Crisis management – Corporate Competition: Extreme Strategies For Extreme Circumstances

When dealing with a crisis management issue one needs to approach with caution and ‘think’. Take your time and act, don’t react and know the level of measures you are prepared to take in advance. Any company under solid management will have counter measure templates in place, customized by corporate strategies consultants in advance to apply to the situation. You’ll typically have three levels: modest, moderate and extreme.

For the sake of time we are going to focus on the most drastic solution ‘extreme’. This is reserved for blatant white collar crime, security breach that can devastate the company economically, proprietary technology smash and grab theft or non-recuperating attacks on C level character that will hinder the short term and long term stock price and rebound if your company is public.

I see these situations a lot, particularly in the biotech, software and technology genres of public or soon to be public entities and the aftermath is often devastating to the point of no repair so the company feels it must respond to keep this dilemma from devaluating the other products and services and relationships that have not, as of yet been damaged.

The crisis management process will typically go like this. I arrive at the company headquarters with my team and the receptionist knows who we are, why we’re there and without a word from us will usher us into the conference room. The CFO has his head in his hands, the CEO is slumped over in his chair like a ragdoll, the COO is on his cell phone talking to their patent attorney and the corporate controller is talking to the in-house legal counsel in whispers. The tension is thick and nauseating.

We take our seats, I’ll move the CEO from the head of the table to the side and I take his position. This is not a power play, instead I am willingly taking on the burden of managing the situation and demonstrating this with my physical position and the room will begin to lighten up just a bit. My opening speech to get everyone in the proper mindset, my questions and statements are typically the same if the economic devastation is of such magnitude that we need a closed room strategies meeting. “OK, we have a problem and we’re going to deal with it and what’s done is done.” I’ll put my cell phone on the table, “let’s look at this crisis from every angle as if you would with this phone. Look at it from the side, above, beneath and every angle you can possibly imagine. What we are doing with this exercise is to first find out how the company left itself open to this situation and who is responsible for not catching it and you’ll find that this person was either in on it or they are not qualified for the position that they have.” That person is escorted out of the building and their employment is terminated.

We will then put a process in place to patch up that security risk to keep from further damage and we move on with the meeting. Next, we identify the individual or competitor that has initiated this calamity and we put a plan together. After we put a legal action together we need to take the legitimacy and credibility away from this party and my approach to this always shocks the hell out of the client.

I’ll turn to the CEO and ask him if he supports the death penalty for murderers. Every single time they look at me as if I just hooked a hose to the sewage pipe and was about to spray them down with it. “What in god’s name are you talking about?” there response is always the same so I explain. “If a man in a ski mask broke into your house and shot your wife, what course of action would you want the prosecuting attorney to take in the matter”. Again, the response is always the same, “This isn’t murder you nut, it’s a white collar crime”. After they say this, mission accomplished, I succeeded in putting things into perspective and the group begins to think more clearly.

The goal then becomes making the reputation and legitimacy of this criminal a distant memory to the public. I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t support the death penalty, I’m more deviant and would want a murder to suffer and wish he was dead but has no physical means to do so in a solitary confinement cell in prison. The strategy then moves towards reasonable retaliation and a plan begins to take shape.

Harboring a criminal will put the harboring associates in legal jeopardy so we will start there. Put out a statement (of course with the blessing and audit of legal counsel) to known affiliates of this criminal, their name being associated with this type of event will take away the ‘safe zone’ of the felon and they will begin to disassociate themselves with him/her which will eliminate their ability to actually use the technology or formula at the center of the theft.

Next, take into consideration the fringe elements such as startups looking for an edge, companies in developing nations etc., no need to directly communicate with them but keep an eye on them and do your research on who their corporate alliances are and who distributes for them in case this technology should find it’s way to them. Circle your wagons and tighten your grip and by the end you’ll have a criminal that has nowhere to go, no money or prospects or contacts willing to be associated with them.

Once this is accomplished you bring in a legal strategy to crush him. Annihilation, economically speaking, is a must. They cannot have the means to hire a top notch attorney to let them get away with this crime (case study note: when the FBI is taking down a mobster, the first groups they contact are the post office for mail fraud and the IRS to freeze their assets during the investigation and court battle) if the government has set this precedence your strategy should be similar but adjusted in obvious ways. Use a solid strategy, don’t retaliate in a way that is in the gray or even remotely illegal. Don’t break the law for that ephemeral sense of satisfaction because that contentment is rapidly fleeting and you’ll find that you’ve taken on unnecessary battles and the real criminal will get away with the crime and your proprietary application.

