CHAPTER | FOURTEEN
What to Do About Office Politics
Office politics is the name we give to the negative and harmful maneuvering for position, power, status, and favoritism—or just plain love of the game-playing—that occurs to varying extents in many offices across the country and around the world. Office politics are difficult to control because organizations are made up of human beings with many different ideas, values, and personalities, and their ability and willingness to cause mischief varies widely as well. Worse, office politicians, whatever their goals, pay no entry fee and rarely incur a penalty for their participation. So there are few barriers to playing the game, and the cost to the individual for the actions may be very small. Unfortunately, the cost to an organization can be extremely high. That cost may include low productivity and poor performance, along with the loss or silencing of good people, whose voices need to be heard for the company to perform well. In the worst case, the cost may be the complete breakdown and failure of the organization.
Drucker's View of Office Politics
Drucker so detested office politics that he once gave it as his reason for avoiding faculty meetings, even though he and Dean Paul Albrecht were close friends who shared a passion for executive education. He stated his views on the subject at the very first class of executive Ph.D. students who met at the Faculty Club on the campus of Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California. I was present as one of these students. This was a team-taught course in which both Drucker and Albrecht led the class for nine Ph.D. students. It was part of a controversial program intended to educate and prepare already successful executives, who possessed MBAs, for the top rungs of management in their companies.
This first course was intended as a no-holds-barred warm-up for the more rigorous courses and work to come. Though there was a written agenda, it was pretty loose. I don't recall how the subject came up, but Drucker reacted at once to the subject of office politics. In fact, he was uncharacteristically heated in his remarks. “Office politics can destroy any organization. You should avoid such things completely,” he said. And then he added, “I do not attend Paul's [the dean's] weekly management meetings for precisely this reason.” We all awaited a response from the dean. It was something to the effect of, “If you are Peter Drucker, you do not need to attend my faculty meetings.”
In bringing Peter Drucker to Claremont, Paul had won out over several larger and then more prestigious graduate schools in the West that also wanted his services when he left New York University in 1970. They had offered more money and other incentives, but they could not match the executive program that Peter and Paul had envisioned. Now it was several years later, and this executive MBA program was well established. Peter had a lot of clout regarding what he would and would not do, including in this new executive doctoral program that I and the other eight had our eyes on. It may even have been in Peter's contract that attending faculty meetings was optional. In any case, we knew exactly how he felt about office politics. Though he wrote little explicitly about this topic, as his student I learned from him how to avoid and, if necessary, manage this destructive phenomenon. In view of this, consider that there are two perspectives from which a professional must view and manage office politics. Both require action, but of two different kinds.
The First Perspective: You Manage Yourself
Although a manager may be a supervisor, you are in an organization larger than that division or department, working in conjunction with other managers and thus in a universe subject to office politics over which you have little control. Yet, there is always one individual over whom every manager has control—himself.
Recently I was speaking with a well-known professional who knew Drucker well. Some years ago, this man was in an organization that was rife with office politics that he could not control. It was beginning to affect his attitude toward his work and toward his co-workers, and even, he thought, his ability to do his job. He explained the problem to Drucker and asked for his advice. Drucker responded, “The solution to your problem is simple, but not always easy to carry out: concentrate on your job, ignore the politics, and do not participate. Above all, just do your job.”
Some years ago, a young man at a private college advanced rapidly up the career ladder. Hired as an assistant professor, the lowest rank on the academic ladder, he was quickly promoted to associate professor, and then to full professor. His obvious abilities led to his being offered the position of associate dean. In academia, administrative positions are a separate track that does not compete with the academic track of professors, who are supposed to focus on such activities as research, publication, teaching, and service. In fact, professors are treated almost as independent entities with great latitude in their activities. Nevertheless, administration is also important, and depending on the university, an associate dean, though sometimes viewed as a relatively junior position, is considered a stepping-stone to higher administrative posts, including dean, vice president, provost, and president.
The dean in this case was an older gentleman who had actually helped the young professor in his career at this university. However, becoming associate dean changed the young man. For the first time he was in a position to affect the entire School of Business. Moreover, he hungered for the deanship—so much so that he began to “play politics.” He not only undercut colleagues who were potential competitors, he also began to talk behind the old dean's back and magnify to others any mistake that the dean made. Finally, he even tried to convince other professors to go to the president to recommend that the dean be removed from office and that he be appointed dean in his stead.
When these kinds of politics are afoot in any organization, the manager has no option. The offending “politician” must be removed from office. In this case, the associate dean needed to be fired. However, the dean did not act and the associate dean managed to destroy the dean's ability to lead. Too late, the president realized what was going on. The dean was forced to retire; much to the associate dean's surprise, however, a different dean was selected and he was moved to a staff position outside of the School of Business, where he had minimal contact with faculty. He received no more promotions.
To repeat Drucker's answer to my friend's query, “Above all, just do your job.”
The Second Perspective: You Manage Others
As a manager, you cannot permit harmful office politics to rule in your organization; it is your responsibility to manage others. As noted above, the president failed to take action and thus lost an effective subordinate. But taking action is not always so easy. There is a hazy line between what is fair and good for the organization and what may be interpreted as favoritism.
Let's say one of your employees comes to you and asks for additional work. Is that office politics? If the individual is doing poorly dealing with the tasks you have already assigned him, the answer is pretty easy. But it's not so easy if this individual is in fact doing an outstanding job. Is it favoritism to comply with his request for more work? Probably not, especially if those you supervise could make the same request and, if deserving, have it granted. However, it is important that your policies are clearly known in advance.
The example of the associate dean seems clear enough when viewed here. But the harmful office politics he began should have been stopped by the university president, the dean's boss, before things had gone so far. Or the dean himself should have recognized much earlier that he had a growing problem from a scheming subordinate and have taken action, no matter how difficult this would have been or how much he might have preferred not to do so.
The best way for you as a manager to handle office politics is to make your policies clear and public. You can anticipate that some of your subordinates who are performing above average will seek additional work and responsibilities. Having everyone familiar with and understand your policies regarding promotion, selection for special jobs, additional work, and the like will go a long way toward heading off office politics or charges of favoritism.
What if, despite your best efforts, such harmful politics come into play? You need to stop them at once. Private one-on-one admonishment and announcements to everyone in your organization to cease and desist are your first steps, your initial lines of defense or, to be more accurate, your offense. If necessary, you will have to discipline office politicians or even remove them from the organization. They are that harmful and that destructive.
Drucker was no theoretician. He was a man of action. His recommendation was to take the action needed—don't let office politics destroy your organization.