Jungle Fighter Repellant

 

Few things in the management world are as infuriating as having a good, or even great, initiative blown to smithereens by office politics. To be precise, I would like to define office politics as those actions taken by members of the organization that benefit themselves personally, while being neutral or even detrimental to the goals of the group or team with whom they are working. By this definition, office politics encompasses everything from idle gossip about coworkers, all the way to arguing against a course of action, not on technical merits, but because the person (or persons) making the counter-argument have something to lose should that action be adopted. I discussed in last week’s blog the brilliant Michael Maccoby, particularly his book The Gamesman; The New Corporate Leaders (Simon and Schuster, 1976). In it, Maccoby asserts four basic archetypes in the workplace:

• The Craftsman doesn’t care so much about for whom he works, but does care a great deal about the quality of his individual output.
• The Company Man tends to assume the persona of the organization around him.
• The Gamesman, after whom the book is named, doesn’t see his benefits as translating to a roof over his head or food on the table. Rather, he sees his renumerations as some kind of token in a grand game he’s playing. Because of this, he is both more likely to master the rules of this “game,” and be willing to take risks.
• Then we have the Jungle Fighter, who gets ahead through calumny and cloak-and-dagger tactics.

Jungle Fighters are both vile and ubiquitous, and are typically at the forefront of office politics. In an organization of any size, there will inevitably be some, and in those cases where the organization is based on a flawed (or, especially, pathologically flawed) business model, they may even represent the majority archetype. If a member of GTIM Nation finds themselves in such an organization, the only – and I do mean only ­­­­– solution is to get out, and as quickly as possible. For the rest of the business world, where the Jungle Fighter population is more manageable, and emergency disengagement is not necessary, your working life may still be made considerably worse by the presence of these people. What can be done?
First rule of dealing with Jungle Fighters actually comes from Sun Tzu, and The Art Of War, and it is this:

Do not engage an enemy more powerful than you. And if it is unavoidable and you do have to engage, then make sure you engage it on your terms, not on your enemy’s terms.[i]

Unless you are yourself an advanced Jungle Fighter (I prefer to believe there are very few or none within GTIM Nation), you cannot engage them on their terms. They’re too good at engaging in ex parte conversations and calumny, and they almost always get away with it. And, no, I’m not so Pollyanna-ish as to assert that these people can be overcome through sheer comparative accomplishments. Jungle Fighters will typically possess an amazing ability to be perceived as being highly involved in successful projects, and having relatively little to do with struggling ones.

Based on the assertion that these are the Jungle Fighters’ two favorite tactics – calumny and glomming onto successful work while distancing themselves from poorly performing tasks – two counter-strategies can be rather effective, if engaged in a timely manner. Number One: if you are a PM, and a member of your Team wants to discuss another member, stop them immediately, and invite the target to the discussion. End all ex parte conversations dealing with other Team members, their performance, or assignments. This is the Jungle Fighters’ bread-and-butter tactic. Without it, much of their power evaporates away.

Number Two: document your Scope Baseline in detail. Most PMs are familiar with the Responsibility/Accountability Matrix, or RAM. This is a matrix with the Work Breakdown Structure on one axis, and the Organizational Breakdown Structure on the other, so that each Control Account or Work Package in the Project has its performing organizational element identified. Once you have a detailed Scope Baseline arranged in a RAM, everyone’s role is clear. You won’t leave any ambiguity space for the Jungle Fighter to assert a contribution outside of their RAM assignment, nor will they be able to escape an association with a poorly-performing Work Package if, indeed, they were part of that assignment.

The easy strategy, of course, is to simply stay off of the Jungle Fighter’s radar screen, and, if you can accomplish this reliably, then fine. But if you can’t, I’ll leave you with one final Sun Tzu quote:

What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.[ii]

[i] Retrieved from https://www.azquotes.com/quote/548824 on July 10, 2023, 18:16 MDT.

[ii] Ibid.