Always have countermeasures in place before you need them. Have a crisis management team on retainer and ready to rock and your response to white collar crime must be swift, precise and the target must feel the obligatory squeeze and emotional suffocation rivaled only by the devastation of being alone, broke and without defense before you initiate the legal process.

Corporate Preservation Via Competition Control And Deconstruction

As a structuring consultant I’m typically brought into a public company or large private company that is in the middle of a crisis management situation and I become a fixer. My firm will analyze the problem, look at it from multiple objective angles apply various template processes and find a solution to counter the issue at hand. Sounds easy but guess again.

Here is what most corporations that find themselves the center of a hostile takeover or slander situation fail to identify early on, eliminate the problem early. Many times it starts with the firing of an employee or an overly competitive bid for a large contract both have the same stimulants and indicators so the C level executive in charge needs to keep their ear to the tracks to be able to identify the dilemma before it becomes an ‘out of control’ publicity nightmare or takeover situation.

It is crucial to identify these individuals and align oneself accordingly to cripple the trigger before it can explode. Most of the problems that your company will face are in your office right now in the embodiment of an overzealous sales manager who believes he has the intellectual superiority to run your company better than you can, if he’s right, promote him but test him first, if he’s wrong offer him a severance and paint a clear picture as to his non compete and scare the life out of him the day he is terminated by having security walk him through the legal actions that will take place if he/she makes any attempt to use your processes or secrets to the public or competition or defames your firms name in anyway. Next bring in your corporate attorney to do the same, then you come in as the nice guy and gently ask him to take this severance and find a job that will meet all his needs both professional and emotional.

Other tell tale signs of potential issues an employee that seems to have something counterproductive to say about everything, the manager with a bad case of the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome, executives that are too entrepreneurial, you get the idea.

Next, you need a protocol in place to take a proactive approach to counter negative PR. You should have a media specialist on call, updated on your corporate strategies and proprietary processes with a plan ready to go to counter blog defamation and other virtual crimes that can dismantle your company or economic status/market place position.

90% of the problems your company will ever have will come from those who are inside right now. Evaluate your executives that have access to trade secrets or issues that could damage your reputation. Plant a seed early. Find someone and make an example of them and make it public and you’ll find that most potential and damaging issues can be shut down before they start by implementing the above as a start.

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Many Will Strive But Few Will Succeed In Achieving Their Power Position – Here Is What You Need To Consider

Corporate strategies and political strategies are similar in many ways and merge in many more as the ultimate goal is recognition for a contribution to economic growth as this is the one power tool that transcends all other contributors to power. The entity recognized for delivering on promises of jobs, capital to a targeted geography or economic certainty is the one that will gain traction regardless of current economic disaster going on around them.

To do this, to be the person that gains a following for their ability to step into a position of power and swim in shallow shark infested waters one must consider the fact that you will be attacked from all angles and your ability to eliminate the factors that are conducive to facilitating these attacks is crucial but do to so and make a massive statement is where the natural genius comes into play. Fact: the most sensitive part of the shark’s anatomy is it’s eyes, surfers and divers that can stay calm when a shark is circling before an attach will immediately go for the eyes of the shark, kick, punch and shred with the fingernails, diver’s knife, whatever they have. This is what the reader must consider when diving into a realm as competitive as obtaining the power in a general corporate or political ‘power grab’.

Don’t waste time on areas of the competitor that won’t have a disastrous affect immediately, a punch to the tail of fin won’t do anything is a shark attach, rip out the eyes and pummel the eye sockets and even if they keep coming they’ll be blind to your position which eliminates their position as a threat.

Know your competition, study them, identify their past affiliates and find out what they were like in the past, dig up dirt but don’t address them directly as this will make it too clear as to where the negative press is coming from, instead use a cat’s paw, third party to deliver the bad news. This third party should be completely none affiliated with you or your company and the information should be issued to them by a non affiliated messenger.

Find out where they sensitive points on the ‘mark’ reside. Is it voting record? Pump and Dump schemes with other public companies? Is it a politician without a pedigree making them a lap dog to the established politicians who just use them as a vote? Who are they taking campaign money from? Who has the CEO elected as CFO or CFO and is there a blatant demonstration of mis-judgment etc.?

The obligatory power grab is like offering an ice cold bottle of water to a group of 100 lost trekkers in the desert, they will use every advantage and fight as dirty as they have to in order to achieve ownership of this prized item.

