Dan Erwin

How to Set the Stage for Haggling Success

Effective hagglers carefully set the stage for their success.  Exploring your own alternatives for haggling success is inevitably followed, says Max Bazerman, by assessing the other party's alternatives.  Setting the stage is the third step in the art and science of haggling.   

Setting the stage is an old idiom very familiar to those of us with background in drama.  Because the stage for your negotiation is a key success factor, setting the stage needs elaboration.  You don't just walk in and start haggling over the price of a product.  My very successful "horse trading" father regularly talked me through stage setting  and its importance. 

If, for example, there was a purchase to be made from one of his ethnic buddies on "14th Street" in old Detroit, he talked to me about the best week of the month, the best day of the week, the best time of the day and who to engage.  He was very calculated in his assessment and I learned that it usually paid off big time.  (I doubt that this kind of experience takes place anymore.  That world is gone.  But if I was along, the sale occasionally concluded with coffee, donuts, candy and a lot of laughter from one of the store owners.  On those occasions when my dad did exceptionally well, he received the kudos, "Well Tom, you did it to me again."  And since my dad had priced the object in question at several other places, the owner was not just BSing.)  Studies over the past 10 to 20 years indicate that my dad's success is typical of trained negotiators.

How do you set the stage for successful haggling?

There is a lot to be said for my dad's focus on timing.  Consumer Reports advises negotiating early or late in the day when the stores are quiet.  But you'll need to know the customer cycle.  I've found that in some suburban stores the best time is between 10 am and about 11:15. 

In addition, Consumer Reports reminds us that we may need to work with a manager out of earshot of customers.  The mere presence of other customers might put an end to your negotiating before you ever got started.

Make certain you've done your homework on competitor's prices and expect the salesperson or manager to verify the prices.  Electronics stores will check prices on the web and will want to discredit prices such as Amazon where delivery times are an issue.  So be ready to push back on delivery times when time is not an issue for you. 

Finally, be polite, listen intently without any need to respond instantly to the salesperson's question of you.  Bazerman and colleagues also remind their readers that stores typically pay fees on credit-card purchases.  Keep in mind that cash may encourage further bargaining.  In major purchases, like autos, cash can work against you because installment loans are a major part of their price, but you don't have to tell them you're going to pay cash until you've already negotiated.  Be especially wary of the tacked on prices for warranties which many firms will attempt.  I recently bought a $60 item at an electronic store where they wanted me to buy an $18 three-year warranty.  I don't buy warranties, not even for a new auto.

One final note for those of you who are resistant to haggling.  Check out the web and you'll see that as a result of the recession, haggling is becoming a lot more common .  In the final analysis, it's street smarts, par excellance, and your buck.

Four Recruiting Secrets of a CEO

Recently, Lawrence Kellner, the CEO of Continental Airlines, laid out his secrets for recruiting.  Kellner's secrets are those every professional should understand because they show you how to manage your career--in case of job loss--more effectively.  Although Kellner obviously gets involved only at senior levels, his recruiting guidelines are typical all the way down the hierarchy with most of my clients. 

Kellner doesn't believe you can figure out in a one or two hour interview whether anyone is going to be a success.  Talent is not very easy to identify, and the smart managers recognize this.  Pfeffer and Sutton point to research that indicates that though most think I.Q. is the key performance issue, the notion is quite suspect.  Intelligence acounts for no more than 16% of the variation in performance.  In short, "for most jobs in most organizations, assessing talent and ability is fraught with error and bias."  Recruiting is a crapshot.  Bob Sutton's comments on bosses fills you in on the kind of boss humility that's important, not only about recruiting but other stuff as well.  Still, if I were interviewing for a job, I'd do a lot of preparation for the interview.  Same if I was recruiting.

Kellner's second approach is to go through his rolodex to figure out whether he has worked with someone who'd be really good for filling the job.  What that means to me is that most professioals need to focus on performing well and self-advocating to the relevant managers so they'll know who you are and how well you perform.  This is not rocket-science, but so few professionals self-advocate and keep managers up to date on their performance that it's no wonder there are so many high-performers on the street. 

Third, when there's no one in his rolodex, Kellner widens his search to people he trusts and asks them about people they've worked with.  "Who do you know that can . . . .?" is a common strategy among successful managers.  If they know you as a high performer, you're liable to get an opportunity.

The final strategy is to find someone he trusts who knows the person he's thinking of hiring.  Kellner believes, like all the managers I know, that "the best possible interview is miniscule in value compared to somebody who's got even a couple of months of work experience with somebody."

