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Surviving Organizational Politics - Part II

March 7, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: People Issues, Project Management Best Practices

Surviving Organizational Politics - Part II (#2 in the series Surviving Organizational Politics)
By Satya Narayan Dash

1. Treat politics as a type of problem solving

A programmer treats his or her coding work with intense discipline and creativity: similarly, a designer for building new auto components or an architect building a skyscraper. If you treat politics with the same discipline and creativity, chances are high that you will be able to manage politics well.

2. Recognize the best forms of power

There are many forms of power such as referral, reward, punishment, expert, legitimate etc. However, the best forms of power are two – expert and reward.

From prehistoric age to this day, every form of reward has been constituted to display certain user of power under the hood. Use it both ways – for your sub-ordinates and your seniors (not superiors!). Generally the later form of reward for seniors are not there in a company – but then, institute one yourself.

3. Have your cheat sheet handy

There will be many conflicting interests working in an organization such as self-interest, ego, dislike, etc. and also there will be true desire for a successful project or product.

You need to have your cheat sheer handy and ready and it should include questions like:

  • What are the goals for this project this month or week?
  • What are the criteria to make sure that decisions being made are good for the project?
  • Are we using our power to best serve the project?

People may disagree with the questions, but they are disagreeing or agreeing on the right kind of questions. Even the highly political people can not avoid pointed questions like the ones above.

4. Divide and rule

It works with products, marketing strategy and it also works with politics. A group is an illusion. Do not run behind the conclusions being driven in a group meeting. As a matter of fact, rarely things work out in any meeting – hence the name “meeting”! So divide the group into people – people with influence, people with knowledge, people with power etc. and follow them one by one, separately.

5. Know your battles and know your wars

Loss of many battles is compensated by a single war. You need to ask yourself if the battle that you are in, is worth that much as it might have been spent well in certain other productive activities. So, if you have to walk away from certain battles for a bigger war to win, do that.

Conclusion:

In the first piece, surviving organization politics - part I, I mentioned that there might be organizations where politics is played in an evil way and you might end up there. It is truly hard to work in those kinds of organizations and you should leave them as soon as possible. Nevertheless, as long as you are there, you have to survive and come out unscathed.

  1. Behave as if you are in a herd, but think independently:

    Organization comes and goes. Team comes and goes. People come and go. However, you must remember that:

    You live with yourself longer than with anybody else.

    So think independently, but act as if you are part of the herd they belong to. Otherwise, you will be left out.

  2. Assume formlessness:

    Have you seen water droplets on lotus leaves?

    It is everywhere, but actually nowhere. Be like that: be with everyone, but do not support anyone.

  3. Have an exit plan:

    If you have realized that evil minded politics thrives in your organization, then it is time to call it quits. As in today’s world no one guarantees life long employment, but organizations can promise of a life long employability. And your ability to be employable comes mostly from your knowledge. However, in a highly political organization, you actually do not learn anything of value.

Finally, if you are in a company, there will be politics. And you need to know which side you are in. At the same time, you should have a clear plan for yourself on how well you can get with it. If you do not play it, then be prepared to languish or even die (professionally, of course).

Satya Narayan Dash is the Principal Consultant and Founder of Teleox® Consulting, Bangalore, India. Prior to that, he was Project Leader with Wipro® Technologies and a Project Leader with AdventNet®, Inc. He has rich experience of 8+ years in product development, and architecture in Java® and J2EE® based Telecom solutions. As a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®) from Project Management Institute (PMI®) and MS Project 2007®, he has trained hundreds of project managers and consultants. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, India. He can be contacted at email: ndsatya@gmail.com

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