Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit

One Of the most contentious laws in Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power is Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit.  

‘Use the wisdom, knowledge and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a god-like aura of efficiency and speed. In the end, your helpers will be forgotten, and you will be remembered. Never do what others can do for you.’ 

Look, I get it. If you’re running a company, you’re never going to be able to do everything yourself. That’s why companies have employees. Take Apple, for example. Steve Jobs founded it. Thousands of people helped build it up. Do you think he wrote the code for EVERY programme and designed EVERY interface? But when you think of Apple, you probably think of the bespectacled slim guy in the blue sweater giving TED talks. can you think of a single name of anyone else who worked on it? I can’t. 

I can’t say I’ve ever worked for Apple. I’ve not even worked in the private sector since 2008. In the public sector, though, in which I’ve worked since 2007, I’ve come across this law in action. 

Back in about 2014 I had a manager we’ll call HS. I’d been working in this particular office for a few months before she came in, from the Chief Exec’s office, and she immediately made changes to work processes – changes that weren’t too popular with a lot of people. She stayed there a couple of years, dishing out work to people who weren’t capable of it (myself included), and held lengthy team meetings that usually included extensive updates about what was happening further up the chain of command – most of which didn’t directly impact us. It was a difficult time, in all honesty. 

There was a piece of work she asked me to do – I can’t remember what it was exactly, but I spent quite a while on it. Then, in a team meeting, she announced she was going to do  a specific task that sounded eerily like the one I’d done. I clarified with her right there and then, and she just claimed, no. It’s not the job I did. She then went into more detail… and it was basically what I’d worked on some weeks ago. 

As the years went on, government cuts affected us more and more, and it looked like the building we worked in was going to close. HS jumped ship to another town. Things got a little easier after that, and it wasn’t long before the building was sold off and I was moved over to a different department myself. 

Fast forward a couple of years. I’m at a staff engagement event in a big hall, probably for the last time before they sell that building off too. I’m on a table with some young women I’ve never met before, but we’ve all moved around and worked in different offices as time has gone on. It turns out that, at different times, that this group of women had also worked under HS. I’m the first to admit I did not get on with her. Neither did they, one girl tells me. They’d done a ton of work for her as a team, and she took all the credit for it. 

Moving a few more years on to current day… according to her LinkedIn, HS is now an Assistant Director in the public sector in another borough. 

Law 7 is not the nicest of laws to enact, but it clearly works for some. I did see a video online where Robert Greene himself discusses this law (which, predictably, I now cannot find). He doesn’t necessarily advocate its use, but explains that in the working world, there’ll always be someone prepared to take that action to get what they want. He recommends at least being aware of it. It wasn’t until the tail end of the pandemic that I ended up reading The 48 Laws of Power, in the early summer of ’21. While reading, it occurred to me that HS would have read a lot of management books, and 48 Laws was doubtlessly one of them. 

I can’t imagine not crediting someone. I have guest bloggers once in a while and I’ll always give them their dues. Maybe I’m not ruthless enough. 

Or maybe I’m just not a manager.

Law 19: Know Who You’re Dealing With

In Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, Law 19 is ‘Know Who You’re Dealing With.’ 

‘Deceive or outmanoeuvre some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lamb’s clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then – never offend or deceive the wrong person.’ 

In the book, Greene regales the true story of a businessman and cattle ranch owner named Norfleet. In 1920, a travelling con man named Joe Furey, backed by a gang of swindlers and crooks, passed through Fort Worth, Texas, and stumbled upon Norfleet. Furey ran the con on the rancher, convincing him to ‘invest’ in several schemes, only to reward Norfleet with envelopes stuffed with newspaper clippings. 

There were many victims from Furey’s gang, most of whom cut their losses and chalked it up to experience. 

Not our Norfleet, though. Oh no. He found Furey in Jacksonville Florida and ‘personally hauled him off to face justice.’ He went on to Denver to find other members of the gang, bankrupting himself and causing his own divorce in the process. It took 5 years for him to destroy the whole con ring. 

Let’s leap forward a century, to near present day UK. In July ’24, Labour ousted The Conservatives after 14 years in power. A lot of Labour voters, myself included, entered this new era with cautious optimism. At last, the Tories were gone. Can we tax the billionaires now? Can we hire more GPs and Social Workers as a result? Can we have a sufficient amount of grit in winter? 

I’m writing this in April / May ’26, and the answer has been a resounding ‘no.’ 

But these aren’t the only reasons Prime Minister Kier Starmer has dirt – and in fact blood – figuratively on his hands. He’s still supporting Israel even after the UN described their assault as a ‘full-fledged genocide.’ He openly admitted on air, on LBC, that he believes Israel does have a right to kill children in Palestine.

