All Posts in Office Politics

|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Is the controversy over the supposed “War Against Christmas” relevant to working IT managers? Absolutely.

One reason, discussed in last week’s column, is direct. The December holidays are a focal point for the difficult challenge managers face whenever the religious or cultural differences of a diverse workforce collide in the workplace … which is, and must be, a social environment as well as a place work gets done.

Here’s another reason for you to pay attention. Step outside your personal opinion regarding the issue’s validity. Instead, consider politics as a sport and the effectiveness of the War Against Christmas as a tactic. You’ll find strong similarities to a stratagem popular in office politics — making people angry so they’ll make decisions without thinking.

To be an effective executive you have to be an effective politician. The word has taken on ugly overtones, deserved by some politicians but not all of them. The word itself, though, is (or at least should be) neutral. The perfect politician is someone who can maneuver — manipulate isn’t too strong a word — people with competing interests into following a common direction without ever being manipulated by other politicians.

The first part — manipulating people — isn’t very hard.

Politicians manipulate people by engaging their emotions. The extent to which they succeed is the extent people stop thinking analytically, because when people stop thinking analytically they’ll accept any proposition they want to be true. The more powerful the emotion the more likely their acceptance.

And you’re in the middle. Think of the situation as a large, multi-player chess game. Everyone is both a piece on the board and one of the players. You’re a player when you persuade someone else to move from one square to another. You’re a player when you decide which square you should move to. But if someone manipulates you into making a move that isn’t in your best interest, you’re just another piece on the board.

The most powerful emotion politicians have at their disposal is probably anger, and just about everyone is susceptible. The only challenge is finding each person’s hot button. This is easier in office politics than national politics because in national politics the propagandists have to engage in mass marketing — a hit-or-miss affair. In office politics the politicians understand each of their targets personally.

Here’s how it plays out. You’re the CIO and budget season has rolled around again. You’ve prepared a rational budget: Start with last year’s spending, add budget for new programs, the maintenance increment for newly delivered software and inflation; subtract for programs scheduled to complete, maintenance on software scheduled for decommissioning, and your continuous improvement target.

A corporate politician — one of your peers, who wants more budget but has no logical argument to give in its favor — chooses a hot-button topic for the CEO, CFO or both, and maybe for some of your other peers in the company too:

  • It’s all technology for technology’s sake,
  • IT projects always cost too much and take too long.
  • We keep spending and have nothing tangible to show for it.
  • Gartner says PCs cost $13,000 each per year and isn’t that awful.
  • Paul Strassmann says there’s no correlation between IT spending and business benefit anyway.

The politician knows who is susceptible and doesn’t try to push a button that isn’t there among any of the others. All it takes is three or four executives grumbling about IT and how its budget always seems to be increasing. You’ll find yourself on the defensive, where it won’t matter how good your math is.

The defense against this kind of backstabbing is preventive: Strong relationships among the company’s executives. People are most vulnerable to those they trust, ideas they’re already predisposed to agree with, and, when it comes to anger, targets they don’t know or already don’t like.

You aren’t immune either. The same politician, or a different one, will try to make you angry too, only at different targets — probably the “bureaucrats in Human Resources” and the “bean counters in Accounting.” If you know and trust the politician, and don’t know or already don’t like Human Resources and Accounting, you’re as vulnerable to this manipulation as anyone else.

So remind yourself constantly: If (1) someone you know and like (2) says something that fits your biases that (3) starts to make you angry at (4) somebody you already don’t like, turn on your adrenal-gland suppressor.

You’re being played.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

“News,” according to a theory nobody believes, started as an acronym for “North, East, West, South.” Here’s some news for managers trying to decide who should receive the best assignments, promotions, bonuses, and raises: You’re most likely to notice employees who face northeast. You should value the ones who face southwest.

We’re revisiting the management compass — the navigational tool executives, managers and supervisors consult to guide the relationships they depend on for success. The adroit ones pay attention to all four compass points: North, to those they report to; east, to their organizational peers; west to those who make use of what their organization produces; and south, to their staff.

As a general rule, managers fall into two categories. One is the northeastern crew, whose relationships with organizational peers and superiors ensure their personal career success. The other consists of those southwestern souls who, by dint of leading staff effectively and taking care of their service recipients, get the job done. Relatively few managers are adept at dealing with all four directions.

When it comes to your own personal effectiveness, there’s no substitute for skillfully mastering all 360 degrees. Part of doing so is to make sure that among those reporting to you, those who face southwest succeed.

It isn’t as easy as it might seem. No matter how good your intentions, the very nature of focusing attention on getting the job done means not focusing attention on making sure your boss knows you’re doing so. In many situations (IT operations being a prime example) success means invisibility — problems are what get noticed. If you aren’t careful, those who achieve invisibility will become invisible to you. They won’t expend any energy to make sure you understand what they’ve achieved; you — especially if you’re a nor’easter — won’t have any reason to look in their direction.

As a nor’easter you won’t have any reason to look in anyone’s direction unless they develop strategies for making sure you do. Who’s going to do that successfully? The nor’easters who report to you. Not those whose only skill is getting the job done.

It gets worse: Not everyone who does a great job is someone with whom you’re comfortable. It’s very, very easy to fall into the trap of mistaking relaxed interaction with strong performance, and social awkwardness with marginal ability. That’s especially true in IT, where the CIO, and often the next management tier as well, have to demonstrate a strong ability to interact well socially with non-IT business executives (northeastern competence). Those most comfortable interacting with business executives are often uncomfortable interacting with those who are, shall we say, nerdy?

We aren’t done either: Let’s imagine you conquer these challenges and find ways to accurately assess the real performance of all those reporting to you. Are you sure they’re equally able to do so?

This matters a lot, because in every IT organization — even those with exceptionally strong employees throughout — there’s a small cadre whose departure or demoralization would cause immense disruption. Among the IT staff their identities are well known. Whether your managers recognize their importance is another matter.

So here’s what you do. Presumably, you already include in your schedule regular meetings — formal or informal — with IT staff members. Next time around, ask this question: “Other than yourselves, which three people would it hurt the most to lose?” A few names will recur, over and over again — your shortlist of key staff.

Take the list and pull out their most recent performance appraisals. It’s a safe bet some of them didn’t receive strong ratings. It’s almost as safe to bet that most of those with weak ratings report through one or two managers — probably, managers of the northeasterly persuasion.

The situation is now clear. The question is, what are you going to do about it? At a minimum, it calls for some heart-to-heart conversations with the managers most prone to ignoring their strongest performers. It’s very likely you need to do more than this, as these managers are the ones most likely to create the illusion of strong performance instead of performing strongly.

As a leader, you can’t afford to deal in illusions. The only question is whether these managers can be saved. They aren’t all empty suits, tempting as it is to make that assumption. What you can assume is that throughout their careers they’ve been rewarded for facing north, and east.

It’s up to you to make sure the wind blows in the other direction.

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