CODEXCard 4 of 9 · 48 Laws of Power, Core Nine
Make others depend on you
A replaceable person is a discardable person.
Make others depend on you is the eleventh of Greene's laws. It holds that your position is safest when others rely on what you uniquely provide. If you can be swapped out easily, you may be. If your skills or relationships are central to someone else's success, you have security.
Much of this is ordinary career sense. Developing rare expertise, building trusted relationships, and owning hard problems all make you valuable in a lasting way. That kind of dependence is mutual. The organisation gains from your skill, and you gain from its support. Both sides are better off.
The line Greene's critics stress, and the one worth holding, is between being needed and holding people hostage. Hiding documentation, refusing to train others, or creating chaos only you can fix might feel like job security, but it produces resentment. Eventually someone decides the risk of keeping you is greater than the cost of replacing you.
Defensively, this law helps you spot unhealthy setups. If a colleague, vendor or partner has quietly made themselves the only one who can do something critical, that is a fragility. The fix is shared knowledge and backup options, introduced calmly. In your own work, aim to be the person people want to keep, not the one they feel trapped with.
Example
A small business discovers that only one contractor knows the password to its website and refuses to share it. When he raises his fee sharply, the owner has little choice. Afterwards she moves hosting to an account she controls, documents access, and hires a second developer for backup.
Try it this week
Identify one system or task in your life that only one person can handle, and create a simple backup or written handover.
From 48 Laws of Power, Core Nine (Robert Greene · 1998).