Don’t bring a slinky to a fist fight, bring a steel pipe, don’t go to war with paper planes and silly putty, use remote controlled drones that will be able to inflict massive damage from afar. Don’t enter into a political or power grab without the right support and names backing you or it will be disastrous.

Winning Is Temporary, Annihilation Is Permanent: Corporate Strategists Speak
If you’re a board member, CEO, COO or CFO in an industry that is as cut throat as pharma, biotech, technology, software etc industries you most likely have hired a strategies consultant to step in to help you gain a much needed edge over your competitors.

One of the first things you’ll realize is that winning is only a temporary byproduct of victory over a certain angle and it is only a matter of time until that competitor is back again, bigger and stronger than ever and once again posing a major threat to your organization as you must fight to keep your economic position in your niche marketplace.

The key element is to annihilate the opponent. But you cannot do this directly. One way to obliterate a competitor to the point of no return is to feed their smaller, more aggressive competitors with devastating information that you’ve dug up on the ‘target’ that will damage them in a way that offers no rebound potential.

Find information about the CEO, CFO, COO, board members, advisory board members, product or services weakness, angry customers (give them a public platform to voice their anger) make step in, be invisible, and use your social media agent to make these guys rock stars.

When the press is taking a crippling affect on your competitor you should be evaluating their share price, buy some and dump it and continue to do this ongoing with any major competitor (check with your attorney to find out about any legal issues you should be aware of first). If a mugger is coming at you with a knife you don’t want to kick him in the shin, you want to grab a steel pipe and smack him over the skull until his laying on the ground and you can remove the weapon from his hand, a chump laying on the ground unconscious without a weapon ceases to be a threat. Business is no different.

Educate Your Child Or Watch Them Crumble: The Sad Future of Global Economic Strategies

In life, real life (not this politically correct utopia brainwash content they are force-feeding our children with in school to cripple their minds) is truly, absolutely survival of the fittest. Make no mistake intellectual battle lines are drawn and at the end of the day there are two educations a child gets today: School and Home.

At school children are taught that if they play along with the group, all is well, they’ll get good grades and if they say no to drugs, fall on bended knee before the teachers they will make it. A child’s education at home must be about applications, strategy and considering the public education game a playground. Understand that when you send your child to school they are submerged in a ‘follow the leader’ subculture that goes like this: go to class, study, ready, test well and put your napkin on your lap at lunch get into college and get that piece of paper that convinces intellectual halfwits that you’re qualified for that $30k paper pusher job, fall in line with the student loan suffocation mechanism to allow the government to take their piece of the action and you’ll be fine.

As parents, we need to have a strong, updated comprehension of this because we place our children in a position where they are tied down and force-fed by self proclaimed intellectual scholars yet the reality is they teach because they cannot do (yes I know I’ve said this before but keep reading). Those who can apply the tactics taught in school go from tactician to strategist. A strategist is able to apply the tactics studied in university class rooms to their current and immediate environment, ‘teachers’ also referred to as ‘tacticians’ cannot.

Train your children in the Machiavellian ways that have been demonized by those who are afraid to lose control but mastered by those in control. Throughout elementary and high school training it is your job as a parent to show your child how to apply what they are learning in school as the instructor as their educational facility is unable to do this as they are a tactician not a strategist. Strategists own the companies that tacticians work for. Strategists are on the board of companies and have C level executive stations while hiring and firing an ongoing ocean of tacticians.
How can you tell if you’re child’s teacher is a tactician as opposed to an educator with the full package? They treat the halfwit concepts of the new ‘political correctness’ as if they were laws passed down from Mount Olympus and constantly use backwards, mean nothing terminology such as hyphenated ethnicities which is nothing more than one additional strategy used by the powers that be to separate the citizens of this nation even more in turn securing more of a strangle hold on the minds of our youth, they take a kumbaya approach to communication with a ‘there is no wrong answer’ process to confusing the balance of a soft maturing mind, they’ll teach about Victoria, self proclaimed Queen of a so-called ‘United’ Kingdom with no mention of the ongoing British attempts to infiltrate this country with chaos missions during the civil war, the war of 1812, multiple invasions from Canada early in the history of our Nation and ongoing via economics and our current legislative and trade system.

Its war and we are battling for the minds of our children in order to keep them from entering into the zone of the mindless drone. They will brainwash your child all day in school, instead of handing your child over to more negative influences by allowing them to sit in front of the idiot box for four hours per night, give them books to read like the Art of War, The Prince and other books that will train them to assimilate this lame public/private school education into practical, strategic concepts that will set them apart, above and beyond their peers.

