Dead Weight, GoTo Guys & The Conspiracy Against Competence (Part 2)...

Basic 80/20 math says that out of 300 million people in the U.S., only 5 million actually produce anything.

These are the the Go-To guys and gals, and the whole creaking system teeters on their overburdened shoulders.

They keep the lights on and the trains running on time.

And company presidents and shareholders, consciously or unconsciously, must keep the Go-To guys from ever discovering their own value, their importance, their true levels of talent.

The Go-To guys must stay muzzled. Because losing a Go-To guy is very, very costly.

Genuine Go-To guys are exceedingly difficult to replace.

So Corporate America has developed a finely-tuned formula for getting and keeping Go-To guys:

1. It's almost impossible to identify them before you hire them, and HR departments usually screen them out. It takes a Go-To guy to know a Go-To guy, and Go-To guys rarely work in HR departments.

2. You find them by accident, and when you discover them, you give them more and more work to do, supplemented with dainty morsels of guilt. Every time something is amiss, like sales are a bit off this month or the excel spreadsheet forecast was done sloppily on Friday, you call him at home on Sunday afternoon and express to him how concerned you are about his performance lately. You explain that you're afraid he's not keeping the eye on the ball and you don't want this to ever happen again.

3. It's vitally important that your Go-To guy have between $25,000 and $65,000 of student loans. It also helps if he has two car payments and a balloon mortgage on his house that's really a bit rich for his income. That way he's freakin' terrified of missing even one paycheck. He knows that a layoff or firing would bring certain financial doom. That fear never vacates the back of his worried mind.

4. His compensation for the 55 hour work weeks, the unceasing stress, the lack of appreciation, the complete absence of opportunities to influence really important strategic decisions, the vacations interrupted by cell phone calls and impromptu meetings, is those two cars and the house that's a bit rich for his income. During your fireside chats, you counsel him that he deserves these things because he works so hard, and maybe he should even treat himself to a boat. Aunt Visa and Uncle MasterCard and Madison Avenue do their part to reinforce this, ensuring that he never has enough money to take any business risks, ever.

5. Stroke his ego with things that cost the company very little. Plastic plants, corner offices, fancy titles ("Vice President of Manufacturing Technology" is a good one), and when you're together at client meetings, whisper to the client, just loud enough for Go-To guy to overhear, that Go-To Guy graduated from MIT with a 3.6 GPA. Maintain a big long list of things Go-To guy can't take to the bank, but which still make him feel proud of his accomplishments.

6. You pilfer money from his 401K program and limit it to extraordinarily conservative investments (while talking about the 401K program in such delightful, embellished terms that he never visits a financial planner and considers saving up his own nest egg) so your Go-To guy will actually never have enough money to retire. He'll still be your Go-To guy when he's 83 and has a colostomy bag strapped to his leg.

7. If you don't want to keep him until 83, fire him four months before his 20 year company anniversary, just before his pension vests. Oh yeah, and if you really want to stick the knife in deep, fire him on his wedding anniversary. Send him home to his sweetheart in tears and shame. It'll sweeten their weekend, the one with the steak dinner and red roses at the Radisson. Oh, and whenever you bump into him around town, tell him to be sure and tell her 'hi' for you.

8. Tell the Board Of Directors meeting that the company lost the 3 1/2 million dollar account with Starbucks because of Go-To guy's inattention to detail and lack of maturity. Tell them you'd already been concerned about his performance for quite some time, and you solemnly accept a share of the blame for not dismissing him as soon as you saw the warning signs. This will ensure that they never suspect it was actually your fault – you hacked off their purchasing manager for trying to cut your own distributor's throat to keep some more margin. He knew right then you were a blood sucker and he nixed the deal.

Now I'm willing to bet that YOU are one of these Go-To guys. Most of my subscribers are.

How do I know that? Because you're INVESTING in yourself.

You go out of your way to get yourself educated—even pay out of your own pocket when necessary.

It's my experience that people who invest in themselves do it either because they are Go-To guys, or because they're becoming Go-To guys.

To Corporate America there's **nothing** more dangerous than a Go-To guy who invests in himself.

Because one day you shake your head, and a new fire flickers in your eyes, and you look around and realize, "Hey, I don't need them, they need ME!"

And as all the board room honchos know, there's no un-ringing that bell.

Carpe Diem,

Perry Marshall

P.S. Another bar in the cage that keeps the Go-To guys in their place is ISOLATION.

When a Go-To guy realizes there are more of their kind out there, they start to get dangerous ideas.

The Mastermind Forum is an iron-sharpens-iron "band of brothers," where Go-To guys gather to compare notes and support each other.

For more on how to join, click here:

Dead Weight, GoTo Guys & The Conspiracy Against Competence... Part 1: