When your enemies are close, it’s easier for your allies to work with you. Truthfully, I usually understood my enemies better than my friends.ģ. That demand, of course, meant that each person had to be close enough to me to be well understood. If I could frame my proposal in such a way to satisfy the self-interests of each of those six, I was well on the way toward success. One of the persuasion strategies I learned from Bill Howell years ago was the importance of creating a highly representative “panel” of usually about six people who would represent the diversity of commitments or opinions on an issue. You have to keep your enemies close to understand their perspective and interests. There are plenty of times when such a person can help to better my thinking and position on an issue.Ģ. They bring a different worldview, perspective and/or ideas on a subject of common interest. Often it’s from opponents, adversaries or fence-sitters. Indeed, my best learning doesn’t always come from friends. You can learn a lot from people you dislike.
In short, I’ve found Machiavelli very useful for my own success.īut there are a number of exceedingly important reasons for keeping your enemies close:ġ. As both a manager and a consultant, I’ve found a number of people who fit in that same box. These are also people whom you’ll need in order to get your own personal and organizational objectives met. In the business setting, I refer to “enemy” as a person you have to interact with, someone who’s competing for your resources, who doesn’t follow through on his commitments, whom you don’t trust, with whom the “chemistry” isn’t there, or who disagrees with your perspective from the ground up. That’s my basic rationale for acting on Machiavelli’s instinct. One of the involved persons just might be your enemy. But, au contraire!Īs a manager or leader it is inevitable that we’ll want to add to our knowledge base, try to sell ideas, get people on board and even change the direction of our organization. You’d think that with my easy-going optimism, I’d never write a blog on this subject.
#Keep your enemies close how to#
Actually, it came from Machiavelli in " The Prince," the definitive primer for how to be a dictator. It wasn’t the Godfather’s Michael Corleone who first uttered this well-known dictum.
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