With flattened hierarchies and constant organizational changes, a number of implications surface from Kellner's conclusions--that is, if you want to manage your career successfully. 

Make it a practice to get outside your work silo and narrow area of expertise.  Needs and opportunities change constantly and your expertise may be of little value unless you've got the experience and smarts to leverage it in different ways.

Second, learn to self-advocate without being perceived as a "careerist," someone who's always trying to "play the game."  I refer to self-advocacy in a post about Gen-Yers managing Gen-Yers, but astute self-advocacy is always a necessity. 

Third, maintain a shoulder length network, not merely defined by your friends--the birds of a feather syndrome.  Get to know people outside your organization and outside your expertise and keep building that network.  I rant about this networking issue regularly, and hope to see more and more professionals take-charge of their career by networking.

Why Is How a Person Deals With Failure Important?

I've worked with Carol Dweck's studies on motivation for some time now and have learned to focus far better in my coaching.  Carol has found that people have one of two mindsets:  a fixed mindset that limits growth and a person's future, or a growth mindset that enables a person to see the world in a new way and develop their talents throughout life. 

A mindset is not merely a personality quirk.  It's a deeply held stereotype or mental model that determines our fundamental attitudes, our thinking, even our actions.  A fixed mindset means that you have to prove yourself, trying to look talented over and over again, like a rat on a wheel.  A growth mindset means that you know that your talents can be developed, that great abilities are built over time, and that you can take the steps to do it right through your failures--the path of success.

So, when I'm coaching a client or team member, what I want to know ASAP is how that person deals with failure.  Yeah. . . . just getting some people to admit failure is a pain in the ass.   However, there are plenty of successful people out there who have no difficulty admitting failure, and even laughing about it and telling me, off the cuff, what it did for them.

Why is how a person deals with failure important?

Dweck answers the question in spades, in ways you won't see anyplace else.  Your mindset frames the whole running account of what's taking place in your head.  It guides your interpretation of events and makes your own sense out of those experiences.  Carol reports that several of her studies have probed how people analyze and make sense of the failure information they're receiving. 

Those with a fixed mindset constantly monitor the input and feedback they're getting.  But, here's the rub.  Everything good is a positive stroke, and everything bad is a negative stroke.  They're caught in an endless cycle of trying to look smart and talented at all costs.  Feedback is interpreted from  a judgmental perspective.  When they fail, to use the old language it's all about "bad me."  As a consequence, when they've failed, they back out of the situation, blame someone else, and never try that one again.  It's the path of stagnation and career obsolescence.

And as Carol also points out, those with a growth mindset are also monitoring their experiences.  But there's a significant difference.  They don't judge themselves and others like those with a fixed mindset.  Of course they pick up on the positive and negative information, but they assess it for its potential for learning.  They want to know how they can improve and how they can help their partners.  They understand that failure provides insight into how to change, how to grow and eventually how to succeed still more.

That's why, ten years after college graduation, when you meet some talented people you expected to succeed, you're surprised by their lack of success.  But others?  You would never have thought that they'd succeed, but they do.

So, how do you deal with failure?  If you're constrained by a fixed mindset, you can make the changes that lead to fulfilling your potential.  But it'll take some self-monitoring and work.  Stay tuned.

Richard Holbrooke: The Amazing Manager

The 21st century is going to put expectations on managers that many have never considered, much less had brought to their attention. We know that thinking skills, people skills and creativity are going to be at a premium.  That could be intimidating if you think about yourself from a genetic perspective, but the mantra today is a bit different:  Talent is grown, not born.  As a result, viewing these competencies from the perspective of excellent narrative can be a useful exercise for personal growth.

One of the finest descriptive analyses of a bureaucrat that I have seen in years is George Packer's work on Richard Holbrooke in the September 28 New Yorker.  Holbrooke, who brokered the Dayton Peace Accords with Slobodan Milosevic, now serves as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Obama administration.

Lest you think that the article is one liberal journalist, George Packer, writing about another liberal politician, Richard Holbrooke, I urge you to read David Frum's appreciative blog on George Packer.  Frum, you may remember was an economic speech writer for Bush, is now resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and also writer for the National Review.  As Frum summarizes, Packer is an exceedingly elegant writer.

