Analyse a workplace power situation the way Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) would — who holds power, whose support you need, what fortune can take from you — then give both the Machiavellian read and the honest modern counterweight. Use when navigating a reorg, a new leader arriving, stakeholder politics, a territory dispute, or 'my project is caught in politics'. Produces a power map, a Machiavellian assessment, and an ethical playing-it-straight plan.
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Use machiavelli-counsel to analyze [workplace situation and stakeholders], [desired outcome and deadline], and [actions already tried], producing a power map, Machiavellian assessment, ethical counterweight plan, and fortuna check without recommending deception or manipulation.
Required inputs
[workplace situation and stakeholders]
[desired outcome and deadline]
[actions already tried]
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SKILL.md
name: machiavelli-counseldescription: "Analyse a workplace power situation the way Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) would — who holds power, whose support you need, what fortune can take from you — then give both the Machiavellian read and the honest modern counterweight. Use when navigating a reorg, a new leader arriving, stakeholder politics, a territory dispute, or 'my project is caught in politics'. Produces a power map, a Machiavellian assessment, and an ethical playing-it-straight plan."
Machiavelli Counsel Skill
Five hundred years before "stakeholder management," Machiavelli wrote the unsentimental
manual on power: how it is gained, kept, and lost. This skill applies The Prince's
actual analytical questions to a modern workplace situation — then, because flattery
of the reader's cynicism is its own trap, pairs every Machiavellian read with the
honest modern move. You get the clear-eyed analysis without the 16th-century ethics.
What This Skill Produces
A power map of the situation: who decides, who influences the decider, whose
support is load-bearing, who loses if you win
A Machiavellian assessment — what The Prince's framework actually says about
your position (not generic "office politics tips")
A counterweight plan: the ethical version of each move, and where the
Machiavellian and honest paths genuinely diverge
A one-line fortuna check: what part of your position depends on luck holding
Required Inputs
Ask for (if not already provided):
The situation, in the user's words (reorg, new boss, rival team, stalled project…)
Who the key people are and what each controls (budget, headcount, the CEO's ear)
What the user wants to happen, and by when
What the user has already tried
Framework: the questions The Prince actually asks
Work through these five, in order — each is drawn from the book's recurring analysis:
New prince or established? (Ch. III, VI–VII) — Is the user (or their rival, or
the new leader) newly arrived in the role? New power is fragile: it must build its
own support and cannot rely on inherited loyalty. A new exec's first 90 days follow
Ch. III dynamics almost embarrassingly well.
Whose arms? (Ch. XII–XIII) — Does the user's position rest on their own
capability and relationships ("own arms"), or on a sponsor's protection
("auxiliaries")? Borrowed power vanishes with the sponsor. Name what is borrowed.
Feared, loved, or despised? (Ch. XVII, XIX) — Machiavelli's real claim is
narrower than the famous line: aim to be respected and above all avoid being
despised or resented — contempt, not strength, is what kills princes.
Translate: is the user seen as competent-and-fair, soft, or self-serving?
The friends of the old order (Ch. VI) — Who benefits from things staying as
they are? Change makes enemies of everyone the current arrangement feeds, and only
lukewarm allies of its beneficiaries-to-be. List both columns for the user's plan.
Fortuna vs virtù (Ch. XXV) — Roughly half of outcomes are outside anyone's
control; the skill of the operator is building levees before the river floods.
What is the user treating as stable that is actually luck?
Output Format
## The situation, read plainly
[2-3 sentences, no euphemism]
## Power map
| Person / group | Controls | Wants | Load-bearing for you? |
## The Machiavellian read
[Each of the five questions above, answered for THIS situation, chapter noted]
## Where Machiavelli is right — and where to ignore him
[The 2-3 insights that hold up · the moves he'd endorse that you shouldn't make,
and what to do instead. Be specific: "he'd say X; the durable version is Y."]
## The next two weeks
[3-5 concrete actions from the honest column]
## Fortuna check
[The one dependency that is luck, and its levee]
Quality Checks
Every assessment traces to one of the five framework questions, chapter cited
The power map includes at least one person the user didn't mention (asked for,
not invented) — the missing stakeholder is usually the story
The counterweight section names a real divergence, not "be ethical" filler —
if the honest move and the Machiavellian move are the same, say so
No invented quotes: paraphrase the book; quote only what you can quote exactly
The advice would survive being read aloud to everyone named in it — that test
is itself the ethical line this skill holds
Anti-Patterns
Do not recommend manipulation, deception, or briefing against colleagues — the
skill analyses power honestly; it does not coach bad faith. When the user asks
for the dark version, give the analysis and decline the execution.
Do not serve generic office-politics advice ("build relationships!") wearing a
Machiavelli hat — every claim should need the book to make it
Do not repeat the famous misquotes as the book ("the ends justify the means"
appears nowhere in it)
Do not flatter the user's read of their own situation — Machiavelli's entire
value is that he didn't