As an IPO and strategies consultant I have always been and continue to have 50+ business plans submitted for every one deal that I actually approve as a transaction in which we will get involved. Every day the inquires seem more desperate and the situations of the corporate applicants more dyer. The situation with our domestic and global economy is less about debt and economic collapse than it is with the demise of the serial entrepreneur whose motivation stimulates innovation, economic scalability, viability and perpetuation of ingenuity.

Politician marionettes and their lobbyist handlers and special interest puppet masters can formulate incremental incidence that chisel away at the souls of voluntarily passive and blind civilians that they govern. If you’re not mad then you’re already dead.

I remember a well known presidential adviser say something to the tune of, “A single devastating tragedy on American soil will have US citizens begging political powers to rape them of their constitutional rights in order to preserve the peace in a time of chaos” or should I say orchestrated chaos. Agenda driven disarray, legitimate or manufactured (typically the former) is like a gift from the gods for helping politicians demonstrate to constituents that they are up for the task of leading the ‘dumb public’ through the tumultuous jungle of individuals and organizations set on damaging them.

Catastrophic marginal-ism infects today’s youth and puts traditional economic warfare in the hands of those ruled by chaos.

Chaos without an agenda is counterproductive like a protest without a cause. Intellectual midgets enforce legislation dreamt up by self proclaimed scholars at the university level who cannot ‘do’ therefore they become professional ‘thinkers’ who sermonize on memorized concepts and ideas that they can’t put into action.

The circle jerk evolution perpetuated by the nomad scholar poisoning minds with ideas of economic utopia. These concepts soften the emotions and weaken the spine taking away the critical combat mechanism inscribed in man’s subconscious mind the pushes them to succeed, to create, to compete to stay up at night, tossing and turning to find that critical route to find a light out of the tunnel of debt to provide a better life for their children. Strangulation of innate motivation to succeed is the byproduct a mind that loses its ability to think. When one stops thinking, analyzing and meditating on formulating applicable strategies out of memorized tactics all is lost. Book ‘smarts’ and scholarly dedication is nothing without the ability to apply those strategies in an environment that challenges historical precedence with current realities. What the economy needs isn’t more money printed by the corrupt and distributed to big business for a triple down concept that never has and never will work.

What our global economy needs is a spark of unceasing motivation that ignites into a bonfire of action by civilians, not governments. We need less government intervention and more communication among entrepreneurial powers, less lay down, voluntary victimization and more proactive offensives on negative forces that disintegrate the affects of strategists materializing opportunities against all odds and obstacles set up by “thinking” and “not doing” scholar midgets.

In this economic environment corporations are looking past the Federal Reserve backed institutional lender that sucks the soul from the body while ejecting the body from one’s house due to late payments and inability to pay the ‘fractional reserve”, monopoly money loans based on the ten to one rule (Federal Reserve backed banks can loan 10 dollars for every 1 dollar they have in reserve and this is fine until the Fed decides to call in those loans which is how we got in this debacle in the first place). Less government and more accredited investor based strategies via PPM/Regulation D, less big business trickle down scams and more microcap corporation expansion via post public expansion via acquisitions and mergers via creative cross collateralization of public securities. Investigate the concepts and master your plan, only then can we climb out of this rat hole in which we’ve been tossed. Wake up!

As part of our expansion we are going to be offering our client base and future clients a dual listing on the OTCBB in the United States and the dominant European exchange, Frankfurt Exchange in Germany.

We have been fielding inquires from clients with one common question, “What is the advantage of two listings?” here is the response from one of our European partners:
If the stock price is $1 on the otcbb it is a similar price on the FSE in €. The IR campaign would be reflected in that way if you have strong buyings in the US and Canada, the european market maker has also to fill the bid. Which means that the stock price will also go up on the FSE. You can attract much more investors and build a bigger shareholder base with the right IR program if you are dual listed. Which means you can attract a much bigger market with the stock.
The most common reason for companies to opt for this is the need to list in two different countries. This may happen because of:

A merger of companies listed in different countries or,

A new listing to gain access to capital from a larger market

The second is, typically companies that are already listed in their home country which, as they get bigger, find it useful to have access to the larger amounts of money they can raise in larger markets. In the interests of their existing (home country) shareholders they need to retain their original listing.

