In 2010, I was doing an international project out of India. I was a young gun at that time, feeling confident and idealistic. What politics, it's about making an impact to the company. Right? Despite corporate not deciding to invest in India in a particular business line, I created a slide deck showing the actual reality which was my recommendation to invest. One day I got a call from my mentor in New York telling me that he had been hearing about my "aggressiveness". Next week I was taken off the project. Just like that. I was gutted. What actually happened was that I totally ignored the political element or consequences of my recommendations. Where there are people there is politics. Whether is your kids school board, or your neighborhood charity or workplace. People = Politics. Do you consider politics to be a negative phenomenon? As I have progressed in my career I have developed a healthy respect for organizational politics rather than a disdain and repulsion. Going from an IC to a manager of managers at Google, I also became very very adept at managing politics. And I think with age, you just generally become smarter about these things. Better with people, wiser with emotions, more strategic etc. First thing is acknowledging and accepting politics at workplace. You should ask yourselves which side you are on. Disdain and repulsion or respect and acceptance. Politics is a very very natural consequence of a bunch of human beings working and trying to work together. It's generally driven by the concept of alliances i.e. informal groups of people are able to hold more power and influence than individuals. Sometimes alliances get formed naturally and sometimes by design. One of the big reasons why people find politics repulsive is because it violates their sense of a fair and even corporate structure and functioning. Like why the fuck should a group of people who hang out at the tennis club together drive decisions? Who the fuck are they? Another reason that I used to find politics repulsive is my deep need for fairness and I simply didn't find politics to be adding to fairness. It didn't make me feel I or my work was in control of the reward and recognition I deserved. Anyway - my main message here is that accept corporate politics as a natural consequence of putting groups of people together. It will ALWAYS happen. There is no group of people that is free of politics. How to deal with politics? A) Embrace politics but don't engage B) Acknowledge the concept of alliances at workplace and learn to identify these C) Identify those with influence and power at workplace from those that don't - this is the hardest as power and influence is not the same as higher job title. D) Don't get too swayed by your desire to make an impact to the org and be recognized individually. If you are not at the top then your success MUST be shared by others - so learn to include this group early on. Be ok with your manager and others stealing a little bit of credit. In fact as you grow in your career you learn to share most of the credit with others! E) Recognize toxic politics. Toxic politics is a very small % of most organizational politics. Have to learn to read it. Many years back I was on the wrong side of this and this happened because my boss was on the wrong side of it and I gave too much of my loyalty to him. This is a common situation. F) Sometimes you want to engage in politics - I've always look at this from the perspective of being on the side of an alliance. And I've realized at this stage of my career that it's better to be in a side that is taking decisions than on the side that's resisting them. G) Always have a more senior mentor who is making you familiar of the org landscape. Have more than one mentor and accept that the political landscape changes often H) stay aware during reorgs - don't jump to conclusions about which way the power is shifting and wait a bit. I) improve your understanding of which roles truly matter to the org and which roles are mickey mouse roles. For example always know that a VP of sales is more important than a VP of customer success. Your CEOs best buddy who he had worked with for last XX years, is more important than most of the dispensable employees in the org. Competence doesn't matter. J) Don't gossip - politics is not the same as Gossip. Politics is not (mostly) at the individual level. It may feel that way but look at it from an alliance perspective. K) resources - I've read many books but I am not sure I want to recommend books here. If there is one thing I want to leave behind about politics is that you are ready to handle and tackle politics successfully WHEN you start seeing it as both an unavoidable phenomenon in workplace and as potentially a positive one. I've rambled a lot and I tend to do that. Hope there is some wisdom here that can be useful. I intend to write more on this on my subreddit with a bit more practical advice over time. https://www.reddit.com/r/mobiusengine/
Nice ad for mobius whatever
I'm okay with it. If he is providing value for free, he can plug something at the end. It would be different if he only wrote half of this then said "subscribe to see the rest."
As an immigrant and non native speaker of the language I work in, I recognize that I have no chance to succeed in this kind of political warfare and don't even try. I'm sure it's similar for immigrants to the USA.
But then so many non-natives head tech orgs as CEOs and CTOs. It must require a lot of political navigation to reach there. So there must be a way
There must be. I'm really impressed with those people who can do it.
Too long bro just make a YouTube video
This post could have been 2 sentences
Give it to chatgpt to summarise and then paste here .
There are also oftentimes no checks and balances to these power alliances. They can put people unfairly on pips, hold top performers back on promos, undermine you with your direct reports, gaslight you in meetings and overall just make life difficult for you. Why? Because frankly, they just don’t like you
Alright so I urge you to get it out of your head that there is a likeability contest. I've been there and it's easy to say that when we don't feel like we are in control. Here is the brutal truth - every human being is motivated by some underlying driver. In corporate, there are just a few - money, love, advancement, impact. And these motivators drive people to build alliances. So people are put on pip NOT because they are not liked but because they are not seen as aligning with the influencers motivators. Btw - fairness and building a just world is NOT a driver for most in corporate. This is what we often don't pay attention to.
Reasonable post but without advice on how to navigate things practically it's kinda moot.
That was surprisingly accurate for a blind post
A quality post on blind? This cannot be
I will accept it, but I will NEVER respect politics. We should form alliances only as a company against our competition.
I acknowledge. This is me 15 years back too so I see where you are coming from.