For business value to grow, Political Agility is a necessary sail. It emerges with distinctive divide, may it be between individuals, varied stakeholders, departments, countries, other entities, etc. Perfect alignment is never a possibility, so avoiding overbearing, overriding conflicts with rationalistic and ideological waves will guide an individual and an organization to make the right choices with persistence, dedication, and collaborative contribution. As such, it was logical to have Political Agility in our model as it is roiled by emotions and to nullify the negative effects it brings with the churning, we feel Political Agility certainly needs to be honed.
Politics is everywhere and it is a known fact that Machiavellianism is not going to vanish anytime soon. Upper management calls the shots sometimes without assessing the outcomes and its risks. One such example is when the space shuttle Challenger was launched. Morton Thiokol Incorporated and NASA wanted to prove to the public the success of the US space program so that they could get future funding. They did not ensure the safety of the astronauts, thus ending up losing all seven crew members. Therefore, every individual and every organization needs to hone political agility just as we see in this example where expert technical advice was not taken into consideration and in fact speaking up was discouraged. An individual of expertise needs to be given the thumbs-up to share the findings and organizational decisions weighed ethically with inputs gathered from all parties. In short, politics and its demerits can be very harmful to organizations. This is why political agility is very important for an organization’s projects, portfolios, programs, and much more to come to apt consensus before embarking on endeavors, especially of this rare nature.
“Performance with a Purpose” has been talked about in so many international forums by many C levels. It brings power, order, loyalty, ethics, trust, emotion, culture, and communication to the desired shores of that organization. When people in an office are calm, cohesive, and are full of integrity, corporate caution that is so inevitable can be managed in an easier way. If profit is the only objective, obstacles such as gossip, being cut-throat, etc., will demean the leadership quality desired in an organization. Instead, tactfulness and leading by example can negate the loss, and the ability to deliver minimum satisfactory result for pointless activities is what we feel is the essence of political agility.
Mishkin Berteig in agileadvice2 writes this thought about this Agile Manifesto value: “Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools” is basically a statement that given the right circumstances we can use processes and tools, but that our default approach to work and problem-solving should be to focus on individuals and their interactions. Processes and tools do not improve on their own.
As such in our minds the brightest beams that will guide toward political agility are when utmost caution is exercised with the corporation. This ship can be landed safely ashore with the quality of the leaders that navigate with far-sighted and near-sighted vision in mind. Saying and doing exactly as the leaders would want their teams and projects to perform is one way of attaining this. In other words, leading by example. One such example is to weigh all options and then support the decision-making right down from the bottom of the sea. A robust action chain is vital for any organization’s performance to reach the desired shores. This should encompass a minimum of:
- expecting probable glitches,
- intervening before corrective action is indispensable,
- attitudes and actions of leaders’ deeds and conducts to be cognizant.
When all of these are ploughed through a chain reaction, there will be no link that has a chance to break in the chain. These measures above will be the guiding force for responsive sustainability of the empowerment of all the stakeholders in a project and all situational topographies.
One of the key parameters of the agile supply chain management3 is to make sure that there is as less friction as possible within and around the supply chain cosmos. In the article, Muhammad Sher says, “To make it robust chain, it would be vital to use state of the art, planning applications, that supports the working teams in decision making and sometimes with what if scenario capability, usually companies go for backup plans that costs considered to be extra, than such applications make it more responsive and cost efficient.”
Political Agility in our minds is the ability to navigate through competing agendas and collecting consensus among all stakeholders. This is a reality that all supply chain managers go through in their daily work routines. The credibility of these managers’ viewpoints needs to be supported by the collection of evidence and the analysis of data to avoid political collision. Data pertaining to their own chains are available from their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, logistics track & trace systems, and other integrated Business Warehouse Systems. External data are made available from portals such as Clearmetal and by using portals such as Flexport, Haven, or Infor for freight movement.
The industry of analyzing an organization may require establishing solid relationships from the get-go. Creative solutions to political dilemmas and getting the buy-in may require individuals to be involved with an agile mindset. This may be attained when individuals work independent of politics at every single strata, situation, project, team, and so on and so forth. So the queries here for the personal agility of an individual to reach up to organizational agility will be “How come,” “How much,” and “How not to” as shown in Figure 5 on next page.