Advantages to Investors / Shareholders

As mentioned earlier, the major advantage is that the shareholders can buy and sell shares of both the companies on bourses in the two countries. That means, when a company’s securities are listed on more than one exchange for the purpose of adding liquidity to the shares and allowing investors greater choice in where they can trade their shares. It contributes to the liquidity of the shares listed. This enables investors to have a greater choice as to where and when they can trade their shares. A significant apparent advantage of a dual-listed structure for companies is the benefit of scale and access to foreign capital.

It is not a widely used technique, although it is thought to improve the spread between the ‘bid and ask’ price which helps investors obtain a better price for their securities.

From the shareholders’ perspective they can buy and sell shares of both the companies on the stock exchanges in the two countries.

A structure would also remove the time-consuming requirement for the companies to take regulatory approvals from the various countries in which they operate should they go in for a conventional merger.

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In the strategies of war, how does a new regional military power or upstart guerrilla troop solidify their position? They identify their adversaries and eliminated them. How is business any different? The truth is the strategies are identical while the actual elimination process differs. War is fought with bombs and guns, economics is fought by crushing an idea or believe system that perpetuates the money machine behind a company, take away the public believe system based on the concept put out by a company and you’ve eliminated their ability to survive. Corporate branding, marketing and all promotion centers around piercing the minds of the public to inject an idea that ultimately triggers them to have an emotional need for your service or product. Few purchase decisions are spontaneous but for those that are it’s a matter of putting making something available with the threat of taking it away.
When injecting an idea in the mind of the involuntary recipient it must be like a candy coated ingestible as opposed to a spinal tap entry. Smooth and easy as opposed to painful and forced. Some sugar coatings take on the identity of a comedic TV commercial where laughter is the mechanism used to bypass the critical faculty while a sappy emotional segment may work for others.
The key to obtaining and maintaining one’s position is to identify your immediate competition, deal with them and once this is facilitated move on to the next potential threat. For the immediate competitor one elimination strategy that tends to work regardless of industry is to analyze the regional market in which you find a competitor of equal size who is in direct competition with you and then find his localized upstart or micro competitors and via third party strategically align your agenda with their promotional tactics. Help them to collectively and unknowingly pinpoint and weaken specific products and services that pronounce the actual threat to your company. Phase two is to make yourself known to them via this third party introduction and buy equities in these companies and contractually obligate them to use this capital for designated promotional solutions that will grow that regional company. You want this money to be used to infiltrate the region with your services/products and have the new partners go into their established client base with mailers, phone calls and in person sales calls and introduce your company and solutions to them.
Your initial competitor will begin to lose traction (assuming they are a public company) and their stock price will begin to fall, you want to begin buying stock in this competing company but not enough to stimulate or increase the share price. A combination of multiple subsidiary elements ganging up on this one particular company in addition to your firm buying equities in a plummeting stock will deliver to you the control you need in order to remove this entity as an obstacle to your growth.
As the company lessens in market share and comes into a new phase of financial hardship, help the process along by now adding the sell/buy process to damage their stock that much more (obviously, before initiating this phase talk to legal counsel for advice). Now that the stock is at a critical volume and price you can step in and flood the market with the stock that you purchased to send them into ‘penny stock’ domain, the kiss of death for any company that wants to stay on or eventually qualify for the NASDAQ (don’t look at this as losing money, you should see it from the perspective of gaining long term market share) and when the company is close to shutting their doors, you can step in as the savior with investment capital, acquisition proposal or workout a subsidiary type merger. By this time the company is so weak they have no choice but to accept on of the above options thus, you’ve accomplished the elimination of a competitor while creating a virtual monopoly in this regional based strategy. There is a template strategy that straddles political and economical situations. The template is the same while it needs to be adapted with a customized process.

Corporate Strategies: Chaos With An Agenda and Eco-Quantum Mechanics

There is a world that exists within our world; a place where chaos is king and puppet masters reign supreme and misdirected remaining populace just beg to be controlled. This flipside to common conscious reality is the corporate and political strategy of ‘chaos’. What? That’s it you say? You may not appreciate the power of comprehending this alter existence so let me explain.

Within the confines of chaos lies the origin of man’s nature where the concept of leadership and subservient coexist in harmony because there is order within clearly defined positions. The principal is typically invisible and the acquiescent are voluntarily exposed to satisfy the subconscious need to appear to his colleagues as the organizational power head. It is the artificial fulfillment of this need that perpetuates the process.

