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In response to my recent plugging of my daughter’s nascent contract programming business and my reference to the POTUS’ Twittering support of his own daughter’s business to justify it, a long time subscriber and correspondent wrote, “I am SICK TO DEATH of the politicization of EVERYTHING. Strike two, I unsubscribe next time.”

Huh. I thought I’d indulged in nothing more than a harmless wisecrack, and in fact, unlike various recent Oscar winners, I’ve restrained myself from political commentary in KJR in spite of near-daily temptations.

And, let me cast my vote in the same direction: I’m also sick to death of the politicization of everything, although I doubt my correspondent and I mean the same thing when we say it.

Which brings us to this week’s anti-politicized topic: dealing with politicization in the organization you work in.

But first, let’s be clear about what “politicized” means.

At the easiest-to-deal-with level, politicization means talking about politics in the office. It’s easy to deal with because given the current public political climate it’s an awful idea. Nothing good can come from it … no one will persuade anyone who isn’t already on their side of a given issue and there’s no need to persuade someone who already is.

Either way the most likely outcome of a political conversation is inflammation for all conversing parties, who all also risk damaging their personal relationships with the each other party in the bargain.

At the next level, politicization is a synonym for tribalism: Dividing the world into us and them and viewing them, not as opponents, but as enemies. In the public sphere this is what has made our political climate so toxic. In the enterprise it’s one of the root causes of organizational silos with high walls and minimal collaboration.

Worse is that tribalism almost invariably escalates, as each side views hostile behavior on the other’s part through a magnifying lens, calling for an even-more amplified response.

It’s my impression that silo-driven attitudes and behavior are, as a broad trend, becoming worse in most enterprises, although, as there is no good measure of organizational silo height I can’t prove the point. Nonetheless, whatever the trend line, politicized organizations in this sense of the word handicap themselves when competing with their more cognitive counterparts.

But not as badly as organizations that take politicization to the next level. Call it political epistemology.

Epistemology — the study of what it means to “know” something — is, in addition to being eye-glazingly opaque, quite frustrating to deal with. Peel the epistemological onion and you’ll reach two equally unsatisfying conclusions: (1) It is sensible to be more confident of some propositions than others, based on the comparative levels of evidence and logic in their favor. But (2) it isn’t sensible to be completely certain of any proposition, with the possible exception of the proposition that certainty isn’t possible.

Political epistemology is what happens when what to believe and how certain to be of it depends on an individual’s tribal inclinations.

Never mind public policy and how someone’s party affiliation shapes their beliefs about What Works. There are plenty of business examples right in front of you, from decisions about strategy, to IT’s choice of virtualization technology, to which PaaS provider is best, and whether to deploy its technology stack inside the corporate firewall or to contract for external hosting.

No, no, no, no, no. I’m not saying Democrats favor private clouds while Republicans prefer public ones. Among the metaphorical breakdowns here: Businesses tend to have more than just two major metaphorical political parties. Heck, IT tends to have more than just two, with many IT professionals enjoying at least dual citizenship besides, with such fracture lines as Windows vs Linux, COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) vs open source, Waterfall vs Agile, and Engineering-and-Architecture vs Management-and-Finance.

The hazard doesn’t come from individuals having these inclinations. They’re natural and probably inevitable.

No, the hazard comes from the close-minded certainty that starts with “my tribe is good, my tribe’s allies are good enough, and every other tribe is deluded and evil” and finishes with the by now commonplace phrase “confirmation bias,” which means, if you’re among the uninitiated, that people uncritically accept any and all inputs that affirm their pre-existing beliefs while nit-picking to death anything that appears to contradict them.

Is Keep the Joint Running becoming politicized? As the poet Robert Burns wrote,

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion

Which is to say, you’ll have to tell me.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Consider the cuttlefish.

Cuttlefish engage in what might be called tactical deception. When a male cuttlefish courts a female in the presence of other males, he displays a male pattern facing the female (courtship), and a female pattern facing away, to deceive the other males.

Copyright Monterey Bay Aquarium
Copyright Monterey Bay Aquarium

And like their cephalopod relatives the squid and octopus, cuttlefish squirt a black ink into the water when they’re caught by something threatening, obscuring everything around them as they make their escape.

When Cuttlefish managers display different personalities or express different positions and opinions to different colleagues, it isn’t to improve their mating success (okay, it might be, but let’s keep this on a professional level, shall we?). They do this to build political alliances, saying what they think they need to say to whoever they need to say it to in order to persuade everyone around them that I’m on your side.

Because Cuttlefish managers say what they think a colleague wants to hear, with little regard for consistency from one conversation to the next, they’re rarely able to remember what they said to a given individual about a given subject, once they’ve spoken to two or three others about it afterward.

And when someone inevitably calls them on an inconsistency, Cuttlefish managers squirt out their version of black ink … an acoustically opaque collection of sound waves that closely resemble speech, replete with grammar and syntax but utterly devoid of meaning while they make their escape to another meeting.

Some Cuttlefish come by their … plastic?  approach to position-taking from a misplaced desire to be cleverly Machiavellian, although Machiavelli would have sneered at their ineptitude.

But in most cases, Cuttlefish-ism seems to be more a consequence of the creature’s invertebrate nature: Lacking a spine, Cuttlefish just don’t have it in them to say anything to anyone that they think might result in rejection or disapproval.

If you don’t know someone is Cuttlefishing you’re in danger of basing your own actions on the belief that you have their support on some issue that matters. When it turns out you don’t, you’ll be the one left holding the bag.

Which is why your tactics for dealing with Cuttlefish start with detection. Fortunately, Cuttlefish, as noted before, aren’t particularly subtle about their deceptions. Talk to them about a subject a few times and you’re likely to get a clue or three; talk to colleagues you respect but with whom you disagree, mention what the suspected Cuttlefish told you, and ask if they’ve discussed the matter with him (or, her).

If the suspect agreed with all of you, he/she is no longer a suspect. He/she is a confirmed Cuttlefish.

Dealing with Cuttlefish isn’t all that hard either, so long as you keep your wits about you. Among your alternatives:

  • Document: You’ve discussed something with a Cuttlefish. He indicates his support. Instead of being happy about it, send him an email summarizing the situation and stating that you’re glad you and he agree on the issues and best solution. If things get dodgy later on, you’ll have the email to haul out as you say, “What I’m hearing you say now is different from our last conversation about the subject. What’s changed?”
  • Congregate: Your Cuttlefish detection system has resulted in a positive identification (that is, you and your colleagues have compared notes). Call a meeting with the Cuttlefish and your friends to reach a consensus as to what the plan should be for dealing with whatever the issue was. In the meeting, ask the Cuttlefish to be the first to suggest a solution. And then, have fun.
  • Be last in line: You already know you’re dealing with someone who will tell you whatever you want to hear. Take advantage of this: Wait to discuss whatever the subject is with the Cuttlefish until it’s nearly time to act. Then, have the conversation you need to have, listen carefully to the position the Cuttlefish expresses, and document it. You win!

If you’re a SCUBA diver, seeing a cuttlefish in its native habitat is something special. But if, instead, you swim around the cube farms and offices of a modern corporation, spotting a Cuttlefish manager is an experience that’s neither special nor rewarding.

It is, however, better than being taken in by this mollusk’s camouflage.

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