. YOU NEED PEOPLE, RESOURCES, AND A LITTLE POWER👑

I'm currently reading the book "Stairway to Heaven: Dialogues on Power, Career, and the Global Elite" by Mikhail Khazin and Sergei Shcheglov📕

A quick disclaimer: what follows is not my theory. It's my retelling of the first chapter—as I understood it and put it on paper. The authors might say I oversimplified it. But this is Telegram, not a dissertation defense😄

The main idea of the chapter:
Power does not always coincide with position and rarely exists alone.


We are used to looking at a company through its organizational structure: CEO, deputies, managers, employees. Everything is logical, arrows are straight—almost a perfect world📊

But behind the formal structure, there is often another—the structure of real influence. It is built on trust, mutual obligations, and control over resources.

The authors put it provocatively:

"People seek power as a gang"

By "gang" they mean a group of people who act in concert and support each other.

A lone individual may be talented and hold a high position, but without a team, they are vulnerable. They may lack information, support, executors, and access to resources.

Moreover, a resource is not just money💵
It also includes:
🔹 critical expertise;
🔹 access to management;
🔹 approval authority;
🔹 a strong team;
🔹 important information;
🔹 relationships with clients;
🔹 the ability to accelerate or halt a decision.

The chapter illustrates this with the example of the internet company "Portal" (referring to Rambler).

Formally, everything seemed clear: owners, president, directors, and departments. But in reality, investors intervened directly, teams reported to different people, and individual employees controlled key knowledge and specialists.

As a result, a manager could hold a position but not control the situation. Meanwhile, someone lower in the organizational structure became a key figure because nothing moved without them.

Hence the chapter's formula:
Power → resource → power


Control a useful resource—become significant. Gain influence—gain access to new resources. This is how a power group forms.

It may have no official name. Its members may work in different departments or even companies. But they are united by trust, common interests, and a willingness to support their own🤝

The authors use a feudal metaphor: suzerain and vassals. A person offers loyalty and useful resources to a stronger participant, receiving protection and opportunities in return.

But one is not immediately accepted into such a group. First, a person (called a "train") is tested: how useful, reliable, and capable of keeping agreements they are.

Another important idea: within the system, a person has several ratings.

🔵Professional—how well they work.
🔵Intra-team—how much they are trusted.
🔵Potential—how high they are willing to be promoted.

These may not coincide. Therefore, good work alone does not guarantee career growth and access to decisions…

Dear friends, what do you think about this?