A commonplace application of this perception is with a manager in a corporation. Within the minute immediate access to those below the manager, he is the zenith of this structure but the reality is he is subservient to the VPs who are under the thumb of the C level executives who are hand puppets to the board of directors who are held liable to share holders and the stratagem of order in chaos is just getting started.

The group with the loudest voice in a corporate structure are the shareholders who in turn are typically the meek mild ocean of marionettes and the circular mind bend continues. The interdependency of this wheel now becomes obvious and the third source of influence to this model is introduced.

This wheel has an outside source of influence that is more powerful than the elements within the wheel as it is the ‘agenda’ of those who capitalize off of the perpetuation of the disarray that keeps those confined to the circle with foreheads to the grind stone unaware that they have the ability to look up and be liberated. The ‘agenda’ influence injects the ideas and concepts that enable this environment to exist and without it there would be now stimulant to pressure intellectual, scholastic or professional development.

The actual masters of the structure are an ever-revolving collection of global alliances possessing diversified interests that are interdependent and continue the perpetuation of this universe such as political leaders with the need to create jobs within a region, a consolidating organization aiming to capture a controlling majority of an industry etc. and just as you guessed, each of these leaders are accountable to another structure and so the quantum mechanic, socio-economic hierarchy is the stimulant that perpetuates our inter-reliant existence.

In the world of economics and politics there are the influential and the followers. The followers and leaders often believe that they fall into these positions of hierarchy because of knowledge and presents for a particular cause thus, mutual credo chanters follow their lead and there you have it the leaders and the followers but this is anything but accurate.

The reality is much more technical but once you understand the process you can step in and lead just about any cause, campaign or company.
The formula for leadership is not necessarily your position on a cause but two things, the conception of your idea on a cause and you as an individual that can embody the hopes and aspirations of those around you which will draw them to you and will eventually become your flock. The key element here is to grow your flock. To do this you need to first find those seeking a leader, find the common thread they all share in seeking a leader and what causes they support.

Many people want to be influential but they freeze up when it comes down to stepping out and taking on the position.
Once you’ve identified a group you’ll need to assimilate into this group and start from the top to the bottom on their cause list. Make your presence known. Get on committees and stay close to those who already have a following. Be seen with this person as an insider having serious conversations and don’t forget to laugh. Followers are watching your interaction from afar and the visual element and timing here is crucial.

Most likely these leaders you’ve identified yourself with have polarized themselves and are voluntarily secluded as they’ve reached the limit of their comfort zone and have not journeyed to other groups to build their following, you will be different. As you serve on these committees you will use the influence of these currently micro leaders to immediately gain committed followers on multiple fronts. You’ll build your following based off of the leaders you bring in who have the following and you won’t waste your time with going after the actual individual follower. So to be clear you will be at the top of the food-chain by creating a new position above the current leadership and you’ll be the one with the ultimate power by having the ability to engage multiple groups simultaneously. You’ll be asked by other, less evolved leaders beneath you for introductions to other entity members and leaders. You’re objective here is to make introductions that outwardly seem free and open while you remain in control of the communication between individuals so you don’t find a rival situation on your hands.

Application of this concept would go something like this: join the chamber of commerce, buy a members guide, go to the section that lists the groups and the group leaders, this is where your infiltration will be initiated. Research each leader with a basic Google search, know their likes and dislikes, hobbies and everything about their company and their immediate competition before you even visit the first meeting. Take your time with this as you will never get a second chance to make that first impression.
After you’ve don’t your research and feel ready, make sure that your body language speaks volumes by demonstrating confidence and by all means make your knowledge seem passive and off the cuff. Don’t be a close talker, don’t be a know it all and don’t seem overly aggressive as if you have an agenda. If the current leadership feels threatened in any way you’re done, it’s over. You’ll never get a chance to break in and word will spread like wildfire.

Each inside group has an applicable version of the ‘good old boy club’ identify the characteristics of these individuals when you are in the group, apply the knowledge you’ve absorbed in research, throw out some helpful ideas and ease in like an old man in a hot warm bath.

Once you’ve conquered one group, step into the next and the next and soon you’ll run into others at the same level as you and from their you’ll pick a leader that you can control and use your circle of influence to get your agenda out their based off of the exceptional pedigree of the individual demonstrating a willingness to be controlled in order to feel and put up the illusion that he is the one in control.

There’s a lot to swallow here but read this a few times and let it sink in and by that time we’ll have the second article out to take you from here to the next strategy to claim your position at the top.