What's especially useful for businesspeople is that Holbrooke's skills are detailed and placed in a work context that includes current affairs, historical matter and personal bio, so you've got a concrete description of the specific competency.  Packer provides you with masterful descriptions of strengths along with the warts, while emphasizing personal complexity.  For example,

His great advantage over most colleagues and opponents is his analytic and synthetic prowess, which allows him . . . to break down the reasons for the Taliban's successful propaganda campaign in the tribal areas while connecting it to imperial British history in the region.  As for his flaws, he seems remarkably unaware of them.  Holbrooke cannot be kidded about the trait for which he's best known:  his ego.

With that kind of information, you'd think that Holbrooke might be an insensitive jerk. 

The notion that Holbrooke craves attention . . . is accurate but misleading.  Far from undermining those he works for, Holbrooke is a loyal servant to power, with an old-fashioned respect for the presidency.

His mentoring skills are legendary, along with his willingness to give credit where its due.  He also knows not only how to access power, but how to get the support and people he needs.  Packer relates Holbrooke's need for a certain Afghani human-rights specialist who was wary of losing her independence.  It took him a month, but eventually he won her.  Henry Kissinger's comment on recruiting skills is telling: 

If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes.  If you say no, you'll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.

The take on ambiguity, that difficult and little understood competency underlying business success, is, well . . .  unique, to say the least.  Christopher Hill, who has held ambassadorships to Korea, Macedonia, Poland and now Iraq describes Holbrooke's thinking process this way:

He often works on the music before he gets to the words, creating an atmosphere and a sense of what we are dealing with--are we dealing with a sad song, or what?  Right now, Richard Holbrooke is getting a sense of the issues, the people.  Eventually, the music will shift from Vietnam to the Balkans (Holbrooke's background).  And if he gets to a negotiation it will be realistic.

Holbrooke's comment about institution building was that things are not sequential.  They have to be parallel.  In business language, you've got to deal with the strategic complexities and keep focused on the big picture.

Technically, the article is analytical narrative and that's what makes it so valuable for the reader and the businessperson.  The competencies are surfaced, but spelled out in actions.  They're easier to recognize and remember in narrative form.

I could go on and on, but this is such an impressive article that you'll find many things to get you thinking.  Some of the behaviors may be grating, and I certainly can't imagine recommending some of them.  But the strengths are amazing. 

I'm saving it and keeping it for my favored clients because it will generate a lot of useful conversation about managing and learning.  The September 28 of the New Yorker is on the newstands now, or you can buy the article on the internet for download. 

Tell me what you think about it.

Quotation of the Week: Jane Goodall

Question:  Which do you like better, chimps or humans?

I like some chimpanzees much better than some humans and some humans much better than some chimpanzees.

--Jane Goodall, world-famous primatologist

Another reason to think seriously about being a nice guy and ask that all important question:  does it really pay to be a nice guy?  It all depends.

Need to Be More Productive? Take Some Time Off

Do you work on a 24/7 schedule?  Always on?  People in professional services like IT, consultants, investment bankers, accountants, etc. usually make work their top priority.  If they're going to succeed, the rule is they need to be on--all the time.  At least that's what most believe.

Blackberry own you?  Work more than 50 hours a week, maybe 65?  And even more time on the Blackberry?  And respond to messages within an hour?  Those are the people that really need to see this research.

Counter-intuitive findings reported in the October Harvard Business Review challenge all those beliefs.  Jessica Porter and Leslie Perlow of Harvard Business School studied service professionals in the Boston Consulting Group and found that "it is perfectly possible for consultants and other professionals to meet the highest standards of service and still have planned, uninterrupted time off."

Of course, the researchers' notion was a case of rethinking the unthinkable, and a challenge to conventional wisdom.  Here's how they carried out the research.  They selected a group of four consultants who were working with a new client that the firm really wanted to add to their portfolio.  The project involved daily interaction with the client, leading the consultants to believe that they had to be at the client site four days a week.  The research required everyone to take a full day off a week--unusual for BCG and major consulting firms.  The researchers talked the firm into adding an additional person so that the total time invested in the client wasn't changed, but every member of the team had to take off a day a week. . . on one of the days he/she would normally be with the client.  Over the four years the researchers added 10 more teams to the research base.

A lot of nervousness and resistance was inevitable.

Results?  In contrast to teams that did not take part in the study, the research revealed the following:

• higher satisfaction with work/life balance
• higher job satisfaction
• more open communication
• increased learning and development
• better product delivered to the client
• increased work efficiencies
• greater likelihood of long term career at the firm (consulting has huge burnout rate)

Intriguing insight:

Exaggerated responsiveness to the client "perpetuates a vicious cycle."  24/7 responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness, both in the client and in the consultant. 

