All Posts in Office Politics

|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Don’t worry. This isn’t a partisan political column, nor is it irrelevant to your corporate role. We’ll get there — be patient. You can learn a lot from current events if you know where to look. For example:

Let’s imagine you’re disturbed by current events. Perhaps you’re reacting to the recently passed laws allowing “harsh interrogation” and the suspension of habeas corpus, or judicial activism, or environmental and energy issues, or the war in Iraq, or illegal immigration, or the bipartisan gerrymandering of districts to make as many incumbents as possible safe, or taxing and spending, or not taxing and spending anyway, or Roe vs Wade, or the growing influence of religious groups vs Roe vs Wade, or the ownership of both major political parties by big business. What should you do about it?

A peculiarity of American politics is the persistence of third parties (and fourth, and fifth, and so on).

To the extent third party candidates have any impact at all, it’s usually to help elect whichever major party candidates hold the views least compatible with their own. And that’s in a good year. Mostly, third parties provide an outlet for those who want to participate in the political process without having to experience the sausage-factory ugliness of the political process itself. They provide an opportunity to say, “I told you so.”

Imagine that Perot, Nader, or both had spent all of their energy and influence working to modify the electoral process to allow “instant run-offs,” where voters list candidates in order of preference. Instant run-off would mean that Texans who like Kinky Friedman best for governor, but still would prefer Chris Bell over Rick Perry could vote their preference. If the Kinkster came in third, their votes would automatically shift to Bell.

Instant run-off would instantly remove the single biggest barrier to any third-party candidate — the perception that voting for one is a wasted vote. Had Perot lobbied for instant run-off in Texas in 1992, it very well might have happened, and having happened in Texas it very well might have spread — an enduring change that would have fostered the Independence Party he founded.

It’s worth asking why he and Nader decided to lead third parties instead of infiltrating the Democrats or Republicans, and why, having formed new parties, they chose to squander their time, energy and resources running for president instead of for instant run-off or some other tactic that would have had laid a strong foundation to build on. Three factors probably played important roles: An unwillingness to dirty their hands; a preference for being the big frog in a small pond instead of just one big frog among many in a lake; and a desire for the limelight.

The result: Their hands remained clean, they became big frogs in small ponds, they got the limelight … and they had little or no impact, other than as spoilers.

Which brings us to you and your role in corporate America.

Corporate politics, like national politics, is a multi-player chess game. The higher you rise, the more your personal effectiveness depends on your political skills. You choose tactics that can win given the situation as it is, not as you wish it was. While corporate politics rarely descends to the kinds of tactics used in national politics, on an average day you still find yourself faced with choices that are morally ambiguous at best.

Politics means getting your hands dirty, trading your support on one issue for someone else’s on another; building alliances with people you don’t necessarily admire or like; flattering, cajoling, and at times threatening. It isn’t a game for the finicky, and as a general rule, the nastiness of the tactics needed to win correlate with the size of the lake you’re ribbetting in.

Your choices are the same as those that were available to Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. If you find politics distasteful or lack the aptitude for it, but still want to play a leadership role, choose a smaller pond … a small-to-mid-size company.

But don’t turn up your nose at those who swim in the big lakes. They are the same as you and me. They just play the game better. Many are very ethical people, too. In their code of ethics, unlike the code of third-party candidates, achieving the least of the available evils counts as a moral victory.

* * *

Speaking of politics, election day is approaching. Given the issues at stake it’s as important a mid-term election as any of us have seen in decades. One of the candidates that’s running for each office and has a chance of being elected is a better choice than the others who also have a chance, even if you don’t much like any of them. Your vote is your influence, and even if you’re just choosing the lesser of two or three evils, you’re responsible for doing so.

Many disagree. To me, that says it’s just fine to allow the greater of two evils when you could prevent it, so long as you are able to wash your hands of the responsibility.

Comments

|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

The biggest benefit of writing a column like this is that I don’t have to have all of the brilliant insights. Did I say all? I don’t have to have any — I just have to read my mail. Example: In response to last week’s column about project and program management (“Don’t Supersize. Chunkanize,” KJR 9/18/2006), Hank Childers responded:

Another observation about projects … there is no such thing as project momentum. Projects don’t want to get done. Their natural state is to slow down until other forces overtake them. Projects keep moving as long as we keep moving them. And this requires, I believe, the ability to see the end.

Childers is right on the money, and neither the reason nor the resolution is methodological.

Project management requires diplomacy, to balance the competing needs of different business managers and executives, no two of whom agree and all of whom have more political clout than the project manager. It requires frequent, deep communication with all of the employees who will be affected by the project’s intended outcome and would be just as happy continuing to work as they have been. For all concerned, project failure would very probably be more convenient than success.

Project management also requires constant attention to the project team’s emotional state and interpersonal interactions. Working on a project is more stressful, although less boring, than working on a job that involves doing the same work day in and day out, for at least two reasons:

First, when employees participate on a project, every day calls for creatively solving another new set of problems. That’s more stressful than handling the same old same old.

And second, working on a project is like taking a long journey on foot. Intellectually, you know that if you can walk at a steady pace of 3 mph for 6 hours each day, then to reach a destination that’s 1,000 miles away you’ll be walking for less than two months.

Right. I’d take the first step and think, “A thousand miles to go? I’ll never make it!” No matter how many verses of One Thousand Bottles of Beer on the Wall I’d sing, the finish line wouldn’t seem any closer. Giving up can seem like a very attractive alternative after a few thousand paces.

Project teams, like all organizations, are intensely human activities. For some unaccountable reason, many project management methodologies, business schools, and entire consulting practices ignore this simple, inescapable fact. They view the enterprise one dimensionally, as collections of processes, or cash flows, or value chains, knowable through reports, dashboards and scorecards.

Some project managers, IT managers, business managers and executives fall into this trap, mistaking reports for the state of the business. Presumably, when on vacation, they similarly mistake the map for the countryside.

The best know better. They know that before the processes, cash flows, and value chains, and the reports, dashboards and scorecards, the enterprise is an assemblage of men and women who expend time, effort and intelligence to help the organization succeed. They know who matters in it — not just by title, but also from informal influence or because if they’re hired away by a competitor the roof will fall in. They know that it is a complex network of human relationships and they carefully define their place in it.

Because these executives know better, they become adept at building their own personal networks — PunditSpeak for developing friendships throughout the company. That means that while the rest of the executives look at sales and margin reports, express concern that the numbers look bad, and argue with each other about what to do about it, the best executives know that the delivery teams the company is putting in front of clients have too many insufficiently competent members, resulting in re-work, make-goods, and other margin- and reputation-killers. They know because they talk with the sales force and account managers all the time, listening instead of challenging and “holding them accountable.”

Their reputation throughout the company is based on large numbers of employees at all levels knowing, respecting and trusting them. So when the time comes to fix a problem, they’ve already established the credibility they need to be persuasive about the reality of the problem and the necessity of the solution.

The best business executives know this. The best project managers know it too. They have to. Otherwise they wouldn’t be the best project managers.

Heck, they wouldn’t even be adequate ones.

Comments