Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business whose research focuses on power acquisition and usage from a practical, research-backed perspective. His work challenges conventional wisdom about power being inherently corrupting, instead arguing that good people should actively seek power to create positive change.

The conversation explores Pfeffer's seven rules of power from his book Seven Rules of Power: get out of your own way, break the rules, show up powerfully, create a powerful brand, network relentlessly, use your power, and accept that success will forgive your methods. These principles draw from his earlier work Power Why Some People Have It and Others Don't, which concludes that power-seeking is essential for both health and effectiveness.

Pfeffer discusses the health benefits of power through the Whitehall Studies, showing how job control reduces stress and cardiovascular disease. He challenges popular Silicon Valley advice against networking, demonstrates why modest behavior often backfires, and explains how power enables organizational execution - the gap between strategy and implementation that his book The Knowing-Doing Gap addresses.

Power Extends Life Through Control and Reduced Stress

The Whitehall Studies by Sir Michael Marmot found that higher-ranking British civil servants had lower cardiovascular disease risk because "the higher your rank, the more control you had over your job and your work" - Jeffrey

Power Why Some People Have It and Others Don't ends with the statement "seek power as if your life depends upon it, because it does" based on epidemiological evidence linking power to longevity

The absence of job control creates stress - being told exactly when, where, and how to work "infantilizes" employees and triggers fight-or-flight responses that damage health

Getting Out of Your Own Way Means Rejecting Modesty

Most people are trained to be "modest and self-effacing" but organizations evaluate "are you able to make things happen? Are you able to get things done? Are you able to essentially bend the world to your will?" - Jeffrey

Gary Loveman's principle: "don't be liked, get a dog" because "a dog will love you unconditionally" while your job requires making difficult decisions that won't please everyone

Good to Great author Jim Collins admitted that level five leaders who are "modest but fiercely determined" as CEOs "is not" how they behaved "on the way up" to power

An Asian-American student transformed his career by changing his elevator pitch from listing credentials to stating: "I'm an African-American medical student going to business school so I can transform the care for black Americans"

Rule Breaking Drives Innovation and Success

Southwest Airlines created the 20-minute turnaround when they "didn't get as many planes as they wanted" - Herb Kelleher realized passengers "paid to get from one place to another," not to wait at major airports

Whole Foods succeeded with John Mackey's insight that "people would pay more for food they wanted to eat" and local tastes varied, so store managers should stock according to regional preferences

Breaking rules creates discomfort - "when you break the rules, not everybody's going to approve" but "if you're right, eventually you will be popular"

The No Asshole Rule author Bob Sutton had to fight his publisher over the controversial title, demonstrating that rule-breaking requires persistence against initial resistance

Networking Beats Performance Alone for Career Success

Naval Ravikant's advice that "networking is overrated, go do something great and your network will instantly emerge" is "insane" because "if you do great work, how in the hell is anybody going to discover that great work if nobody knows who you are?"

Mark Granovetter's research in Getting a Job shows "most people got jobs and good jobs through their weak ties, not through their strong ties" because weak ties "know different things and different people"

Investment banks promote the most connected people, and "no one has ever gotten promoted if nobody knows who the hell they are" - networking is "necessary but insufficient"

Successful networkers are generous, connecting others who might benefit from knowing each other, creating value beyond direct personal benefit

Building and Using Power Requires Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Many people fail to use acquired power because "they don't think they deserve where they are" and suffer from imposter syndrome, believing "they got there by luck or by accident"

Gary Loveman laid off 13,000 people during the 2008 recession, including "single moms" and "cancer patients who lost their medical care" - "do you think those people like me? I assure you they don't"

"The higher you rise, the more difficult the decisions will be, because easy decisions are made way below you" - executives only get "decisions that involve trade-offs" where "not everybody's going to be happy"

Success forgives controversial methods - when a product manager used expensive resources and top developers for a freemium model that worked, "everyone forgives me for being expensive when I try it the second time"

Power Practice and Personal Investment Drive Results

Practice power skills individually: "practice networking by figuring out 10 or 15 or 20 people that if they knew who you were and thought positively about you, you could positively affect your career"

Pfeffer charges "$1,500 an hour" for personal coaching and argues people should "invest in yourself" rather than spending money on "an overcoat" or "Starbucks"

Omid Kordestani "decided to stop doing my job" at Netscape to network with senior executives, became employee #11 at Google, and "makes himself $2.5 billion"

The power class is popular "because it makes people rich" - students compare it to "cod liver oil" that "doesn't go down easily, but you need it"