Listening to Nonverbal: A Unique and Valuable Skill

You read that right.  We look at all the nonverbals except one:  vocal cues.  Vocal cues are not just about loudness and softness.  There are many different messages in them.  U.S. businesspeople play down the voice in more formal settings.  This becomes especially obvious in males when the issues assume significance. 

It's important to understand that language is mostly a conscious activity, while nonverbal behavior, including voice tone, is fairly involuntary.  If a person is saying one thing, but his/her nonverbals are saying something else, trust the nonverbal messages.  Certainly check out facial animation, color changes, muscle tension, antsy behaviors while sitting, but don't miss vocal tone. 

Voice tone is genuine.  Tone, like all nonverbals is an illustrator when accompanied or tied to speech.  It illustrates what is being said verbally.  It reinforces the verbal message, emphasizing what a person is saying about her comfort with you, or her rejection of your advances.  Listen for such characteristics as warmth, tension or sincerity.  If a person's voice goes quiet, flat or emotionless, that's also signaling something, perhaps control, caution or even fear.  If the tone is pushy, trying too hard or bright, you're getting still different messages.

Three nonverbal rules: 

You can't not communicate.  Even silence is communication.  Often, you'll have to ask to find out what silence means.

Be careful about drawing nonverbal conclusions based on your first meeting of a person.  What's vocally flat in one person may be a message of warmth in another.  

Nonverbal emphasizes the intensity or importance of what is being said.  It not only compliments what's said, but it also accents or repeats the verbal message.

Observe (and listen to) the nonverbal and try to define what the consistency between verbal and nonverbal looks and sounds like in each person.  Individuals differ in the degree to which they express nonverbals.  Cultures differ very much in the degree to which they express nonverbals, even between different parts of the U.S.  The Upper Midwest, where I live, uses less verbal and nonverbal intensity than any other part of the country, while the Southeast uses the most. 

The best way to begin to understand vocal tone is to pay attention to just that one nonverbal for a single day or more.  As you're conversing with someone, keep listening to the tone of voice.  It may feel strange, but you'll gain a lot of insight as you keep up with the process.

Managing up, sideways or down, negotiating, persuading, building relations are just some of the competencies that can be enhanced by a richer understanding of listening to the nonverbal.

Key Skill: Management of the Organizational Culture

Occasionally I either meet or read about a woman at the top of a "male business."  Lina Hudson, President of BAE Systems, land and armaments group, is just such a person.  Recently, the NY Times interviewed her about rising to the top of organizations.  Her basic philosophy is that organizations are built on relationships, and those are the skills you need to get things done. 

Because it's unusual to see an interview with as much emphasis on the ability to work the organizational culture, and because that ability has become more and more important in today's workworld, I want to excerpt her wise comments on managing the organizational culture.   The interviewer sets up her response by asking for Ms. Hudson's best career advice.

I tell people that in a corporate environment, which is all I’ve ever known, first and foremost you need to understand the culture you work in, and find a way to make it work for you rather than trying to fight it. Corporations are very interesting machines. And what you need to look for is the informal power of the corporation, not necessarily the way the organization looks.

An early boss told me, spend the first couple of months in this job figuring out how things really work around here, and then go and establish allies with the real movers and shakers in the organization because that’s the way you will be the most successful. And I advise people to do the same thing.

You can never succeed in a corporate culture on your own. It is all about how you fit, how you know how to make things happen within the infrastructure and in a way that’s acceptable to the norms and values of the corporation that you work in.

Once you catch on to who really pulls the strings and where the real power base is, who you have to collaborate with, who you have to inform, who you have to seek for advice and agreement, you can actually make these big, very, very lumbering organizations work very, very well. It’s all about the informal structure. It’s about the critical relationships, and it’s about fitting in, in a constructive way, so that you really make your decisions that not only benefit yourself but benefit the corporation as well.

Ms. Hudson's comments ring all too true.  You'll want to check out the entire article.

Managing the organizational culture is about the ability to manage up as well as the ability to develop intelligence networks to support your objectives.  In today's flattened organizational world, these are competencies you need to start building the first day of your job.  Don't get caught like a newly promoted vice-president of a major consumer products company who hired me to help him learn how to manage organizational system.  It was such a high priority for the company's new organizational model that he was certain he'd lose his job if he couldn't manage across disciplines (that was about eight years ago).  The possibility that a person could go that far without influence management skills today is practically nil.

