I’ll never forget my own reaction to Michael Korda’s 1975 book, !Power: How to Get It, How to Use It.   I was shocked that a book with such a chest-thumping macho title could actually focus so much on things like judicious interior decorating, how to enter a room, etiquette, dissembling and projecting false charm, and so forth.  Despite the fact that Michael Korda was an extremely powerful man in the publishing industry, I was sure that what I was reading about must be just an isolated aberration.

Having since that time gained experience in a wider variety of businesses and risen to a substantially higher level in the economic food chain, I can now see that Korda was talking about something taking place throughout Corporate America.

In fact, if I now had to choose an archetypal "new corporate man," it would without hesitation be that most conspicuous modern-day counterpart to the courtier, the management consultant.  The consultant takes it as his first premise that he exists in a state of permanent dependence on others for power, and therefore sets about immediately and assiduously cultivating those who have it.  He accomplishes this via fluency in the arts of presentation and politics and general management of perceptions;  and often rounds out his repertoire with excellent corollary skills at gossip, cattiness, and sycophantry.

Although today's vast mega-corporations don't actually require a visibly dandified or effeminate style for success, their remote and disjointed style, which places an increasing emphasis on how we look rather than what we do, shifts the nature of competition, metaphorically speaking, away from hockey, and more toward figure skating.  At the very least, this opens the door to a lot of mere posers.