A bizarre choice if they were middle management; the running of a kingdom in the Prince is only really directly applicable to highest levels of C-suite management.
Machiavellian principles like "it's better to be feared than loved" seem to be quite applicable to any level of management, not just the C-suite.
I guess it was their aspiration, but they behaved so apallingly to other people that they never went anywhere past middle management.
Well, according to one theory, the Prince was supposed to be a Trojan Horse fooling the reader into acting against their best interests, since Machiavelli wrote it as a gift for his arch nemesis.