"Yale Is Not a Trade School"

The conversation about liberal arts and business is more heated than ever and it's coming from many places.  Personally, it's a very important question, because I've long since decided that the better thinkers tend to be liberal arts grads.  I'd heard that message for years, but after extensive psych and interview evaluations of more than 400 corporate managers and execs in my consulting business, it's obvious.  It's also not politically correct to talk about it too much inside the corporation. 

Notice, I said "tend to be" the better thinkers.  Of course, that's not always true.  There are exceptions to every rule.  At least I'm consistent.  My wife, our three daughters and myself all have liberal arts degrees.  Matt Shaffer, a Yale senior, published an article in the Yale Daily News this past Tuesday which I've used for my blog title.  In a number of conversations at the Harvard Club and from Yale alumni, he kept hearing Ivy grads from some of the top consulting firms and banks mouth these words:  "I haven't used anything that I learned from my economics major."  Shaffer suspects economics is one of the most popular majors because it enables you to satisfy the recruiters for your first job.  And once you've had those three hiring interviews, supported by your economics major, you'll wish you'd studied Renaissance literature or philosophy.  That'll give you a far richer understanding of the world in which you work and live. 

Shaffer's conclusions are straightforward:  Taking 'Financial Theory' won't actually make us better bankers, but by familiarizing us with financial jargon and proving our genuine interest in the trade, it might give us an edge in the initial hiring.  In other words, it won't make any difference in how we perform in our jobs, but it might determine whether or not we get the jobs in the first place.

WSJ is publishing a series of articles by Stephen Yoder and son Isaac, who's starting his freshman year at a liberal arts college.  In the latest article, son Isaac is writing about registering for classes and wondering whether he should follow his father's advice to branch out and take courses from professors with the best reputation. 

He also writes that it doesn't set one up very well for a paying post-college career.  Furthermore, in somewhat frustrated tone he announces that his advisor hasn't said a word about the courses that would help him get a job later.  Having been a university teacher 25 years ago, I could tell him that most college teachers don't know beans about the business world.  That's not their job, but . . . . 

The comments, of course, are split down the middle.  On one side of the issue a commenter tells him that he should go ahead and get a philosophy major, that he can do whatever he wants with it.  (None of the writers seem to know the research showing that executives with undergrad philosophy majors are among the best paid in business.)  On the other side of the column are those who indicate that by the time Isaac's in college he should know exactly what career he'll be going into after college, and should take courses in preparation for that career.  (What planet are they living on?  Boomers have extended their kids' adolescence so long that even if the recommendation is correct, which I seriously doubt, few Gen-Yers will be concerned about their career until at least their senior year in college.)   No surprise to me that the argument is heated.  It's driven strongly by the economic climate.

A couple weeks ago, Drew Faust, president of Harvard, stepped into the fray, but from the perspective of university purpose, a macro perspective.  Her perspective, both historical and contemporary, adds needed insight.   

The economic downturn has had what is perhaps an even more worrisome impact. It has reinforced America’s deep-seated notion that a college degree serves largely instrumental purposes. 

Faust takes a perspective, that though historical and desperately needed, is rarely heard within the business context any longer.  It causes me to ask whether the liberal arts has become an elitist orientation.

In the era of economic constraint before us, the pressure toward vocational pursuits is likely only to intensify. As a nation, we need to ask more than this from our universities. Higher learning can offer individuals and societies a depth and breadth of vision absent from the inevitably myopic present. Human beings need meaning, understanding and perspective as well as jobs. The question should not be whether we can afford to believe in such purposes in these times, but whether we can afford not to.

My protege, Liam O'Dea, has taken a similar argument and placed it within his own successful work experience.  He argues that it is the power tool for success.

My bias is clear, and I think the facts are on this side of the discussion.  I "tend" to prefer my liberal arts friends.  Of course, you could say that's the old birds of a feather flock together rule.

Question:  What do you think about it?

What Do You Do When Your Boss Ignores You?

The September 10 issue of the Wall Street Journal has one of those articles sure to inflame the ardor of some and gain a lot of reader comments.  It's the familiar conflict of what to do when your boss ignores you.  The writer, Elizabeth Garone, a well known journalist with a rich history of writing about business issues, responds to a question from a CIO in a bank in Texas who's having great difficulty breaking into the Texas "good old boy" network and getting nothing from the CEO to whom he reports.  He has 25 years of experience in banking with more than 20 years in technology.  He's losing interest in his job, but has a good salary and if he stays for five more years will have a "good salary continuation package."  That's a swell package that will pay his salary from retirement to death, or if needed, from disability to death.

