Notebook: Cute Dinosaur Notebook and Lined pages, Extra large (8.5 x 11) inches, 110 pages, White paper (Notebook for Kids)

David D'Alessandro, Chairman and CEO of John Hancock Financial Services, is famous for his frankness and his ability to spot the weaknesses in conventional wisdom. In Career Warfare (McGraw-Hill, 12/26/03), this insider spells out the unwritten rules of organizational life, the real truths even the best boss won't tell you.

Author of the best-selling Brand Warfare (2001), D'Alessandro offers a keenly observant guide to the subtle reasons why ambitious people perish, stagnate, or flourish in any organization, large or small. Consider this classic nugget from Career Warfare: "It may shock you to learn that the people in a position to actually do something about your career do not think about you all the time. I guarantee that they think about you only one-tenth of one percent of the time you spend thinking about yourself."

D'Alessandro argues that if you want to get ahead, you have to make it easy for powerful people to trust you with new opportunities. You have to make a name for yourself and establish the kind of "personal brand" that commands respect. Of course, you also have to work hard and accomplish things; that goes without saying. But are you seen as honest? Focused? Fearless? Do you have a gift for making work fun for the people you manage? It is these qualities that will set you apart from your equally hard-working and accomplished peers.

Yes, there are a few dramatic moments of victory or stupidity in every career, but D'Alessandro says it is your day-to-day patterns of behavior that really determine whether you win or lose the career war. Seemingly insignificant decisions, such as whether to greet a security guard, drone on in a meeting, or keep a piece of information to yourself, can say everything about who you are. "It is the character you've demonstrated over the course of a thousand transactions that will shape your brand and prompt someone to take a chance on you -- or not."

Writing in a refreshing style peppered with vivid personal anecdotes and lessons big and small, D'Alessandro offers ten major rules for making the right kind of personal impression:

• Rule 1: Try to Look Beyond Your Own Navel
• Rule 2: Like It Or Not, Your Boss Is The Co-Author Of Your Brand
• Rule 3: Put Your Own Boss On The Couch
• Rule 4: Learn Which One Is The Pickle Fork
• Rule 5: Kenny Rogers Is Right
• Rule 6: It's Always Show Time
• Rule 7: Make The Right Enemies
• Rule 8: Try Not to be Swallowed by the Bubble
• Rule 9: The Higher You Fly, The More You will Be Shot At
• Rule 10: Everybody Coulda Been a Contender; Make Sure You Stay One

In Career Warfare, no organizational piety survives unscathed. A few of D'Alessandro's insights:

How organizations work: "The elders of the tribe eat first. And if you cannot accept that, there is only one thing to do: Start your own organization, so you'll be at the top of the food chain."

On bosses: "The fact of the matter is, all bosses will use you. In their eyes, you are primarily an instrument to help them further their own careers. The real question is whether or not you are smart enough to use them."

On working for a partnership: "Partnerships are a lot like college fraternities, in that they are able to convince the freshmen to do all kind of humiliating and self-destructive things because they want so badly to be a member of the club."

On understanding when it's time to leave a job: "Where ambitious people get a case of the stupids is by staying in a comfortable place long after they have already gained whatever knowledge and power they were going to gain."

On handling the press: "If you resent having journalists prying into your business, my advice is, get over it. In general, most journalists are ethical. If they are asking you questions you don't like, it is generally because they have a job to do."

On building a reservoir of goodwill: "Be generous with your time, money, power, insight, and efforts because you should be generous. But also be aware that one of the side effects of this generosity is that both you and your organization will have some insulation from the mistakes you will make down the road."

D'Alessandro's unique voice gives Career Warfare a refreshing bite that readers will remember from the day they first read it until they day they retire. That's a good thing, because as the author points out, even the best personal brand does not entitle you to let your guard down. At every phase of your career, you will need to defend your good name from the sniping of your enemies, the indifference or incompetence of your bosses, and your own worst impulses.

"You never reach a point where you are done justifying yourself," D'Alessandro writes.

Career Warfare shows you how to command respect at every stage of the game.