Figure 5
Figure 5 above highlights the essential questions to ask oneself: How come the situation came to this point? How much damage is already done and how much can be avoided so that one can find out how not to damage even more and how not to have a repeat performance. Extrapolating some of the points from “Rebecca Knight,”4 these queries when answered by each individual to full satisfaction pave the path from personal agility to organizational agility.
Honing political agility can be done in a number of ways. A few ways are given below:
Upper management can:
- Lead by example.
- Support innovative decisions made by all levels in the organization.
- Set sail into the corporate seas with cautionary efforts.
- Respond to the political challenges need to be effective and sustainable for the growth and development of an organization.
Industry Applications by International Practitioners and Academia for Political Agility
As long as there is more than one person in any situation, politics are inevitable. Political agility helps you to survive organizational politics. When external stakeholders like service providers are involved, the relationships between internal stakeholders may be affected because the person who introduces the external stakeholder may either have personal interest or take the objection to the idea as a personal attack. Political awareness and cautiousness helps you to win the other person not to your side but to the side of the interest of your organization.
Makheni Zonneveld, Future Readiness Coach,
NETHERLANDS
The best way to gain your team’s and your partner’s trust is to be ethical at all times. It takes years to build a relationship, to build confidence, to construct a reputation. But, it takes less than a moment to lose it all. I recently had this situation where I stopped trusting a close business partner, who I thought was family. I am sure, the whole team will never forget the day I confronted them. But if my teams trust me, they will stand behind my decision and support me. Political agility certainly paved the way in this instance.
Joanna Staniszewska, CEO, You’ll Ltd.,
POLAND
The aim of political agility is to create an environment of trust and transparency for achieving the organization growth. It also requires changing the existing ways of working, if required to adopt pragmatic approaches to make the process leaner instead of continuing with bureaucratic style of functioning. The benefit of political agility is increased accountability amongst the team working towards a shared goal. An example could be the leadership communication during client interactions for supporting their team’s decisions and approaches for achieving the customer outcomes. To aid to hone political agility, it may be worthwhile to look into the Cynefin framework (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework) shown in the diagram below. It is useful in responding to complex and chaotic problems through sensing the context and helps in avoiding the problems that arise when the preferred style causes to make mistakes. This is a key tool for creating agile leadership and resilient organizations.
Gaurav Dhooper (PAL-I®, PMI-ACP®, SAFe4®, CSM®, LSS-GB)
Program Manager, RPA & Agile Practitioner at Genpact
INDIA
It could be argued they are demonstrating political agility; being ruthless as to what is no longer expedient and being gentle with what now is……how many times have you seen a politician change their opinion when the ‘winds blow with or against them’?
Paul Hodgkins, Executive Director, Paul Hodgkins Project Consultancy,
UNITED KINGDOM
Our education system is steep in tradition and process. In order to understand the nuances and practice, one needs to understand the stakeholders involved, their objectives, the organizational strategies and goals, as well as where the customer’s needs are. Like many organizations, challenges exist in how departments are structured and leadership power vacillates. Maneuvering through organizational structure, process and resources takes political agility.
Professor Linh Luong, Program Director of Master of Science in Project Management, University of SEATTLE
While the data may be simple, generating, and sustaining, political consensus on the value of data may be any data analysts’ biggest challenge.
Patrick N Connally, Director, Teradata, Philadelphia,
USA
My personal opinion is that politics is the only universal religion, where, in all countries and cultures, it is established and rooted since prehistoric times. There are different types of politics and politicians, but both are moved by two rules: governability (countries, organizations, people, etc.), and decisions, which are taken based on political reasons and interests. In our company many decisions depend on internal politics and interests of groups with greater strength within the organization, even though I must say that company owners are doing and giving a great support to catch up with the “disruptive technologies” that nowadays are changing our life and business models. In particular, in our department, Political Agility can help us to become more aware and be more cautious in having an agile governability. Meaning, by taking the right decisions would benefit all stakeholders involved in our daily work activities, so that conflicts that may occur, for various reasons, are handled with persistence, dedication, collaborative and consensual contribution.
Rafael De La Rosa, Project-Portfolio Management Consultant,
PT. SMART tbk,