The writer checks out the consultants on her rolodex, asks for reader comments, and gets a number of seemingly relevant answers.  They include:  the boss is a jerk, your boss doesn't understand your value, stick it out for five years and get another job, be straight with your boss and manage him better, learn to choose your bosses better and check out the culture again to see whether you're misunderstanding,etc.

Interesting advice.  However, it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to assess whether any of the answers have real significance.  But it makes for readership and provides possible interpretations so that, at the least, the reader will have different perspectives should he or she be found in a similar situation.  Besides, it's a catchy title and journalism is all about catchy titles.  WSJ seems to be pretty good at getting reader interest--that's their business.

So what is the best way to approach and ultimately resolve power games and conflicts when your boss is part of the problem?

Rather than address the question the way the journalist sets it up, this is an excellent time to lay out the possible parameters for that kind of question.  Once you understand the important parameters of conflict and power, you'll have a better way to look at those issues.  If you start there when faced with difficulty, you'll save yourself a lot of grief.  

In the above situation the questioner and nearly all the commentators believe the boss holds the cards.  That may or may not be the case.  But one thing is clear:  if you start with that lens, you've seriously limited possible resolutions.  

First, here's my disclaimer:  I'm clueless regarding the best possible resolution for the CIO's problem.    However, from ancient history as well as the last 30 to 50 years of related theory and research, we know the parameters of the resolution.  And I'm writing this blog because I've found that more often than not we focus on only two of the possible three parameters that might provide insight to resolution.

As far back as Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.), the ancients understood that when dealing with conflicts you should look at the protagonist, the antagonist and the context:  the CIO, the boss and the organizational culture.   We are often limited by the proclivity of our American culture to focus on the antagonist.  You see it in politics, economics, business and community.  We focused on Hitler during world war II, on Putin, on Bin Laden, on whatever political party to which we're opposed, on the "government" and on "the boss" when we're not getting what we think we deserve.

When it comes to assessing how to manage an an interpersonal difficulty, we're primarily dispositionalists.  That's a neat term referring to our emphasis upon the psychology of the wrong-doer.  As might have been expected, the majority of the comments to the WSJ article emphasized the psychology of the boss as the path to resolution, while a few focused on the skills that the CIO might need to successfully manage the situation. 

If you're focusing on the antagonist, the boss, most of you know the questions:  what are his priorities, values, expectations, desires, needs, competencies, awareness, etc.?  The possible resolution might be within those issues.

If you're focusing on the protagonist, the CIO, you'll be asking:  what skills does he have, how well can he communicate, manage up, understand power, influence, persuade, etc.?  And, the resolution might be within that list of issues.

But don't miss the organizational culture, the context within which conflicts take place.  What are the culture's values, norms, expectations, systems?  And what are the culture's norms for relationships, conflicts, support, etc.?  You can never succeed in a culture on your own.  So you'll need to know how you fit and have built alliances with the organizational movers and shakers.  Unless they own the firm, bosses became who they are because of their relationships with the movers and shakers, and those people are key to the resolution of problems as much, and sometimes more, than the CEO.   On many occasions those people will not only tell you how to understand and manage the boss, but sometimes they'll help you do it.  It's possible that the resolution to the problem may be within the cultural norms and values.

In companies of any size, the major focus of the CEO is upon the financial stakeholders.  People below the CEO actually run the firm.  Many lower level people accept the movie/TV caricature of hierarchy and CEO power.  But, it's actually rare for CEOs to make decisions without the counsel and support of the people.  And in organizations with history, the people are very responsive to the corporate culture and its mythology.  Indeed, the deciding factor for many hires is whether they fit the organizational culture.  After a few years of existence, employees are more a reflection of an organizational culture than the culture is a reflection of the employees.  (You may want to quit a job because you don't like what the culture is doing to you.  Cultures are unbelievable powerful in their ability to shape people.)  So pay a lot of attention to the "rules" of your organizational culture.  They can be the real decision maker and the path to problem resolution.

Bottom line:  Don't get your shorts all knotted up until you understand how the culture works and whether you can manage conflicts by means of cultural expectations.  I have no experience in the culture where my Gen-Y protege works.  Nearly every recommendation I make concludes with this caveat:  "Here are a couple ways to handle that problem in most firms, but don't make a decision until you've checked out their cultural fit.  My recommendation could be well off the mark for your firm."   

I'd love to hear from you.  To what extent do you disagree?  What can you add?  What have I missed.