How to Succeed, 1975

If you want to achieve power, it is best to start out with a large face and practice a winning, trustworthy smile. On a business lunch, always arrive late to make your companion ill at ease. In the office, answer a difficult question with another question and try to leave the impression that you are a person of mystery and depth.

These tips are from Michael Korda's Power! How to Get It, How to Use It (Random House; $8.95). Another current power book, Robert J. Ringer's Winning Through Intimidation (Funk & Wagnalls; $9.95), has some equally keen advice: do not trust anybody at all; assume you will fail, so your positive mental outlook will not be crushed by a setback; make as much money as you can, because life is short and pointless and there is nothing better to do.

Korda's book is the more sophisticated of the two. Currently editorial top dog at the book-publishing firm of Simon & Schuster, Korda, 42, updates Adman Shepherd Mead's 1952 book How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and the result could be made into an equally entertaining musical comedy. In Mead's day, the status symbol was a key to the executive washroom. Now, says Korda, it is an IBM Selectric II for your secretary.

The proper "power office" should be in the corner, of course, decorated with power colors (a strong blue with a touch of red -to inspire fear -is good) and with chairs low and ashtrays just out of reach to discombobulate visitors. Where the visitor sits in an office is crucial. If the host seats him directly across his desk at A (see top diagram), it means the host is ready to make a deal. The visitor should then move his chair to B, encroaching on the host's space. If the host is trying to evade a deal or placate a visitor, he will suggest that both sit on the sofa. Then the proper move for the visitor is to sit at C, forcing the host to move to D, where he is cut off from both telephones. Phonemanship is important too. An aggressive visitor should ask to make a phone call, settle in at the host's desk (violation of territory), and finger the phone confidently, as it is a strong phallic power symbol.

To put down an older executive, says Korda, one should speak very softly to make him think he is going deaf. If that does not work, get him talking about the old days. Once he defends the old policies, he can be branded as passe.

Party Power. Korda describes office behavior like a pop anthropologist. In the first phase of business parties, he says, the most powerful people will station themselves in the corners of the room, attracting a circle of nonpowerful listeners. "Once this has been accomplished, they move naturally toward each other and close ranks, the powerful separating themselves instinctively from the non-powerful" (see bottom diagram). Advises Korda: this is the moment for the underlings to break away. "It is a sign that the period of familiarity is over."

Korda is so obsessed by style as the key to power that his book reads like The Prince by Matchabelli. He believes that shoes should be the five-eyelet type from Peal & Co., Ltd. and must always be highly shined. Expensive, thin briefcases are out. A man making less than $50,000 should carry only an old, battered two-handle briefcase. A thin leather portfolio is proper between $50,000 and $100,000. A man who makes more than that should not carry a briefcase at all.

Korda's only previous book, published in 1973, was called Male Chauvinism! How It Works. He dreads being thought a sexist, but occasionally has difficulty with the notion that women might become powerful. "Any job a woman does is downgraded the moment she has proved she can do it," he remarks airily. He adds that "if a woman were elected President and chose a male Vice President, we would doubtless see the Vice Presidency transformed into a position of serious responsibility and power, while the Presidency was downgraded until the President and Vice President could be treated as if they were a 'team' of equals."

Ringer's book could have been called "How I Made $849,901.39 in Real Estate in a Single Year." If so, it would have won the eleven readers it deserves. With its catchy title and dusting of tough-guy ethics, however, it is fast making its way up the bestseller lists.

I Was Somebody. As a young minnow among real estate sharks, Ringer, now 37, was repeatedly cheated out of most of his broker's fee in "routine commissiondectomies." Then he discovered what he calls intimidation -really traditional oneupmanship. He started sending lavish 10-in. by 10-in. brochures as calling cards -each costing about $5 and featuring a glossy photo of the earth as seen from an Apollo spaceship. The legend: earth is "an investment to the wise." Explains Ringer: "The brochure was intimidating. I was not just another member of the pack. I was obviously 'somebody.' " Ringer continued to intimidate by arranging to get his clients to meet him at airports where they could watch him land in his own Learjet. He traveled with a retinue of assistants and secretaries, laden with portable office machines, and he unexpectedly brought his attorney to closings for additional intimidation. Ringer believes that these real estate techniques apply "to all phases of life." But the only non-real estate example he cites is marriage: A woman must learn to market a product (herself) and close the deal ("get the stiff to sign on the dotted line and hand over the ring"). Says Ringer: "The main reason I wrote the book was to make money, not to help people." By that standard, he appears to be a resounding success.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.