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!

Today’s strength = Tomorrow’s weakness?

Take something you are very good at. You know it, your boss knows it, and you get excellent feedback from everyone, and great recognition for it. It becomes your signature strength.You are rewarded for your performance and get a promotion, with more responsibilities. A couple of years pass by.

All of a sudden, you find that the same signature strength that you were well appreciated for so far is starting to cause you trouble in your new role. At first, you are in total denial, thinking how could that possibly be? After all, didn’t everyone seem to like it and appreciate it until now? However, the more feedback you hear, the more obvious it becomes to you that indeed this is becoming a real problem.

What could be wrong here? Perhaps you are applying the same skill or strength you acquired earlier in your professional life to your next job or role without realizing that maybe the new role has different demands and requires you to do things differently. This happens to all of us. All it takes is an open mind to recognize and acknowledge the problem and a conscious effort to fix it.

Thankfully, with a few simple but effective steps, you can be on your way to a successful role transition:

• Step 1 - Start from scratch
• Analyze the expectations of the new role, especially the ways in which it is different from your previous role
• Think about what are the key success factors for this new role, and how they are different from your old job

• Step 2 - Have a conversation with your boss
• Leave your assumptions behind. Have an open conversation with your boss about your new role. Even if the boss hasn’t changed, your role has. So don’t assume his expectations remain the same. Ask and listen. Validate your own understanding.

• Step 3 -Talk to peers who have been there
• Talk to your peers who have been in the same roles before. Find out what they had to do different. Ask about what worked and didn’t work for them.

• Step 4 - Learn and practice new skills
• Pick 2 to 3 key skills you need to acquire or behavior changes you need to make to be successful in your new role, based on steps 1 through 3. This is important. Focus on 2 to 3 changes at a time, and not a laundry list of 10 things you want to do better. Once you meet your objectives, you can pick the next set of changes.

• Set yourself a goal and a timeline for acquiring the new skills and practicing the new behaviors.

• Step 5 - Track your progress:
• Get regular feedback from as many sources as you can (preferably 360 degree feedback) to see how you are doing and to make adjustments if necessary.

Easy enough right?

By following these 5 simple steps, you can avoid having today’s strength become tomorrow’s weakness, and you can continue to evolve as a leader.

Could it be this simple?

I once read this fable that stuck with me:

A woman once lived in a shabby, cluttered house. She was lonely, stuck in a rut and was very unhappy with her life. She met a wise man and asked for his advise to change her life. The wise man gave her a red geranium flower and told her to take it home. He told her it would transform her life. She took the geranium home and set it on her wobbly kitchen table covered by a stained tablecloth. While she was waiting for some magic to happen, she saw how beautiful the geranium was but how shabby the table linen looked.  So, she washed the tablecloth. Then she noticed how her newly washed tablecloth made her floor seem dull, so she scrubbed it. This made her kitchen walls look bad, so she repainted the room in a fresh color and replaced missing cabinet knobs. Eventually her entire home was sparkling. She was very proud of the work she did on the home and started inviting friends to her home, enjoying her life much better. She became cheerful, her outlook became positive. The Red Geranium was magical indeed and changed her life.

We want to change many things in our life too, whether it is personal or work related. However, it is hard to get motivated because we attempt to make grand changes all at once. Instead, if we make small incremental changes and meet them, we will be motivated to do more like the woman in this story. We need to find our red Geranium that would get us started.

Let us say we do make a small change, how do we ensure we continue doing what we started and make the change permanent? I found that if we stick with something just long enough - about 30 days without giving up, chances are it becomes a habit and you no longer have to think about it.

A couple of years ago, my cholesterol numbers were really bad. I started exercising, but given everything else that was going on, it was hard to motivate myself to keep up a regular schedule. I decided to try a specific gym routine for the next 30 days. It was much easier to make the necessary changes in my schedule to keep up with the exercise routine knowing I only have to "try" this for 30 days and it is not a permanent arrangement. And sure enough, well after 30 days I stuck to the routine, and it became a habit. And that's not the end of it. Like the woman in the red geranium story, once I started the exercise routine, I was motivated to change several other things in my life style that helped me greatly.

