The Politics of
Failure:
Workplace
Politics & Poor Performance
Executive Summary
This paper provides managers and leaders
with the necessary information to implement a cure for poor
organizational performance and its unhealthy workplace politics. The
paper addresses the following areas: 1) Leadership and Performance;
2) Performance, Strategic Alignment and Politics; 3) Functional vs.
Dysfunctional Politics 4) Performance Diagnosis Checklist; 5)
Dysfunctional Politics and Performance Risks; 6) Treatment
Challenges; 7) Best Practices for Curing Dysfunctional Workplace
Politics
1. Leadership and Performance
The subject of leadership has been greatly
covered by scholars, academicians and consultants, yet building and
sustaining high-performance teams remain elusive to most companies.
Leadership is the most important competitive advantage of a company,
not technology, finance, or anything else. Leadership formulates the
company's business strategy and builds its assets, including its
people and operations.
The leadership team is the
most important asset of the company and can be its worst liability.
A failed business is the result of poor
performance. Poor performance is the result of an incompetent or
dysfunctional leadership team.
To paraphrase Tolstoy, All successful
companies are successful for different reasons, but dysfunctional
companies are dysfunctional in the same way.
The main reason for poor organizational
performance is not the lack of business knowledge, but due to poor
execution attributed to mostly to dysfunctional workplace politics.
Most competitors in the same industry have similar strategies and
tactics, similar products and services, and similar marketing and
sales programs. Their organizational structures, job descriptions,
and even their staff have similar business and technical education.
So over the long-term, with such minor differences between the
competitors, why there is such a drastic difference in the
performance? The research found that the key difference is in the
way the teams work together to execute their strategies. The three
execution dimensions are speed, effectiveness and efficiency. These
performance dimensions are all a function of continuous strategic
alignment, which in turn is a function of organizational politics.
2. Performance, Strategic Alignment and
Politics
Classic management science has defined four
management functions: planning, organizing, motivating and
controlling. According to the research, the classic definition is
missing a key function, namely; aligning. Sustaining high business
performance is a product of continuous strategic alignment.
Strategic alignment is a function of political alignment. It is how
well the teams communicate and work with each other. Simply put,
strategic alignment is getting all the people in an organization
rowing in the same direction -- imagine the force and speed when
they are rowing synchronized in the same direction and imagine the
performance and wasted of energy when they are not.
3. Functional vs Dysfunctional Workplace
Politics
Management by its nature is a highly
political role. The first key management function is planning and
resource allocation among competing business needs and departments.
Managers must balance the conflicting interests among their
stakeholders, including the investors, board of directors,
employees, customers, suppliers, and government.
Technical managers that get promoted into
business management positions, learn, the hard way that they cannot
function, if they do not have the political skills needed to deal
with never ending conflicting views, interests and personalities.
The organizational life is full of conflicts, ranging from minor
differences of opinion to major political wars. Learning how to
manage workplace politics is critical to professional and business
success.
Common organizational politics and
management behavior:
- Most managers have natural
tendencies to hoard resources and build empires to gain more
control power and status within the organization.
- Most managers play territorial games. They will resist or
delay change, if they do not fully understand the impact on
their territory
- If the manager does not agree with the plans, he or she are
more likely to play passive-aggressive games
- Some managers will sabotage the leader’s plan, if it
threatens their interest
- The higher the stake for the manager, the higher the risk of
unethical political behavior
- Even fast-growing and profitable companies can develop
bad internal politics and unproductive work habits that will
eventually lead to declining performance.
- The larger the organization, the more susceptible it is to
the breakdown of communication, the emergence of management
silos and misalignment.
- Many of the smaller companies also suffer from similar
problems, but to a lesser degree.
- When management tends to focus so much on one management
area, e.g., sales, and has no time to manage the internal
organizational challenges, dysfunction creeps in and takes hold.
To build and sustain high-performance teams,
the leadership and human resources managers should distinguish
between functional politics and dysfunctional politics in every part
of the organization.
What is the difference between functional
politics vs. dysfunctional politics?
Healthy
Functional Politics
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Unhealthy
Dysfunctional Politics
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- Collaborative conflict resolution i.e. Win-Win
approach
- Focus on the issues not people
- Respectful non-threatening communication
- Exploring new ideas and building consensus
- Stimulate greater creativity and knowledge
- Increased motivation
- Align objectives, incentives and performance
- Increased group cohesion
- Develops the interest of organization
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- Competitive conflict resolution
i.e. Win – Lose
approach
- Becomes personal and can escalate from wanting
to win, to wanting to hurt or punish
- Disrespectful point-scoring communication
- When animosity occurs, communications break down,
trust and support deteriorate and open hostility results
- Information silos results in poor decisions
- Misaligned incentives, efforts and results
- Increased stress
- Decreased productivity
- Decreased morale & motivation
- Threatens the interest of the organization
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If
organizational politics left unchecked, conflict has the potential
to grow exponentially. As conflicts escalate, workplace politics can
easily transform from functional politics to dysfunctional politics.
The leadership must continuously monitor signs of unhealthy
conflicts and formally manage workplace politics as they manage
finance, marketing and any other critical business function.
4. Performance Diagnosis Checklist
Dysfunctional leadership causes, symptoms
and early warning signs:
- Dictatorial Leadership:
A manager that does not allow disagreements out of insecurity or
arrogance, creates a fear based decision environment that limits
collaboration and creativity in finding solutions to everyday
business problems.
- Democratic Leadership:
A well-intentioned yet, misguided management by consensus instead of
management by expertise, results in overlapping roles and
responsibilities and endless management meetings wasted on
territorial battles, egoistic clashes and retaliations. While
democracy might work for governing nations, it does not work for
businesses where speed, effectiveness and efficiency are top
priority. Imagine if every company functioned like the US congress,
how long it will take the management team before they agree on every
aspect of a business plan and execution.
- Ineffective Meetings:
Argumentative and heated cross-divisions meetings with discussions
and language focusing on point-scoring and buck-passing rather than
sharing responsibility and collaborating to solve the problem
- Fragmented Organization
Efforts: Interdepartmental
competition and turf wars between rival managers lead to the
emergence of silos, which results in communication gaps. Management
silos almost always result in fragmented and duplicated budgets and
projects, thus wasting valuable company investments.
- Too Much Management:
There are many management layers in the organization, thus,
hindering communication and resulting in slower execution.
- Too Much Talk:
Plans are heavy on talk, but light on action. In a political
corporate culture, image management becomes more important than
actions.
- Authority/Responsibility
Mismatch: There can be no
proper responsibility without proper authority. For a manager to be
responsible the performance of his team, s/he should have the
authority to hire and fire without political interference from other
departments. There should be a clear distinction between project
ownership vs. project support functions
- No Management Feedback:
There is limited or no leadership performance feedback.
- Personal Agendas:
Recruitments, selections and promotions are based on internal
political agenda, for example hiring friends to guarantee personal
loyalty at the expense of highly performing and more-qualified
employees.
- Political Compensation:
Stock options, bonuses and perks are not fairly linked to
performance.
- Inefficient Use of
Resources: Budgets are
allocated between business units or departments based on favoritism
and power centers rather than actual business needs.
- Empire-building
Practices: Managers believe
that the more people they manage and the bigger the budget, the
higher the chances that they will be promoted. This results in
raging battles around budgets, strategies and operations.
- Unequal Workload
Distribution: You'll find some
departments are underutilized while other departments are
overloaded.
- Lack of Collaboration:
Every person for himself/herself. Low sense of unity or camaraderie
on the team. The key criterion for decision-making is “what is in
it for me” or (WIIFM)?
- Low Productivity:
Management wastes more time and energy on internal attack and
defense strategies instead of executing the work, innovating and
overcoming challenges. Critical projects fall behind on deadlines,
budgets and performance targets (e.g. sales, market share, quality
and other operational targets).
- Constant Crisis Mode:
Management team spends most of their time on fire-fighting instead
of proactive planning for next-generation products and services.
- Backstabbing:
Backbiting among the executives and managers becomes common and
public.
- Highly Stressful
Workplace: Employees are
stressed and unhappy. There is a high rate of absenteeism and a high
employee turnover rate.
- Morale Deterioration:
Muted level of commitment and enthusiasm by other teams. Even
successful results cannot be shared and celebrated due to animosity
and internal negative competition.
5. Dysfunctional Politics and Performance
Risks
- When employees feel
discriminated against, abused or unappreciated, they may resort to
one or more of the following harmful options:
- Defecting to competition
- Resort to sabotaging the
company, e.g., by sharing confidential information with
competitors or the media
- Employees may become
emotionally distant and have no interest in the success of the
company
- They will display
passive-aggressive behaviors, become uncooperative, work less or
produce substandard results
- Key talent will leave the
company. Good honest workers generally focus on performance and
don't have the skills or disposition for functioning in a highly
political or hostile environment.
- Company develops a
reputation for being an unpleasant place to work at, making it more
difficult to recruit good talent to compete effectively.
- Employees will lose faith
and motivation and their productivity suffers. When the leadership
comes up with new good initiatives, they are met with skepticism and
resistance
The Bottom line:
Business performance will suffer.
The worst thing that could happen to a
company is when the staff loses confidence in the leadership team.
The 2 critical questions every leader must
ask:
- How many of the above-listed symptoms
are present in our organization, department or teams?
- How best to manage workplace politics
and improve team performance?
6. Treatment Challenges
Why is it so difficult to treat
dysfunctional teams and organizations?
- Many times the leadership
team is part of the political game.
- There is strong conflicting
views or conflict of interests.
- New leaders are not able to
assess who is right or wrong because of lack of information or
misinformation due to the information silos, negative political
communications.
- Changing the culture
requires incentives system re-engineering, which may be faced with
strong resistance.
- It takes substantial time
and effort to heal the wounds, to reestablish broken communications
and rebuild trust and collaboration.
7. Best Practices for Curing Dysfunctional
Workplace Politics:
Realistically, it is not possible to have a
politics-free organization. The desire for power and control is part
of human nature, business, and the world. Seeking power and politics
in any company is neither inherently good nor bad. However,
successful leaders know how to leverage politics by setting
performance-oriented instead of resources-oriented goals and
rewards.
Successful leaders set fair rules for the
political game, reward collaborative performance and penalize
animosity and negative behavior. To cure the organization from bad
politics, the board of directors, investors and the C-level
executives can choose from the following list of recommendations:
- The CEO must recognize the
criticality of the political problem and its impact on the business
performance. S/he must commit to change and be its leading champion.
- Management should not be
based on democratic nor dictatorial leadership styles. It should be
based on meritocratic business style. The roles, responsibilities
and authorities should be clearly defined. The expert manager will
collaborate and communicate with other managers, other points of
views and disagreements are accepted, but the responsible manager
has the final decision and ownership of the project or department.
Once a decision is taken by a manager, the other managers should
not be allowed to sabotage or push for a different agendas.
- The CEO can use
independent, experienced and trained advisors and facilitators to
support major plans and change program (outsiders who have no
internal agendas or biases).
- The CEO must use adequate
scorecards and open employee-feedback surveys to assess the health
and performance of the management team, and to identify performance
roadblocks. The surveys must be anonymous and conducted by
independent consultants on a bi-quarterly basis.
- For valid differences of
opinions, consider mediation and arbitration. If that does not work,
replace difficult and uncooperative managers.
- If the existing management
team does not demonstrate a true change of heart and policy, then a
new powerful leadership must be brought in.
- If a new leadership is
brought in, s/he must be backed by the full support of the board of
directors. The new leaders must be given the power to make
decisions, hire, fire and end bad politics.
- The leader must gather the
team together and be honest and direct about bad political behaviors
and should be willing to back threats with actions. It is important
to have the legal counsel be present and announce that those who
continue in their negative behavior will be out the door.
- To quote Gandhi: "Be the
change you want to see.” The most powerful leaders are almost always
the role models for the change they seek. If the CEO practices bad
politics, no amount of training or coaching will change the
management team.
- The CEO should not tolerate
bad behavior. The CEO must realize that both bad and good behaviors
are contagious. Sociological research shows that people will imitate
the behavior that appears to be socially acceptable, even if it is
not their normal behavior. If you allow some people to get away with
bad political behaviors, other people will follow.
- Focus on building a culture
of collaboration as part of the management strategy. The process of
building a healthy organization starts by creating cohesive teams at
all levels (top, middle and line managers). Leverage
executive-coaching programs and action-learning teams to solve
problems and develop strategies. Learning together, helps management
teams to work better together.
- Conduct company-wide team
building workshops, educate teams on professional ethics and train
them on people skills, communication, negotiation and conflict
resolution.
- Once a strategy is agreed
upon, design a performance system to motivate and control - include
both incentives and penalties. The new system must be aligned with
objectives and designed to reward collaboration and penalize silos.
- Communicate, educate and
the organization on strategy, direction and new performance targets.
- Use collaboration tools
(Information and communication technologies) between geographically
dispersed business units and teams.
About the Author
Mr.
Med
Jones is the president of
International Institute of Management – A US based best practices
education and consulting organization.
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Dysfunctional Leadership and Dysfunctional Organizations (pdf)
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