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Politics is the art of dividing opinion and loyalties. Office politics can be the art of making life intolerable in the workplace. The normal configuration is based on management and careerism. Friends, hangers-on, people trying to stay neutral, it’s a menagerie of personal and job-related situations. It’s probably safer to avoid office politics, but it’s also very difficult.
In the office, the politics often relate to clashes between people. Sides are taken, and that’s how the politics of the workplace are shaped. Even if everyone is under the control a single person, the clashes occur through the hierarchy. Managers will clash trying to get budgets, or position. Staff will jockey for the inner circle, at all levels.
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At its nastiest, office politics is purely destructive, involving networks of people, all working on their own personal and group agendas to the exclusion of all else. People are hired to support managers, rather than to work. Extreme careerists frequently use office politics as a weapon, removing competitors to advance themselves. It’s a particularly vicious process, which invariably damages the organizations affected.
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There is a theory that professional office politicians couldn’t really get work any other way. In most cases, however, office politics is more of a domestic event, the workplace divided on a purely local basis. Even so, it’s a matter of opinion whether any work gets done at all, while the battles rage.
Consider this situation:
Two bids to supply a new computer network and supports have been received. The CEO hasn’t made up his mind, and the two most senior managers are supporting both of the bids. The more expensive bid is being supported by the longer serving manager. The decision devolves into a battle for a victory, whose opinion will the boss approve?
(The boss, in fact, is innocently hoping for some informed opinions from his two senior managers, and isn’t at this stage aware of the war that’s just started.)
Both managers then send staff to find supporting arguments for their point of view. These staff are now under pressure, and they transfer the pressure to their subordinates. At the bottom of this pile is some poor soul who’s been told to go and search for information about data management. Others are wading through server catalogs, while some are busy checking system designs and prices. Neither manager’s department is even remotely involved in IT, but they’ve been roped into the clash.
(IT, ironically, is a small department, which reports directly the CEO. The IT manager is too junior to do much more than call himself the manager, and far too busy with their obsolete, frequently crashing, system to do much more than agree they need a new system. He does have a preference, and he’s supported the senior manager, but that’s the extent of his real input into the final decision.)
They then descend on the accounts department, both of them senior to the accountant, and ask for some financial estimates for operating both systems. They do this independently, and the accountant, who is neither stupid nor blind, figures out the situation instantly. The accountant can’t refuse to do the work, but it is possible to go over their heads to the boss, and ask for a bit of guidance, while pretending to be entirely ignorant of the clash between the managers.
This is the advantage of the neutral position. Not actually subject to either manager, the accountant has managed to tell the boss what’s happening, while not taking sides.
Everybody else has meanwhile been busy ‘helping’ put together a case for one system or another. Some work is put on hold, and quite a lot of nitpicking now takes place between departments, not least of which is because they’re sourcing the same materials about company operating costs, and won’t give them to their opponents. Relationships deteriorate, and interdepartmental tantrums about minor matters ensue as the departments fall into line behind their managers.
That’s not good, because the senior manager is the sales manager, and the other manager is the administration manager.
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This is pure careerism, and some fairly basic social instincts, which tend to create cooperation between the people nearest to each other, have taken over. The staff, in practice, knew nothing much more than the basics about getting a new system, and apart from the horrors of the constant crashes, weren’t really involved until the dispute arose.
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The boss isn’t stupid, either. Horrified, and annoyed, but there’s a way to handle this situation.
The two managers arrive for the meeting to decide which system will be bought, with stacks of information to support their cases. The sales manager reports that the system he prefers works brilliantly with sales, being careful not to step outside his own territory. The administration manager quotes cost analyses which irrefutably prove that administration and operating costs are a lot cheaper under his preferred system.
The problem for the boss is putting an end to the clash between the managers. By implication, if he favors either party, one of them wins, and the other loses. The office politics have been very destructive, and the company has become dysfunctional, behind the scenes. In some companies, if one manager goes, all his supporters go with him. The effect is to wreck the managerial structure, or to give control of the organization to one 'lobby group' or another.
The CEO could fire one or both of them, just to maintain order. He could play favorites, which isn’t that good an option, because it would alienate the other manager. There’s a much better card to play, though.
He brings in the IT manager, with his own figures, which are all IT-based. The managers are confronted with an expert, and can’t really argue on his level. They can’t dispute his facts, either, particularly without notice. They are pounded with data loads, bandwidths, indexing and registry functions, file management and archive systems, backups, server security, and much of the rest of the IT spectrum.
Their positions are reduced from arguments with supporting date to personal preferences. The IT guy had the last word, too. The CEO smiles, rather grimly, and says to nobody in particular,
‘Best to leave it to the experts, don’t you think? I think we’ll go with IT’s recommendations.’
There’s a sort of dazed agreement, and the managers leave without even knowing quite what the decision was, both under the impression that their own preferred system had been discarded.
The result was that the more expensive system, preferred by IT, was bought, and the senior manager couldn’t take any credit for the decision. The junior manager saved face, but that was all. Without a cause to compete with each other, the political fronts in the office evaporated.
Office politics tend to revolve around issues and personalities. If the environment or the personalities which creates those issues are removed, so are the politics. It’s better management, and makes for a much better organization.
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