Think of one small change you want to make and stick with it for the next 30 days. Chances are, it will be there with you forever and lead to other great things. 

Don’t wait for that perfect time!

Waiting for that perfect chunk of time where you wanted to get an important task done without interruptions?

You planned well, set aside a nice chunk of time, cleared your desk, got a hot cup of coffee, and you are all set to use that perfect time to get on with your task. You are 5 minutes into your task when you get interrupted with an annoying phone call, a visitor stopping by for a casual conversation, etc. The result? You decide there are too many interruptions today and tend to put off the task until you find yet another perfect chunk of time to get it all done in one shot, and the story repeats. This is a scenario we all witness everyday whether it is at home or work.

I don’t know about you, but I never seem to find this perfect time. When it comes to getting things done, what I found to be working for me instead, is to look for small increments of time, a minute here, 5 minutes there, etc.

The key to successfully using this strategy is knowing how to prioritize and how to break your task into smaller pieces, such that you get the satisfaction of getting meaningful portions done in those small slices of time. But a big part of this strategy, is acceptance of reality and getting comfortable with the idea that any progress made is better than putting it off entirely.

As Pareto famously stated, 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities. Find that 20% activity that is most meaningful for you. The rest will follow.

You could prioritize tasks in several ways, optimizing around various attributes:

• Importance: Get the most important things done first.

• Difficulty: Get your most difficult task done first, and the rest will be a breeze.

• Due Date: Finish the task that is due tomorrow before you start something that is due a week away.

• Efficiency: Organize for efficiency. For example, while filing taxes, get all your documents ready before you start doing taxes, rather than searching and fetching the documents when you need them.

• Dependency: Your tasks could be dependent on another task, so finish them in the right order to unlock dependency.

• Interest: Get to things that are most interesting to you first so you can overcome the inertia.

• Size of the task: Pick smallest tasks first so you can get done with them and check them off the list so you get the satisfaction of getting things done.

Of course, there is no right answer that works in every situation and for every one, so you will have to experiment to see what works for you. But no matter which way you decide to go, divide up the task into smaller pieces.

You will be surprised to see yourself looking for those precious 5 minutes here and there so you can knock these pieces off easily. It actually starts to become fun, and in no time you will be getting things done!

Try it out!!

Book Recommendation - Thinking,Fast and Slow

As leaders, there are two key things we do every day - make judgment calls about the work we do and the people we interact with. Needless to say, both of these are extremely important jobs and have a profound impact on the business, careers, and lives of people.

Both of these tasks inherently depend on our intuition and cognitive ability. Yet, as human beings, we all are subject to many biases that influence the way we go about making these decisions and judgments.

Here is a description of two people. What do you think of Alan and Ben?

Alan: Intelligent-Industrious-Impulsive-Critical-Stubborn-Envious

Ben: Envious-Stubborn-Critical-Impulsive-Industrious-Intelligent

A lot of us probably view Alan much more favorably than Ben. The initial traits in the list change the very meaning of the traits that appear later. This is a great example of the cognitive biases we all are subject to.

"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman discusses many such types of cognitive illusions and intuition biases we face as humans. Professor Kahneman who is a psychologist, won a Nobel Prize for his work on this subject. While this book discusses these in the context of Economics, what is interesting, is that all this work applies equally well to business leaders, as it helps us to recognize and understand our own biases and cognitive illusions. 

The book explains the fact that there are two ways to think about anything - Fast and Slow, based on the existence in our brains of two independent systems for organizing knowledge, logically referred to as System One and System Two. System One operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System Two is slow, deliberate, analytical, and allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, through conscious thinking and critical examination of evidence. System 2 also has another job - it checks on the actions of System One and is mobilized when it detects an error is about to be made, and it gives us a chance to correct the mistakes and revise our opinions.

System One is much more vulnerable to errors, biases and illusions than System Two.  Here are some examples of biases discussed in the book:

• "Availability Bias” which is the process of judging frequency by the ease with which instances come to mind.  An example that is quoted in the book to illustrate this is: “Because of the coincidences of two planes crashing last month, she now prefers to take the train. That’s silly. The risk hasn’t really changed; it is an availability bias”.