 

Then he admits he has family in Israel. That’s what all this is about. Yes, the Israeli government may be blackmailing the UK Prime Minister because he has family that live there. His position is, and always has been, untenable. 

We know, of course, that this assault on Gaza did not begin at the Nova festival attack in 2023. It started in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. U.S. President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day. There have been routine massacres of the Palestinian people ever since. 

Regardless, immediately after the Nova attack – which I of course oppose – many people came out of the woodwork updating their Insta stories and grids, in support of Israel. Stories might disappear after 24 hrs, but my Omininotes don’t. I kept a list. Did these people not realise that Israel has terrorising the Palestinians a similar way to how they treated the Israelis that 7th October, only on a routine basis, and for 75 years? More to the point, do the people still supporting Israel not recognise that we will always remember that they chose to support a terrorist ethnocracy who were systematically wiping out a civilian population? 

Many might. I won’t. Starmer himself will always carry that accusation, and that’s why the next vote will more than likely go to the Greens, giving Labour a solitary term in government – one in which they backed a genocide, jailed protesting grandmothers, impoverished disabled people and continued to allow billionaires to balloon their wealth while stripping our public services. 

Labour is dead, and it’s because they underestimated the voting public.

Law 47: Do not Go Past the Mark You Aimed for; in Victory, Learn When to Stop

Saturday, 11th April ‘26: the British heavyweight boxer, 37-year-old Tyson Fury came out of retirement a *inhales* fifth time to fight *checks notes* Arslanbek Makhmudov, a 36-year-old Canadian-based Russian. The British former champ Fury clinched the win with a unanimous decision, and then called out fellow Brit Anthony Joshua. 

 

Joshua himself is now 36, so both fighters are on the cusp of the 38-Year-Old Rule. This, according to esteemed voice of authority on boxing Sharpbetting (?) is the age generally regarded to be the most appropriate age for retirement. Physical and mental health, brain injuries, neurological injuries and even death are all things that a fighter risks more as he progresses through his 30s. The general consensus is, don’t risk it. 

What might author Robert Greene say about such things? He wrote The 48 Laws of Power, a book that’s been found hugely valuable to many, including rappers and sports stars, but is highly regarded in the business world too. 

Law 47 is ‘Do not go past the mark you aimed for: in victory, learn when to stop.’ 

Tyson Fury has a net worth of an estimated £120 million. Anthony Joshua: £150 million. Granted, there are many people richer than them put together. There are 156 billionaires in the UK today, owning a million pounds a THOUSAND times over, each. But still, they’re presumably sat behind a desk, or on a yacht, for most of their day. They aren’t doing a sport when they’re trying to deflect repeated blows to the skull. 

Both of these boxers have held titles. Both have had long-enough careers. Should they be fighting? I doubt Robert Greene would think so. 

“The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril,” Greene explains. “In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.” 

I expect Greene has no particular knowledge of boxing, beyond interviewing Freddie Roach, Manny Pacquiao’s coach, and being interviewed himself by MMA magazine Bloody Elbow. But he does understand conflict. The guy’s got a BA in Classical Studies. He’s well-versed in world history which, if you remember school, is punctuated with wars and with royalty meeting all sorts of awful demises. Among Greene’s bibliography is The 33 Strategies of War, so I expect he’s got a good theoretical grasp of fighting, if nothing more. 

I’m sure Greene would agree with me that the time for Fury and Joshua to fight has now passed. There’s younger blood coming through. Both aforementioned boxers both had their fair share of victories, and have reached enough goals. The enemies they make from now on won’t be other boxers – it will be their own health.

Applying the 48 Laws of Power

In 1998 Publishing expert Robert Greene wrote The 48 Laws of Power, his debut non-fiction book. Based on decades of research and his background in classical studies, Greene identified 48 laws that allowed people to access power – be it financial, political or social. Compiling these, he created the book, which – under publishers Joost Elffers – sold over 5.5 million copies. 

I read it during lockdown in 2020. A fascinating compilation of stories and explanations, The 48 Laws of Power uses real-life historical examples of these laws, what happens when people apply them correctly, and what befalls them when they don’t. 

It’s a book that pops back into my mind every now and then, either because of something I’ve done, or because of the actions of someone else. I can think of at least one former manager who I’m pretty sure must have read it. These real-life instances tie into at least 1 law from within the book. The older I get, the more I seem to encounter incidents that remind me of those laws, either because the instance backs up one of the laws, or it didn’t, and people suffered as a result. 

Over the next year, I’m going to attempt to analyse each law, one at a time, not necessarily in order, and apply it to something contemporary – a news story, personal past experience, etc etc. Expect these as part of the #psychologysaturday theme.