What do I mean by politics? I mean people advancing their careers or agendas by means other than merit and contribution. There may be other types of … - Ben Horowitz

nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.

Promotions Every time your company gives someone a promotion, everyone else at that person’s organizational level evaluates the promotion and judges whether merit or political favors yielded it. If the latter, then the other employees generally react in one of three ways: 1. They sulk and feel undervalued. 2. They outwardly disagree, campaign against the person, and undermine them in their new position. 3. They attempt to copy the political behavior that generated the unwarranted promotion. Clearly, you don’t want any of these behaviors in your company. Therefore, you must have a formal, visible, defensible promotion process that governs every employee promotion. Often this process must be different for people on your own staff. (The general process may involve various managers who are familiar with the employee’s work; the executive process should include the board of directors.) The purpose of the process is twofold. First, it will give the organization confidence that the company at least attempted to base the promotion on merit. Second, the process will produce the information necessary for your team to explain the promotion decisions you made.

world until he was forty. Despite the late start, Bill eventually became the chairman and CEO of Intuit. Following that, he became a legend in high tech, mentoring great CEOs such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Eric Schmidt of Google. Bill is extremely smart, super-charismatic, and