Game of Thrones Guide to Getting Ahead In The Big Four
The prequel to this article is here.
Once you secure a job at one of the Big Four firms, here are five plays guaranteed to accelerate your success and cement the kind of rep and remuneration you came for.
It’s important to understand that power is the coin of this realm.
Everything here and in most work environments is about status and power. This is the hidden language that decodes the behavior wolf packs in Yellowstone to gambits in the Vatican.
This is the real hierarchy. The ability to navigate it determines your survival. Your ability to manipulate it, that is move pieces as on a chessboard, determines if you’ll rise.
You’re always gaining or losing power and everyone is tuned into how power flows with the hyper-sensitivity of a Richter scale waiting for an earthquake. Not a tremor goes unnoticed.
1. Bionic networking and collaboration skills.
Do you connect dots others can’t even see? Can you see bridges between people that others miss? Then, this is the place for you.
It’s not required, you’ll just find life much easier if this is your superpower.
Connectors gain power by knowing people, connecting them for convenience or gain.
If you don’t have it, try and cultivate it. If the idea of it exhausts or even horrifies you, read on, because there are other ways to thrive here. And be sure to stick around for number five.
2. The ability to tell someone to “go to hell” in a way that makes them look forward to taking the trip.
(yeah, I stole that from Churchill)
Tact and diplomacy are what they’d want you to call it because … tact and diplomacy sound so much nicer than “bullshit artist” or “politician”, a term used often in the halls of these organizations. And make no mistake. Those who rise have this ability in spades.
This is the longest-running Kabuki show in history. Candor is rare and not celebrated, tact is.
If you’re going to say it, it better not make the client unhappy or interfere with those billable hours rolling in.
Do you enjoy the occasional tap dance through a minefield in an electrical storm, then you will love it here. This is true in the corporate world, not just the Big Four.
If you’re straight-talking, straight-shooting, enemy-maker, and no-prisoner taker you better be a good shot and have eyes in the back of your head. And if that description resonates with you, see number five.
This is sales. If you plan on making partner, you better find something to sell and a market and sell it to.
If you can’t do either, get the line item on your resumé and move on or see number five.
3. Abandon the idea that working hard is the trick to getting ahead here.
(And watch out for this one particular psycho. They won’t be hard to find.)
All of the Big Four boast one thing on their “Cons” list, a grindhouse atmosphere of long hours and overwork.
No matter what line of business you’re in, banking vacation and pulling all-nighters are still viewed as a feather in one’s cap.
One accountant I know joked that she and her colleagues worked so many hours they referred to themselves as “volunteers.”
The staff here know how to work hard, and many enter this realm knowing that and thinking that will open doors for them. uh, kinda.
In your first 3–5 years, your hard work will be the magic pixie dust that enables you to fly,
yet know that has an expiration date.
If the only thing giving you altitude is hard work, there will come a day when you slam to the ground.
You may not believe it now, but there will come a day when your energy wanes and burning both ends of the candle is not sexy, fun, or even possible anymore. Whatever prezzies you bought with your nice paycheck, that made it all worthwhile, won’t deliver the buzz anymore.
The hardest working people will do well here, but you won’t rise in the ranks on that alone and the long hours will catch up with you.
Those who build the most alliances and are politically savvy are the ones who rise. If you’re a smart lone wolf, your lack of allies will be your downfall.
Also, while you’re on that journey to the corner office ask yourself …
Are you prepared to:
Be at the beck and call of the person with the key that unlocks the door to your next move up?
Work elbow-to-elbow in the small conference room your client assigns your team?
Eat lunch with the team at least a few days a week and dinner if you’re traveling?
Follow the often ridiculous high school lunchroom power hierarchy that can make it a career-ending move to leave work before your boss leaves?
If not, then this might not be the place for you or at least plan for a shorter tenure.
Beware of psycho that thrives here
Type-A, approval-seeking, “high performers” are the coal these firms burn, so be on the lookout because if they get their hooks in you and get you drinking this killer Kool-Aid you’re in danger.
Here’s what that looks like:
Once I had a call with a Big Four director who wanted to interview me before giving me a slot on a project with a high-status client. He was your garden-variety, straight-laced, rule-abiding guy you see a lot of in these firms.
I knew working for him would be a hell slog in a salt mine when he said this with great pride,
“I may not be the smartest guy in the room, but no one can outwork me.”
Oh Lord, I’d been around long enough at this point to know that this translated to,
“I’m an insecure person who will work my life away so someone will throw me a cookie and tell me how good I am.”
That guy was a workhorse or at best he was whinnying like one to see if you’d return the call.