• “Representativeness heuristic”. Here are some examples that illustrate this bias - “he won’t go far as an academic, he has too many tattoos”, or “The lawn is well trimmed, the receptionist looks competent, and the furniture is attractive, it must be a well managed company”.

• Jumping to conclusions based on limited evidence is an attribute of system one’s intuitive thinking. The book refers to this by the abbreviation WYSIATI, which stands for What You See Is All There Is. An example that is quoted in the book to illustrate this is: “They made that big decision on the basis of a good report from one consultant. WYSIATI. They did not seem to realize how little information they had.”

•  "Planning fallacy", which is our tendency to overestimate benefits and underestimate costs, and hence miscalculate the risk of certain projects or decisions.

All of these have far reaching consequences in our daily lives. Why do we need a System One if it is so vulnerable to biases? Why not just rely on System Two for every decision?

The reason is that activating System Two requires mental effort, which takes time and energy. Constantly questioning our own decisions can be tedious and System Two is too slow and inefficient for making routine decisions in place of System One. By contrast, System One is fast and is generally very good at what it does and works in most cases. The key is not to abandon System One, but understand and recognize the existence of these systems and the biases they come with and use each system as appropriate. We want rationality, but not paralysis, and as anything else in leadership, it is a matter of balance.

This book is an intense and intellectual but a fascinating read, as a large part of the book is based on stories and real experiments conducted over many years. It certainly is a classic on the topic and in my opinion, ranks as one of the must reads.

Happy Thinking…..Fast and Slow!

Negotiating When You're the Only Woman Around the Table

Many times we find ourselves the only female around the table, around the room. Yet our teams trust us to advocate on their behalf. How do you negotiate in male-dominated teams, and expand your influence despite the gender inequity?

Women are still few and far between in Technology, especially in leadership positions. It is very important to have that diversity as women and men bring different attributes and strengths to the table. A key attribute of leadership is the ability to develop other leaders. As women leaders, it is our responsibility to empower and encourage more women to take a seat at the table, in a world where there are so many men.

Men and women have different approaches when it comes to negotiating. Women naturally have more experience negotiating, due to various roles they play in their personal life as mothers, wifes, daughters-in-law. Some of us grew up watching and learning from our mothers and grandmothers who tactfully negotiated with everyone from street vendors to various family members. That is a lot of exposure and training.

You may have to negotiate for many things at work, here are just a few examples:

• Getting the right resources - people, equipment, budgets
• Getting your team’s voice be heard on key issues
• Getting the deserved rewards and promotions for your team members
• Working with your business partners across the organization on project related issues

Here are a few tips for successful negotiations in these situations:

Establish your credibility: In a world where is natural bias towards men and there are more men at the table than women, the key to successful negotiation for women is to establish your credibility, such that your voice is heard and your opinions matter. Preparation is very important to establish this credibility. Do  your homework and have the facts ready.

Make up your mind: Decide ahead of time which aspects of the negotiation you care most about, and which aspects you are willing to compromise on. After all, negotiation is give and take. No one wants to negotiate with someone that wants to win all the time and is not willing to give and take. But, you need to draw a line between what is negotiable and what is not. Mental preparation goes a long way to help with this.

Believe in your cause: Demonstrate passion around the cause you believe in. Your passion is evident to others and helps you to be taken seriously.

Control your emotions: Stay calm and don’t let things get personal or emotional. Women are stereotyped as being emotional, pay special attention to this, and don’t let emotion get the best of you.

Use the right body language: Stay firm in terms of body language, words used etc.

Take the initiative: Whether it is purely for work or for your personal career growth, you have to take the initiative, present your case and negotiate for what you want.

Persuade, don’t be forceful: Understand what's important to others involved and convince what you are asking makes sense with logical and persuasive arguments.

Be persistent: You can’t always win, don’t take it personal. Let it go and try again with a different approach.

Utilize your signature strength: Build your brand around your signature strength. For some, it is the ability to connect with people easily, for others it is the logic and reasoning. Use it while negotiating.

