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Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success by Robert Morris

Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success
Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman
The Free Press

Much as I admire Brandon and Seldman¹s enthusiasm for this subject, I wish they had developed several of their core concepts in much greater depth and with tone and diction worthy of those insights. I groaned when encountering clunkers such as ³Get off that river in Egypt -- De-Nile!² because Brandon and Seldman are not ³teaching synchronized swimming in a shark tank!² Then ³Merge into the Savvy Zone² while recognizing the importance of ³Different Strokes for Different Folks.² (I¹m not making this stuff up. It¹s in the book.) That said, Brandon and Seldman generally succeed when recommending and then explaining ³high integrity political tactics for career and company success.² Brandon and Seldman make two obvious but important points: Like it or not, politics are inevitable when two or more -- and especially when three or more -- people are involved, and, it is nonetheless possible to be (as was Truman) an effective politician without compromising one¹s integrity. In fact, as Jim O¹Toole asserts in The Executive¹s Compass: Business and the Good Society as does David Maister in Practice What You Preach: What Managers Must Do to Create a High Achievement Culture, those whose lives are guided and informed by admirable values (e.g. honesty, loyalty, decency, trustworthiness) will achieve much greater success than will those whose lives aren¹t. Therefore, the ³savvy² executive is one who combines high principles with street smarts. No news there. What gives substantial value to this book is Brandon and Seldman¹s clever use of various devices with which their reader can conduct a self-audit. To their credit, they make a rigorous effort to help their reader to reduce (if not eliminate) both forms of ignorance. Politicking, gossip, self-serving motives, back-stabbing, betrayals of confidence, etc. are harsh realities in almost any organization. They can help principled people to cope effectively with those realities. To me, that is this book¹s greatest benefit. Also, I strongly recommend that readers complete the comprehensive, self-scoring assessment tool and interpretative guide which Brandon and Seldman offer. How to obtain one? The authors explain on page 277.