LAW 7
GET OTHERS TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU, BUT ALWAYS TAKE
THE CREDIT
JUDGMENT
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other
people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance
save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura
of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten
and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do
for you.
TRANSGRESSION AND OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
In 1883 a young Serbian scientist named Nikola
Tesla was working for the European division of the Continental
Edison Company. He was a brilliant inventor, and Charles Batchelor,
a plant manager and a personal friend of Thomas Edison, persuaded
him he should seek his fortune in America, giving him a letter of
introduction to Edison himself. So began a life of woe and
tribulation that lasted until Tesla’s death.
IIII TORTOISE THE LELP AND THE HIPPOPOI
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One day the tortoise met the elephant, who
trumpeted, “Out of my way, you weakling—I might step on you!” The
tortoise was not afraid and stayed where he was, so the elephant
stepped on him, but could not crush him. “Do not boast, Mr.
Elephant, I am as strong as you are!” said the tortoise, but the
elephant just laughed. So the tortoise asked him to come to his
hill the next morning. The next day, before sunrise, the tortoise
ran down the hill to the river, where he met the hippopotamus, who
was just on his way back into the water after his nocturnal
feeding. “Mr Hippo! Shall we have a tug-of-war? I bet I’m as strong
as you are!” said the tortoise. The hippopotamus laughed at this
ridiculous idea, but agreed. The tortoise produced a long rope and
told the hippo to hold it in his mouth until the tortoise shouted
“Hey!” Then the tortoise ran back up the hill where he found the
elephant, who was getting impatient. He gave the elephant the other
end of the rope and said, “When I say ‘Hey!’ pull, and
you’ll.see which of us is the strongest. ”Then he ran halfway
back down the hill, to a place where he couldn’t be seen,
and shouted, “Hey!” The elephant and the hippopotamus pulled and
pulled, but neither could budge the other-they were of equal
strength. They both agreed that the tortoise was as strong as they
were. Never do what others can do for you. The tortoise let others
do the work for him while he got the credit.
ZAIREAN FABLE
When Tesla met Edison in New York, the famous
inventor hired him on the spot. Tesla worked eighteen-hour days,
finding ways to improve the primitive Edison dynamos. Finally he
offered to redesign them completely. To Edison this seemed a
monumental task that could last years without paying off, but he
told Tesla, “There’s fifty thousand dollars in it for you—if
you can do it.” Tesla labored day and night on the project and
after only a year he produced a greatly improved version of the
dynamo, complete with automatic controls. He went to Edison to
break the good news and receive his $50,000. Edison was pleased
with the improvement, for which he and his company would take
credit, but when it came to the issue of the money he told the
young Serb, “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor!,” and
offered a small raise instead.
Tesla’s obsession was to create an
alternating-current system (AC) of electricity. Edison believed in
the direct-current system (DC), and not only refused to support
Tesla’s research but later did all he could to sabotage him. Tesla
turned to the great Pittsburgh magnate George Westinghouse, who had
started his own electricity company. Westinghouse completely funded
Tesla’s research and offered him a generous royalty agreement on
future profits. The AC system Tesla developed is still the standard
today—but after patents were filed in his name, other scientists
came forward to take credit for the invention, claiming that they
had laid the groundwork for him. His name was lost in the shuffle,
and the public came to associate the invention with Westinghouse
himself.
A year later, Westinghouse was caught in a takeover
bid from J. Pierpont Morgan, who made him rescind the generous
royalty contract he had signed with Tesla. Westinghouse explained
to the scientist that his company would not survive if it had to
pay him his full royalties; he persuaded Tesla to accept a buyout
of his patents for $216,000—a large sum, no doubt, but far less
than the $12 million they were worth at the time. The financiers
had divested Tesla of the riches, the patents, and essentially the
credit for the greatest invention of his career.
The name of Guglielmo Marconi is forever linked
with the invention of radio. But few know that in producing his
invention—he broadcast a signal across the English Channel in
1899—Marconi made use of a patent Tesla had filed in 1897, and that
his work depended on Tesla’s research. Once again Tesla received no
money and no credit. Tesla invented an induction motor as well as
the AC power system, and he is the real “father of radio.” Yet none
of these discoveries bear his name. As an old man, he lived in
poverty.