Take your time: When it is comes to accepting a position or agreeing to a deal, ask for time to consider the offer and speak with your family or friends. Go back with a clear mind when you are ready.

Living upto your potential

“You have a lot of potential, but need to make use of it, and apply yourself to be successful.” This is one thing I often keep telling my son as he was growing up. I am sure some of you can relate to this. He once asked me when he was very young, “Mom, what do you mean by it?”.

In order to explain to him in the terms that he could understand, I came up with this analogy. Imagine you have a candy jar that currently does not have any candy in it. It only has plastic chips. But let us imagine that you can take the chips out of the candy jar, take them to a candy shop and exchange these chips for candy. If you put that effort to do this, you will have candy to enjoy. If not, your chips remain as chips and you cannot enjoy the candy. Your potential is like this jar of plastic chips. You have to put in some effort to turn your potential into results and outcomes that you can be proud of.
   
So, how do you ensure you live up to your potential?

  1. Experiment and broaden your perspectives: The first step is to understand what your potential is, ie., how big your candy jar is. The best way to do this would be to take some risks and experiment with different things. For example, take a music class, try painting, cooking or learn to program. Once you start experimenting, very quickly we will realize what things we have an aptitude and interest for. Until we try, we will never know if we have a great dancer or musician in the making.

  2. Inspire yourself: Allow yourself to be inspired by other successful people. Read biographies and autobiographies. Listen to TED talks.

  3. Give your 100% to anything you do. Most successful people share a trait. They are persistent. They do not give up until their goal is reached. Give your 100% or 150% to everything you do. You need to feel that you have given all you have and that there is nothing more you can do.

  4. Look for ways to improve, even when your needs are met. When you think you can’t do anything more, do some more anyway.

  5. Inspire Others: You cannot fully realize your potential until you do your part to help others. Donate your time and intellect. Share your thoughts and ideas with others.

I once heard someone say, when we are in our coffin, we should look beaten and exhausted, with bumps and bruises from various risks and beatings we have taken, but, satisfied that we did the very best we could in our lives and lived up to our potential.

Get a candy jar and put it on your table to remind yourself of the unrealized potential you may have and to do something about it. Always look for ways to exchange those chips for candy!

Your biggest asset - Attitude

Life throws many surprises at us. It is up to us to choose our reaction to these surprises.

Choose? you may ask...yes, choose.

Success and happiness in life both depend on our attitude towards the changes and surprises we face. Even the situations that appear worst to us may not appear to be that bad to someone else, or even matter that much to you when you look at your life overall.

Most disappointments in our life appear bigger than they really are when you look at them up close and in that snapshot of time. Maybe your child didn’t get an A on a test or he didn’t make it to the college of your first choice. Maybe you didn’t get a promotion this year or your peer just became your new boss. Even worse could be if you or your spouse just lost their job or you made a bad investment/career decision that set you back a few years.

In any of these situations, you have a choice to make. A choice to embrace the outcome, with the attitude that there will be another day and another chance, or a choice to treat it like it is the end of the world.

You have the power to make this choice. Your choice of how to treat this outcome will play a bigger role in how successful or happy you will be in life than the actual outcome itself.   

A major source of stress and unhappiness comes from the feeling that you don’t have control over your life. It doesn’t matter whether you had a role to play in the outcome or you were simply a victim of the situation, but simply believing that you could have done something different and could do something different in the future, gives you control over how you treat each situation. Realizing this is a choice you have control over, gives you hope and allows you another chance to get it right.

While it seems that life is full of highs and lows like a typical stock market chart, over the long term, these daily peaks and valleys don’t matter as much. Focus on the big picture, and forget the nittygritty.

Remember, nobody gets it right all the time. Success comes to people who make more right choices than wrong ones and more importantly, recover quickly from wrong ones.

Your positive attitude can lead to enthusiasm about life. And enthusiasm is contagious. It has a tremendous effect on everyone around you. It will draw more positive and enthusiastic people around you, which will in turn boost your own attitude towards life.

Your attitude is the biggest asset you have. Manage it as if your life depended on it, because it does!