Organizational Politics

Politics may have many meanings and implications. I define organizational politics as the art of influencing the actions and policies of an organization. Organizational politics is inevitable and an essential part of every organization. If so, why do people shy away from it? Why does it have such a bad negative connotation? What is the good, bad, and ugly about it? When do we need to participate and when do we need to step away? Here is a double click view into each of these aspects.

The Good:

Typical goals and outcomes: Form alliances to influence key decisions, secure resources for important projects, and promote people or agendas for the greater good.

In a good political environment, you can expect the following:

• Respect and trust for people at a personal level, albeit with some difference of opinions on specific issues
• Acknowledgement by all parties that power and influence are necessary to steer things in the right direction
• Multiple business agendas and points of view, resulting in heated, but productive and healthy debates.
• Negotiations and some level of give and take are expected and allowed for the greater good of the organization
• Disappointments for some parties on short term results, but no long term hurt feelings or petty rivalries
• No stealing of others credit

The Bad:

Typical goals and outcomes: Personal agenda and empire building first priority, business agenda on the list, but secondary

What to expect:

• Personal agendas start driving business decisions
• Influencing becomes counter productive, and takes away too much time from other valuable activities. People start fearing politics.
• The time spent in making a policy outweighs the benefit of the policy itself
• Key decisions don't make sense to most people in the organization, as they are not made based on merit, but based on who has the most power.

The Ugly:

Typical goals and outcomes: Personal agenda is the only concern, at the cost of business success.   

The indications of such an environment should be fairly obvious, but here is what to expect:

• No trust or respect for people, talking behind people's back is prevalent at all levels
• Alliances formed with the sole purpose of personal growth
• Every move has to be measured carefully, everyone has to constantly watch their back
• Turf wars at a personal level with egos playing a big role
• No integrity in decisions, people thrown under the bus freely

In short, if you are not in a position to change such an environment, run away as far away and fast as you can!

All this said, as long as we don't go to the dark side of politics, it is critical that we practice the art of politics to influence and drive critical business results. Organizational politics is a leadership skill and can be learned, like many other leadership skills. Be open-minded and start looking for the signs described above to see what type of an organization you are currently a part of, what role politics plays in it and learn to play for the good.

Got POISE?

One of the questions I often get asked from new managers and leaders on my team is "what are my expectations for them, and how can they be successful in the team?". There are certainly many aspects of leadership that can be critical for success in any organization and especially in engineering organizations - communication, accountability, planning, team work, collaboration, and so on. But as I thought about this more, there are some foundational behavioral traits that cut across a lot of these areas and are essential ingredients for success.

As such, I coined a simple and easy to remember acronym, "POISE" , to describe these:

Proactive

Open

Impact

Share

Execute

Proactive:

Being proactive means we are thinking ahead, taking action, and taking initiative, all of which are essential for success. It applies to planning, communication with our teams, peers and upper management, recognizing and rewarding our employees, reaching out and collaborating with our peers, and many other facets of our daily lives.

Open:

For us to continually learn and grow as individuals and leaders, openness is key. Change is the only constant in life. Being open to change and embracing it rather than resisting it can make or break our careers in many cases. Openness to receiving and giving feedback are also very important to grow ourselves and our teams.

Impact:

We should all strive to focus on the impact we are making on the organization, rather than the size of the team we lead or the management structures/hierarchies. Impact can be made and felt from many places, and virtually by anybody in the organization. Every organization has its share of problems to be solved. In many cases, top management doesn't necessarily even know some of these problems to the extent people closer to these know and understand them. With some focused thinking, proactiveness and openness, anyone can make an impact by being part of the solution for some of these problems. For people in the middle to higher levels of management, focusing on the impact of our communication on our teams is very important, as it sets the organizational culture.

Share:

Share your resources, knowledge and experience openly. Withholding information is an indication of insecurity. While being territorial about resources and teams can work in the short term, it will hold your success back in the long term from becoming a true leader.

Execute:

Ideas, vision and strategy are extremely important and nothing is possible without them. But, ideas are no good until they are implemented, and no vision and strategy can be successful without proper execution. Take action, execute, and get the most out of your ideas.

There you have it. Improve your POISE and success will follow!