In 1917, during his later impoverished years, Tesla
was told he was to receive the Edison Medal of the American
Institute of Electrical Engineers. He turned the medal down. “You
propose,” he said, “to honor me with a medal which I could pin upon
my coat and strut for a vain hour before the members of your
Institute. You would decorate my body and continue to let starve,
for failure to supply recognition, my mind and its creative
products, which have supplied the foundation upon which the major
portion of your Institute exists.”
Interpretation
Many harbor the illusion that science, dealing
with facts as it does, is beyond the petty rivalries that trouble
the rest of the world. Nikola Tesla was one of those. He believed
science had nothing to do with politics, and claimed not to care
for fame and riches. As he grew older, though, this ruined his
scientific work. Not associated with any particular discovery, he
could attract no investors to his many ideas. While he pondered
great inventions for the future, others stole the patents he had
already developed and got the glory for themselves.
He wanted to do everything on his own, but merely
exhausted and impoverished himself in the process.
Edison was Tesla’s polar opposite. He wasn’t
actually much of a scientific thinker or inventor; he once said
that he had no need to be a mathematician because he could always
hire one. That was Edison’s main method. He was really a
businessman and publicist, spotting the trends and the
opportunities that were out there, then hiring the best in the
field to do the work for him. If he had to he would steal from his
competitors. Yet his name is much better known than Tesla’s, and is
associated with more inventions.
To be sure, if the hunter relies on the
security of the carriage, utilizes the legs of the six horses, and
makes Wang Liang hold their reins, then he will not tire himself
and will find it easy to overtake swift animals. Now supposing he
discarded the advantage of the carriage, gave up the useful legs of
the horses and the skill of Wang Liang, and alighted to run after
the animals, then even though his legs were as quick as Lou Chi’s,
he would not be in time to overtake the animals. In fact, if good
horses and strong carriages are taken into use, then mere bond-men
and bondwomen will be good enough to catch the animals.
HAN-FEI-TZU, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER, THIRD CENTURY
B.C.
The lesson is twofold: First, the credit for an
invention or creation is as important, if not more important, than
the invention itself. You must secure the credit for yourself and
keep others from stealing it away, or from piggy-backing on your
hard work. To accomplish this you must always be vigilant and
ruthless, keeping your creation quiet until you can be sure there
are no vultures circling overhead. Second, learn to take advantage
of other people’s work to further your own cause. Time is precious
and life is short. If you try to do it all on your own, you run
yourself ragged, waste energy, and burn yourself out. It is far
better to conserve your forces, pounce on the work others have
done, and find a way to make it your own.
Everybody steals in commerce and
industry.
I’ve stolen a lot myself.
But I know how to steal.
Thomas Edison, 1847-1931
I’ve stolen a lot myself.
But I know how to steal.
Thomas Edison, 1847-1931
KEYS TO POWER
The world of power has the dynamics of the jungle:
There are those who live by hunting and killing, and there are also
vast numbers of creatures (hyenas, vultures) who live off the
hunting of others. These latter, less imaginative types are often
incapable of doing the work that is essential for the creation of
power. They understand early on, though, that if they wait long
enough, they can always find another animal to do the work for
them. Do not be naive: At this very moment, while you are slaving
away on some project, there are vultures circling above trying to
figure out a way to survive and even thrive off your creativity. It
is useless to complain about this, or to wear yourself ragged with
bitterness, as Tesla did. Better to protect yourself and join the
game. Once you have established a power base, become a vulture
yourself, and save yourself a lot of time and energy.
A hen who had lost her sight, and was
accustomed to scratching up the earth in search of food, although
blind, still continued to scratch away most diligently. Of what use
was it to the industriuus fool? Another sharp-sighted hen who
spared her tender feet never moved from her side, and enjoyed,
without scratching, the fruit of the other’s labor. For as
often as the blind hen scratched up a barley-corn, her watchful
companion devoured it.
FABLES, GOITCHOLD LESSING, 1729-1781
Of the two poles of this game, one can be
illustrated by the example of the explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa.
Balboa had an obsession—the discovery of El Dorado, a legendary
city of vast riches.
