I was listening to a radio show the other morning about a book called The 48 Laws of Power. On the show was a CEO of a major company and a reformed drug dealer that made over ½ billion in his time.
According to both of them many CEOs and Drug Dealers alike use these “48 Laws of Power” as a blueprint to building their empires. During the course of the discussion it was implied that inner city drug kingpins have CEO minds, and in many cases, are actually smarter than CEOs.
As absurd as that sounds the point was made that Drug Dealers have to do things that many CEOs have never done, and would not know how to do. For example, Dealers have to build an infrastructure from nothing, while top CEOs are often hired with an established organization already in place. And while CEOs of major corporations effortlessly attract good candidates based on the company’s corporate reputation, dealers have to recruit by creating a street reputation of fear and intimidation, while supplying a vision that will attract people that are, in most cases, tougher than the dealer himself. There were tons of comparisons that were thought provoking.
By no means do I condone drug dealing or illegal activity, but had these guys chosen a straighter path, could they have been effective CEOs in corporate America?
Here’s a link to the 48 Laws…
6 comments:
Of course they could be as good or better than any CEO. Success has the "48 Laws of Power" regardless of the area. The Wire showed the drug dealer taking business classes to improve his "company."
If you do your research some of these fortune 500 companies were founded on money from opimium trade. They rolled money into legitimate companies such as oil, bio-tech and drug companies. The inner city is doing that with the music industry.
They can't sell enough drugs and couple with just CDs to make it to the Forbes 400. Jay is the closest at $300 Million, only a couple Billion to go.
I'ma cosign wit Mr. Smith. As a teacher at an inner city school, I see brilliance quite often in the most unlikely of places. By that I mean, I see extreme intelligence in minds that will never see a college classroom. Had many of these minds been raised in a different setting, the outcome could have changed drastically.
My mom has been a teacher for over 20 years now and she is quit frustrated with the state of the school systems. So many of these kids are falling by the way side.
Nino Brown would've kept Enron legit.
The great thing about being a CEO is you can break the law just pay a fine, maybe spend a couple years at a federal golf course.
Nino Brown is going to jeail for a long time.
White colar crime pays better and if you get caught you jut pay a fine.
The CEO is right, but mind you, he is talking about a small number of drug dealers. Not the average weedman who gets caught every 5 months. He means the guys that run a whole zip code. The guys at the top. Yeah, those guys are smart.
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