Listen to and enjoy Hilary's secrets, but don't tell anyone else about this book. Don't consult it openly; keep it locked away in your desk drawer. Then you can look forward to a long and fruitful career, at the expense of others. Hilary believes in the traditional definition of success: power and money. Every other definition has simply been invented by those who have money and power to try and convince you that you don't want what they have already got. That's less competition for them. Don't fall for it.

Any promising executive who wants to get to the top the sneaky way: learn how to get there in a ninja-like way without appearing to trample everyone underfoot. This kind of advice would stretch the budget of even those stratospheric members of the top flight, but we have persuaded this doyen of company politics to share their knowledge, accumulated over many years, that will allow the ambitious to reach their goal in the same way that Hilary did - like a ninja - quietly, effectively, deadly - and become, like Hilary, the Ninja of the corporate world.

An old campaigner who has already risen to the top of the tree, Hilary has struck fear into the heart of a few, but most never realized who it was that derailed their career, suggested a rival for a promotion, sidelined their major project into the depths of the three-year plan, or engineered the plucking of their best staff into a different department. It's only now that Hilary has retired that these secrets can be shared. You will learn how to spend as little time as possible managing your staff without anyone noticing; see how to avoid being seconded to a doomed-to-fail project; and discover how you could sleep your way to the top.

This book focuses largely on the types of people that you will encounter and how to deal with them, but in order to do this well, you need - like any ninja - to know yourself first.