Early in the sixteenth century, after countless
hardships and brushes with death, he found evidence of a great and
wealthy empire to the south of Mexico, in present-day Peru. By
conquering this empire, the Incan, and seizing its gold, he would
make himself the next Cortés. The problem was that even as he made
this discovery, word of it spread among hundreds of other
conquistadors. He did not understand that half the game was keeping
it quiet, and carefully watching those around him. A few years
after he discovered the location of the Incan empire, a soldier in
his own army, Francisco Pizarro, helped to get him beheaded for
treason. Pizarro went on to take what Balboa had spent so many
years trying to find.
The other pole is that of the artist Peter Paul
Rubens, who, late in his career, found himself deluged with
requests for paintings. He created a system: In his large studio he
employed dozens of outstanding painters, one specializing in robes,
another in backgrounds, and so on. He created a vast production
line in which a large number of canvases would be worked on at the
same time. When an important client visited the studio, Rubens
would shoo his hired painters out for the day. While the client
watched from a balcony, Rubens would work at an incredible pace,
with unbelievable energy. The client would leave in awe of this
prodigious man, who could paint so many masterpieces in so short a
time.
This is the essence of the Law: Learn to get others
to do the work for you while you take the credit, and you appear to
be of godlike strength and power. If you think it important to do
all the work yourself, you will never get far, and you will suffer
the fate of the Balboas and Teslas of the world. Find people with
the skills and creativity you lack. Either hire them, while putting
your own name on top of theirs, or find a way to take their work
and make it your own. Their creativity thus becomes yours, and you
seem a genius to the world.
There is another application of this law that does
not require the parasitic use of your contemporaries’ labor: Use
the past, a vast storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. Isaac Newton
called this “standing on the shoulders of giants.” He meant that in
making his discoveries he had built on the achievements of others.
A great part of his aura of genius, he knew, was attributable to
his shrewd ability to make the most of the insights of ancient,
medieval, and Renaissance scientists. Shakespeare borrowed plots,
characterizations, and even dialogue from Plutarch, among other
writers, for he knew that nobody surpassed Plutarch in the writing
of subtle psychology and witty quotes. How many later writers have
in their turn borrowed from—plagiarized—Shakespeare ?
We all know how few of today’s politicians write
their own speeches. Their own words would not win them a single
vote; their eloquence and wit, whatever there is of it, they owe to
a speech writer. Other people do the work, they take the credit.
The upside of this is that it is a kind of power that is available
to everyone. Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will
look like a genius, even when you are really just a clever
borrower.
Writers who have delved into human nature, ancient
masters of strategy, historians of human stupidity and folly, kings
and queens who have learned the hard way how to handle the burdens
of power—their knowledge is gathering dust, waiting for you to come
and stand on their shoulders. Their wit can be your wit, their
skill can be your skill, and they will never come around to tell
people how unoriginal you really are. You can slog through life,
making endless mistakes, wasting time and energy trying to do
things from your own experience. Or you can use the armies of the
past. As Bismarck once said, “Fools say that they learn by
experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.”
Image: The Vulture. Of all the creatures in
the jungle, he has it the easiest. The
hard work of others becomes his work;
their failure to survive becomes his
nourishment. Keep an eye on
the Vulture—while you are
hard at work, he is cir
cling above. Do not
fight him, join
him.
the jungle, he has it the easiest. The
hard work of others becomes his work;
their failure to survive becomes his
nourishment. Keep an eye on
the Vulture—while you are
hard at work, he is cir
cling above. Do not
fight him, join
him.
Authority: There is much to be known, life is
short, and life is not life without knowledge. It is therefore an
excellent device to acquire knowledge from everybody. Thus, by the
sweat of another’s brow, you win the reputation of being an oracle.
(Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)
REVERSAL
There are times when taking the credit for work
that others have done is not the wise course: If your power is not
firmly enough established, you will seem to be pushing people out
of the limelight. To be a brilliant ex ploiter of talent your
position must be unshakable, or you will be accused of
deception.
Be sure you know when letting other people share
the credit serves your purpose. It is especially important to not
be greedy when you have a master above you. President Richard
Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China was
originally his idea, but it might never have come off but for the
deft diplomacy of Henry Kissinger. Nor would it have been as
successful without Kissinger’s skills. Still, when the time came to
take credit, Kissinger adroitly let Nixon take the lion’s share.
Knowing that the truth would come out later, he was careful not to
jeopardize his standing in the short term by hogging the limelight.
Kissinger played the game expertly: He took credit for the work of
those below him while graciously giving credit for his own labors
to those above. That is the way to play the game.