Office Politics FAIL

 

No month-long theme of evaluating the sources of project failure would be complete without at least some mention of that thorniest of sources, office politics. Most – if not all – of my readers have felt the sting of frustration that comes from seeing, say, a rival for a job posting spending time behind closed doors with a member of the selection committee (if not the boss herself), engaged in conversation or laughter. You just know that the gremlin politics is nudging aside its more straight-laced, conservative influence cousin, merit, and you also know there’s not a darn thing you can do about it.

Let’s start with a precise definition of office politics. Office politics are those interactions among members of the organization that are intended to primarily advance a personal agenda. Unless that particular personal agenda is exactly aligned with the macro-organization’s agenda (which it never is), a conflict of interest is introduced, and the larger organization suffers, however slightly. Ideally, all members of the team you work for would be pursuing the stated objectives of the organization. But, being human, our self-interest naturally comes in to play, and we occasionally find ourselves faced with decisions that may harm the larger group we’re in, but will benefit us specifically. Some level of inflating our accomplishments and minimizing our failures is natural; however, when a significant number of the members of the organization become adept at minimizing others’ accomplishments and maximizing others’ errors, a highly-politically charged environment is introduced into the workplace, and its effects can be devastating.

The lynch pin of the source of political influence is the internal narrative, or script if you will, that we all carry around inside us. As I discuss in my recently-released, must-have book Game Theory in Management, these scripts serve three purposes:

·         They tell us who we are to ourselves,

·         They tell us what to expect from others with whom we interact,

·         And they tell us to what we ought to aspire.

We begin writing these scripts the day we enter the world, and obviously well before we have any notions of causality, logic, or the rules of evidence. People who maintain scripts that are at stark contrast with reality, and provably so, are said to be delusional, but my take is that we are all to some extent, at least mildly delusional. To be forced to quickly rip out and replace nice or complimentary parts of our scripts with reality-based, harsher versions is an extremely painful process, as stock brokers throwing themselves out of Wall Street windows in late October 1929 attest.

Now, your office political movers and shakers know this, at least at an intuitive level. And they are masters at using their favorite tactic, the ex parte conversation, to introduce modifications to the decision-makers’ scripts. By “spinning,” or creating a story that seems to explain why past things unfolded the way they did, and, by extension, explains why the future should unfold in a specific manner, they are in a position to:

·         Maximize their successes,

·         Minimize their failures,

·         Maximize perceived rivals’ failures,

·         Minimize perceived rivals’ accomplishments,

·         And, most insidiously of all, weave it into the decision makers’ internal narrative in such a way that reinforces those parts of their narratives that make them feel good or confident about themselves.

It’s really quite a racket, for being as predictable as it is, this political maneuvering. Note that, in coming up with ways of overcoming or getting around the tainted decision-making process in a politically-charged environment, we have totally abandoned the idea of re-introducing a meritocracy. Not going to happen. Once the “top” salesperson is determined by a subjective selection process among executives, the actually sales figures hardly matter. The most successful code block generator has no shot against the lowest golf handicap. I could go on, but you get my point.

I could offer some fortune-cookie-ish advice on how to survive in a politically-charged work environment, but such environs differ to the point that any such advice would either not be helpful due to being too general, or worthless in your particular setting. I will say, though, that the Jungle Fighters among us do tend to reap what they sow, even if we’re not around to witness their comeuppance. Just hang in there, and don’t become one of them.