Do you know what happens to workhorses? They die pulling the plow or get sold to the places that pay by the pound.
Do not work for any idiot who boasts about their ability to “outwork” people.
Work is not the answer, strategy is. If you don’t have one you could end like this.
Buying into, “my hard work makes me better than you” will merely make you a supplicant to a smarter player who sees your need for approval and take advantage of your willingness to work to get it.
This is the main pathology of these firms. There is no shortage of horror stories on this topic. Ask around.
4. When sh*t that hits the fan can you deflect it onto others?
It is a rare person who can thrive here without this skill. They exist, but they are not common.
You will often hear one word associated with successful people here: Teflon.
Gentle reader, you may accuse me of being too harsh, but extremes are excellent ways to provide examples that will keep you safe and free from harm.
Michael Koubi is the former chief interrogator for Israel’s General Security Services. He sums people’s relationship to survival in an article by Mark Bowden.
“…the hierarchy of loyalty under stress is 1) self, 2) group, 3) family, 4) friends. In other words, even the most dedicated terrorist (with very rare exceptions), when pushed hard enough, will act to preserve and protect himself at the expense of anyone or anything else.”
The ability to deflect the stain of failure on those who don’t have this skill is common among the successful here.
They aren’t smarter or even more hardworking, they just know how politics and image work, and they use it to their advantage.
Yes, it’s tough, but it’s often the prevailing mindset. Why?
Because of the prevailing mindset here: you’re only as good as your last project.
You can deliver five amazing projects, yet make one high-profile mistake, and that will make a sonic boom. When your wins play more like, “Yeah, that’s what we pay you to do.”
5. If you aren’t the “total package” these firms put on the path to partner, then find someone who is and be their right hand.
When I was young and starting in the Big Four, I was eager to grab a big title. One day, a much more experienced person said to me, “Are you sure you want to be the number one because being just to the right of them can be a very good spot.”
He was in it and it was a good spot for him.
Remember the sparrows in Game of Thrones who collected and delivered information for a seeming nobody who eased up the hierarchy on their little wings?
Or Gavroche singing about little people’s power in Les Miserables? A bee can sting a bear.
The Hand of the King or Queen rides around the country collecting rents and cutting off heads in the name of the Sovereign and if you’re smart, you quickly delegate the dirty work down even further (more on that in the advanced course.)
Consider being aide de camp to someone who does have these skills.
Would Anna Wintour be where she is without Grace Coddington?
Would Carson be a legend without McMahon?
If you lack that “whole package” halo that hovers over the heads of the “lucky ones,” find someone like that and become invaluable to them.
Choose wisely and don’t be Trump’s, Michael Cohen.
You won’t hold the spotlight, but you’ll benefit from power and influence.
You’ll find it easier to get things done and that connection will serve as a forcefield to protect you from politics and power plays.
Bottom line. Jerk around the Hand of Queen and get singed or incinerated by a fire-breathing dragon. I’ve seen both happen.
If your sovereign is overthrown, how you fare depends on how wise you are. It doesn’t always mean instant banishment or death.
Yet be very careful here…
This arrangement is rich in the potential for you to go under the bus, or into the sausage grinder.
Don’t align yourself with people who are venal and dumb, but like a fox.
At one Big Four firm, I observed a partner who rode with a small band of sycophants who worked their butts off for her. She didn’t promote them often or take care of them particularly well, quite the opposite. She was such a snake they figured it better to be associated with her than not.
She was a bully and they should have bolted, but like the people who hold power in abusive relationships, she knew how to pick the ones who will take a beating and stick around. That’s what her team did.
Fear and respect can be indistinguishable from one another.
On the other hand, there was a well-worn story about one C-level executive who promoted two of his “assistants” to director-level positions in about the same time it takes to graduate college.
These assistants believed they were 100% deserving of their meteoric rise. Wouldn’t you?
It was an open joke among the staff who watched these pretty young things get promoted past them at lightning speed.
While they were reasonably good at hiding it, they were executive assistants who got promoted to high-level jobs in a very short time. You could cut the incompetence with a knife.
And nope they didn’t do much work, they just swanned around while everyone talked about them behind their backs and rolled their eyes when they weren’t looking, but they were making almost half a million in salary and benefits.
All that may be great and terrible, but at the end of the day you can’t deposit gossip in the bank and while the staff was sniping, the meteor twins were depositing real dollars into their accounts and pulling down years of experience with impressive titles.
If you’re going to align yourself with someone, make sure they take care of you and if you aren’t sure if they are, they’re not. Move on.
A final note. This is a good read for a career here or anywhere:
