Silence in Many Quarters About Organisational Politics

Silence in Many Quarters About Organisational Politics

In the workshops I run, we discuss why organisational politics is such a sensitive topic in many organisations. There are multiple explanations, for example:

1. Some managers and staff like to think of their organisation primarily in logical, rational terms and dismiss discussion of politics as gossip about ‘minor political squabbles’;
2. Some managers and staff see Machiavellian behaviour in the workplace that is subtly harming organisational performance and may raise concerns informally with trusted colleagues (e.g. during a coffee break or after work). Still, this often won't be shared further because:
   1. they can't provide any ‘hard evidence’ for their concerns and
   2. they fear being accused of being disloyal or political.
3. For foxy managers, the last thing they would want to do is alert innocent lambs (or more savvy owls) to the tricks they get up to!

In other words, we have a serious, corrosive human factor that can lead to significant setbacks and problems that is hard to name in many organisations.

The absence of serious discussion and training on this topic in many organisations should, therefore, not be a great surprise. Nonetheless, it represents a considerable threat to organisational effectiveness. I liken the training, workshops, and coaching that would be needed to address these problems to the ‘defence against the dark arts’ classes in the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling.43 She calls out the profound truth that the dark side of human behaviour cannot be eradicated or definitively ‘put in its place’. Professor Snape says:

‘The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever‐changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many‐headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before.

You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating and indestructible. Your defences must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the arts you seek to undo.’

Thus, in the wizarding world, it is recognised that unless you equip children with the skills and know‐how to deal with these challenges as adults, they will be ‘lambs to the slaughter’. Likewise, the popularity of TV series such as The Office, Mad Men, In the Thick of It, etc., can be explained – in part – by the way they show the workplace as it is. From this perspective, many corporate ‘visions’, ‘values statements’ and ‘codes of conduct’ are fiction, and some fiction is a lot more like the truth.

In my experience, Machiavellian behaviour (and organisational politics more generally) receives little explicit attention in governance, risk and compliance (GRC) circles or in RCA literature, fields that are supposed to examine problems independently of political pressure. This is even though good corporate governance promotes speaking openly about difficult issues and that political machinations may undermine GRC and RCA budgets, etc.44 One hypothesis is that these areas are not immune from politics either (whether that is externally or internally).

And while you can hear many organisations and regulators talking about culture change initiatives and ‘behavioural risk’ initiatives,45 and the progress they have made, the presence of politics and human factors tells us progress may only be true in certain areas or that it may not last.46

Those interested in RCA and systems thinking need to recognise the full spectrum of human factors at work, including organisational politics. That means looking beyond the factors covered in the Human Factors literature they normally use.

And for the avoidance of doubt, my message is not that Machiavellian behaviour is a root cause of problems; it will be an immediate or contributing cause. But, unless we can recognise it, talk about it and try to equip organisations to better deal with this phenomenon in all its various guises, we cannot be surprised if things go wrong for this reason.

If we are lucky, we might be able to punish the fox for their self‐serving behaviour, but we still have the question of the factors that allowed the fox to roam freely and kill the hens in the coop.47

Here are some books I would recommend about detecting and trying to manage political behaviour, but I would recommend getting personal support and advice if this is a serious concern:

• ‘Confronting Company Politics’ by Beverly Stone – which discusses the many corrosive effects dysfunctional politics can have, the defence routines 48 that exist to downplay their effect and the need to take some personal responsibility to do something about its harmful effects.
• ‘The Drama of Leadership’ by Patricia Pitcher – which examines power struggles between ‘artists’, ‘craftsmen’ and ‘technocrats’ and the asymmetrical ways each sees one another.
• ‘Political Savvy’ by Joel R DeLuca – in which he discusses the need to acknowledge and deal with Machiavellians (‘Machs’, who I would equate with ‘foxes’).