So Who Are We? --How This Book Is Different -- Managing Minefields -- Can You See It Coming? -- 1 Exit Strategies and Why You Need One 1 -- An Exit Strategy: What It Is and Isn't -- Creating Your Exit Strategy -- Negotiating the End at the Beginning -- 2 Taking the Reins 21 -- A Smart Start -- Setting the Course -- Watch Out for Imprints in the Sand -- Have You Been Chosen over Your Peers? -- Looking the Part -- 3 House of Mirrors, or How to Keep Your Perspective 47 -- Sizing Up the Team -- Overstepping Boundaries -- Unanticipated Pitfall -- Out of Sight Should -- Never Mean Out of Mind -- One More Look in the Mirror -- 4 Comrades, Coalitions, and Competitors 67 -- Your Own Band of Brothers or Sisters or Siblings or... -- When Good Allies Go Bad -- It's Not Always Fair Play -- 5 Trouble with Teams 89 -- Analyze Your Team -- Manage Your Image -- Think Like an Owner -- Corporate League -- Strategies for Psyching Out the Team Dynamic -- 6 Surviving a New Boss 109 -- I Love the Smell of Chaos in the Morning -- And the Winner Is... -- When Your Peer Gets the Nod -- 7 Managing the Rank above You 133 -- Playbook Perception Traps -- 8 Hidden Influents, or the Art of Managing Corporate Staff 153 -- Financial Juggernaut -- Bodies, Benefits, and Boundaries -- Negotiators and Regulators -- Rogue Influents -- Know Who Your Friends Are-and Aren't -- 9 I-Didn't-See-It-Coming Moment 177 -- Ten Red Flags and What They Really Mean -- Wielding Your Power on the Day of Reckoning -- Four Laws of Survival.