ways that threaten their self-concept. Find ways to make them look good to their superiors. The surest way to keep your position and build a power base is to help those with more power enhance their positive feelings about themselves.
15. Flattery Works
Despite people knowing that flattery might be insincere, it still influences them.
Pfeffer writes: “Flattery works because we naturally come to like people who flatter us and make us feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments, and being likable helps build influence. Flattery also works because it engages the norm of reciprocity—if you compliment someone, that person owes you something in return.”
Application: Compliment people sincerely on their genuine accomplishments. This isn’t about being fake—it’s about recognizing that people respond positively to appreciation and that this creates goodwill you can later draw upon.
16. Choose Your Battlefield
Where you start matters enormously. Pick departments and positions that provide access to resources and power.
Pfeffer writes: “In choosing among jobs, choose positions that have greater direct resource control of more budget or staff. That generally means preferring line to staff positions, since line positions typically control more staff hiring and more budgetary authority.”
Application: Be strategic about job choices. A position in a powerful department with growth prospects beats a position in a declining area, even if the latter has a fancier title or slightly higher pay.
17. Break Small Rules Strategically
Following all the conventional rules keeps you in the middle of the pack. Strategic rule-breaking creates differentiation.
Pfeffer writes: “Keith Ferrazzi, now a best-selling author, marketing maven, and star of the lecture circuit, graduated from Harvard Business School in 1992, he had offers from two consulting companies. Before accepting the offer, Ferrazzi insisted on seeing the ‘head guys.’ After they had a few drinks at an Italian restaurant, Keith said he would accept the offer on one condition—he and the head of the firm would have dinner once a year at the same restaurant.”
Application: Make unconventional requests that demonstrate confidence and secure advantages. Go directly to people you’re “not supposed to” contact. As long as you’re not violating ethics or core values, strategic rule-breaking often gets you ahead.
18. Build Resource Control
Power comes from controlling resources others need—budget, staff, information, or critical organizational capabilities.
Pfeffer writes: “Your power comes in large measure from the position you hold and the resources and other things you control as a consequence of holding that position. When you retire or otherwise leave a position in which you once had control over substantial amounts of resources, people will pay you much less heed and give you less attention.”
Application: Continuously build control over resources that matter. Volunteer for projects that give you budget authority. Position yourself where you control critical information flows. Your power flows from what you control, not who you are.
19. Networks Determine Career Trajectories
Who you know matters more than what you know for career advancement.
Pfeffer writes: “Research at a newspaper publishing company found that ‘being in a position to control communications within the department is particularly important to being promoted.’ These results contradict the idea from human capital economics that it is only individual human capital—education, years of experience, and intelligence—that matters for people’s careers.”
Application: Invest deliberately in building an extensive network of high-status individuals. Position yourself centrally in communications. Bridge disconnected groups. Your network is your most valuable professional asset.
20. First Impressions Are Everything
You form stable impressions of people in 11 milliseconds, and those impressions are remarkably durable.
Pfeffer writes: “People start forming impressions of you in the first few seconds or even milliseconds of contact. One study found that judgments of people made in the first 11 milliseconds correlated highly with judgments made when there were no time constraints.”
Application: Pay intense attention to how you present yourself in first encounters. Act and speak with power from the first moment. If you’ve made a bad first impression, it’s often better to leave and start fresh elsewhere than to try repairing damaged reputation.
21. Get Others to Promote You
Self-promotion creates a dilemma—it’s necessary but creates perceptions of arrogance. The solution is having others advocate for you.
Pfeffer writes: “When another made statements about how great an author was, for instance, that person was perceived as more likable than if he made the same statements on his own behalf. The author was also perceived as more competent when another stated his abilities than when he did so himself.”
Application: Hire agents, publicists, or cultivate colleagues who will tout your abilities. Even though people know these intermediaries are under your control, they still rate you more highly than if you promoted yourself directly.
22. Use Media Strategically
Building visibility through media—writing articles, maintaining blogs, getting profiled—creates credibility and opportunities.
