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who gets ahead is not necessarily the person who works the hardest or does the best job; it’s the person who consistently displays the perseverance, assertiveness, and aggressiveness of the true leader.*  9 You
can
be that leader.

6
    ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR CORPORATE CEOS
    Beware the Penis That Squirts Vodka
    W HEN YOU’RE THE CEO of a major corporation, you get a lot of perks—a huge salary, generous stock options, a big office, a corporate jet ready to whisk you to exclusive golf resorts, and a staff of lackeys to take your shirts to the laundry, wash your luxury car, clip your nasal hairs, and do all the other things that you, as a busy CEO, do not have time to do.
    But with these benefits come the responsibilities of being a leader. Which
specific
exclusive golf resort should the corporate jet whisk you to? Do you want starch in your shirts? How
much
starch? Only you, as CEO, can make these decisions.
    Also from time to time you might have to become involved in the running of the corporation per se. You must be very cautious here, because in recent years the authorities have become quite picky about enforcing rules that prohibit corporate executives from lying and stealing vast quantities of money. In a few cases, corporate executives have actually been convicted and sent to federal prisons, some of which have only the most rudimentary tennis courts.
    You don’t want anything that horrible to happen to you. So, if you become CEO, make sure you follow these ethical guidelines:
    GUIDELINE NUMBER ONE: Keep your salary within reasonable limits.
    More and more, the salaries of corporate CEOs are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being out of line with the salaries of the, whaddyacallem, workers. So you want to make sure that, as CEO, your salary falls within reasonable limits. What do I mean by “within reasonable limits”? I mean “roughly 3,000 times as much as you pay a janitor.”
    If you don’t know how much a janitor makes at your corporation, go to an employee bathroom and ask one. (If you don’t know where the employee bathrooms are, ask one of your staff people.) Let’s say the janitor tells you he makes $11,500 a year. Now, using a calculator (if you don’t know how to operate a calculator, ask one of your staff people), simply multiply 11,500 times 3,000 to obtain your target salary, which in this case would be $34,500,000, or, rounding upward for bookkeeping convenience, $40 million.
    Of course you may find that this is not enough. You may have a financial emergency, such as you’re playing golf at an exclusive resort with another CEO and you find out that he makes
more
than $40 million a year. In this case, you have no choice but to increase your salary. But in order to do that and still remain within the ethical guidelines, you will need to increase the average salary of your janitors by one 3,000th of the amount of the raise you need (ask one of your staff people to figure out the exact numbers). Be advised that raising all these salaries might hurt your corporation’s “bottom line.” If so, you may have to compensate by firing some janitors. That won’t be an easy decision to make, but that’s why you, as CEO, make the big bucks.
    GUIDELINE NUMBER TWO: If you use your corporation’s money to pay for half of a lavish $2 million birthday party for your wife on the island of Sardinia, featuring, among many other lavish things, an ice statue of Michelangelo’s
David
with vodka squirting out of its penis, for God’s sake do not make a video of it.
    This was the mistake made by Dennis Kozlowski, who threw just such a party when he was CEO of Tyco. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Dennis also allegedly used company money to buy a shower curtain that cost $6,000 and a dog-shaped designer umbrella stand that cost $15,000. Dennis wound up getting into trouble, and a jury was shown a videotape of the party he threw for his wife. The defense claimed that the party was a legitimate