Poker’s best-selling book (Theory of Poker) was originally published by Prentice Hall but almost wasn’t. The low level editor assigned to approving it, worried what would happen if it flopped. I told him that I would shop it around, it was a big favorite to succeed, and I changed his unethical personal equation by telling him that during interviews after that success, I won’t fail to mention that Mr H prevented Prentice Hall from publishing it. His reply was “Let me reconsider”. I will elaborate in the longer explanations section.
This is a widespread problem that affects two categories of people. Business owners and others at the top, and those who have to go through middle managers to bring their ideas, requests or proposals to those top people. But it would be wrong to put most of the blame on those middle managers who are just looking out for themselves. Because the top people are accomplices if they don’t take expected value into account when they decide whether to criticize their underlings. When the bosses don’t do that, you can’t blame a coach for not going for a first down when he should, or a pit boss for barring a craps player who he knows will either lose $100 or win $5000. Or an editor for turning down a manuscript that he deems a small underdog to succeed.
I had a second incident where I was forced to get nasty to turn a middle manager’s personal EV equation around to the point where it coincided with what the owners and me would want done. I tried to open a bank account in Vegas lacking a normally required piece of ID. After the teller turned me down, I asked the bank manager to reverse it since I was obviously me. When he also refused, I asked him if it was out of his hands or if he had the power to make an exception and simply chose not to. He said that he did have that power but wasn’t going to use it. Bad answer. I told him that I would ask Steve Wynn and Jack Binion to close their accounts there because Mr. …. had no common sense. Until then his personal EV equation was to make the (incorrect) decision not to overrule the teller because to do that had zero upside to him but some miniscule downside. But when he added in the slight chance that I really could get the Horseshoe or Golden Nugget to withdraw their money while attributing that decision to his incompetence, that equation changed a lot. He quickly changed his decision (and his superior attitude).
Don’t be afraid to do something similar if a middle manager throws up a roadblock for his own personal gain.