Pfeffer writes: “Karen worked at a venture capital company in San Francisco in the early days of blogging. She began a blog. It was successful, and soon she was being asked to be an occasional guest columnist on other blogs. When people are going to meet you, they Google you, and in her case, they could read her musings, which gave her credibility. Her future boss had only a 15-minute interview with her. He told her that they had read her blog, could see how she thought, felt there was a great fit, so basically she had been hired through her blog.”
Application: Write articles in your field. Maintain a professional blog. Cultivate relationships with journalists. Strategic media presence creates visibility and credibility that opens doors.
23. Power Demands Sacrifice
Acquiring and maintaining power requires extraordinary time and energy, leaving little room for other pursuits.
Pfeffer writes: “Jack Valenti, for some 38 years head of the Motion Picture Association of America, expressed his concern that his ambition had been a ‘dark thread’ throughout his life that had taken him away from his family, and he worried, still keeping a busy schedule into his eighties, that he had not spent enough time with his children.”
Application: Decide consciously whether you’re willing to pay the price of power. The costs are real—time away from family, sacrificed hobbies, constant pressure. Make the choice with full awareness of what you’re giving up.
24. Power Changes You
Holding power affects how you see others and behave toward them, usually making you less empathetic and more self-centered.
Pfeffer writes: “Studies of the effects of power on the power holder consistently find that power produces overconfidence and risk taking, insensitivity to others, stereotyping, and a tendency to see other people as a means to the power holder’s gratification. As one friend who works at a senior position in British Petroleum told me, ‘No matter what the original intentions and aspiration, eventually power goes to everyone’s head.'”
Application: Protect yourself from power’s corrupting influence by maintaining perspective. Expose yourself to social circles that don’t care about your position. Stay connected to people who knew you before you had power. Work actively against the natural tendencies that come with authority.
25. You Must Take Care of Yourself
Organizations won’t look out for you. The employer-employee relationship has fundamentally changed.
Pfeffer writes: “If organizations aren’t worrying about you and you can lose your job in a political struggle or on a whim, why should you worry about them? Reciprocity works both ways. The employer-employee relationship has profoundly changed over the past several decades. Employers and their leaders have told their employees that they themselves are responsible for their own careers and, in many instances, their own health care and retirement.”
Application: Use every means at your disposal to build and maintain your power. Don’t feel guilty about being strategic or political. Your employer isn’t worrying about you—they’re making decisions based on their interests. You should do the same.
Implementing These Lessons
These twenty-five takeaways represent the distilled wisdom from decades of research on organizational power. They’re not comfortable truths. They challenge many assumptions about how organizations should work. But they describe how organizations actually work—and that’s what matters if you want to be effective.
The key is to start applying these lessons incrementally. You don’t need to transform overnight. Pick two or three takeaways that resonate most with your current situation and focus on implementing them. Build visibility for your work. Invest in strategic relationships. Make your boss feel good about themselves. Once you’ve made progress on those areas, tackle others.
Remember that these skills can be learned. You don’t need to be naturally political or inherently charismatic. What you need is understanding of how power dynamics work and willingness to practice the behaviors that build influence. As Pfeffer notes throughout the book, most people fail to acquire power not because they lack capability but because they’re either naive about organizational realities or unwilling to do what’s required.
The Bottom Line
Jeffrey Pfeffer’s “Power” remains essential reading for anyone serious about career success because it tells the truth. It doesn’t promise that good work leads to good outcomes. It doesn’t claim that integrity alone guarantees advancement. Instead, it provides research-backed insights into how power actually works and practical guidance for navigating organizational politics effectively.
These twenty-five lessons encapsulate the book’s most important insights. Study them. Apply them. And watch how your understanding of organizations—and your ability to succeed within them—transforms. The world of work isn’t fair, but it is predictable once you understand the rules of the game. Pfeffer has decoded those rules. The question is whether you’ll use that knowledge to build the career and influence you want.
