Works
- The 48 Laws of Power, 1998
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Law 26: Keep Your Hands Clean. Greene advises keeping one's own reputation clear of mistakes and unpleasant work by having others do the dirty work and by finding scapegoats to take the blame.
Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit. Use other people's skill, time, and energy to advance your aims while taking the credit for the result.
What it explains
The 48 Laws of Power is a popular synthesis that draws historical anecdotes into rules for gaining power; it is not research, and its value here is as a plain statement of maneuvers that the research literature explains. Its laws on blame and credit describe how actors keep distance from failure while staying close to success.