The power to persuade

The Power to Persuade answers a fundamental question: how can you safely and successfully navigate a world where persuasion, rather than direct command, is the rule? Scores of business books suggest how to boost profits, but this is the only book to tell managers in government and other public sector organizations how to improve performance when there is no clear bottom line. While teaching at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Richard N. Haass realized that no existing book advised those in political settings how to become more effective. Now he has filled the gap. Using a compass as his operating metaphor - your boss is north of you, your staff is south of you, and so on - he provides guidelines for managing key relationships, setting agendas, and translating goals into results. His interviews with Colin Powell, James Baker, Robert Strauss, and dozens of others yield much practical insight. For the twenty million Americans now employed in the public sector, and for millions more working in complex or unruly organizations of every sort, here is a lively, useful book about practicing the delicate art of persuasion to gain influence and achieve success.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.