Jeffrey Pfeffer’s work strips away comforting myths about merit and leadership to expose how power actually operates inside organisations. Drawing on decades of research, he shows that influence is accumulated through perception, alliances, and control of resources rather than competence alone. While his “rules of power” are descriptively accurate, they are ethically neutral and often corrosive. Pfeffer’s later work confronts the human cost of these systems, forcing leaders to choose between naïve idealism and cynical effectiveness—and to decide whether power will be used merely to win or to change the conditions under which winning occurs.