The term “office politics” seems to have become a pejorative now. It has been mentioned in many workplace discussion, closely associated with negative factor that influence one’s career path, or a professional move. But in my opinion, “office politic” isn’t all that bad.
Let’s define what is politics first. In a more general term, politic simply means a play of influence. Yes, it’s often associated with power balance too, because in any given place, the bigger the power, usually the bigger the influence, right?
Like, this is why authoritative power usually have bigger influence in an organization or a country. We also see influence also come from the masses. This is why labor unions can also bring a strong political influence. Think of the French revolution, or communism perhaps?
It’s often seen in history that power and influence often comes hand in hand, but I hardly believe that it was the power that drives the shift in human landscape, it’s the influence.
This goes the same in an organization too. Influence happens between different leadership hierarchies, different departments, divisions, and more importantly: among people.
Regardless of how the term “politics” is defined and executed, playing with influence among organization is never in history considered a bad thing. It’s a neutral thing. This is the main reason why I see office politics isn’t something that deserving of its bad rep. It’s a natural thing to do within an organization. A play of influence is acqually required for any individual taking part of the organization (or within society at large), and to have full understanding of the dynamics between its moving parts.
A researcher’s perspective
After spending majority of my professional life contributing as a researcher / in a research function, discussion about politics often appear too. Questions like “how should we answer this research request? It sounds very political.” appears once every few research project requests. I also heard that many researchers that I talked with, also mentioned about the organizations that feels “too political” that it affects their day-to-day.
On the surface, I’d like to argue that part of a researchers’ work is actually to take part on this play of influence. Why? Because research teams are basically functions that are responsible in contributing to how a decision is made. So to actually inject influence into the organizational process, sounds like the logical way to it, right?
I’d like to argue that a mature research function within an organization, is actually a function that understands this political play and embed itself naturally into all the decision making process. A research team that are apolitical, or simply maintains minimum play of influence, usually either being too narrow on its scope, or simply have difficulties in increasing its strategic importance.
And when we, as researchers, often say to ourselves that we wanted our work / craft to have influence to the organization, it’s an unwritten obligation that all researchers actually have to take part on this play of influence. There’s some political responsibility in our roles as researchers. To be able to play that influence, is actually another core skill that a researcher must have other than user interviews or chi-square analysis.
Reflection
I wrote down this post as a reflection on some of my previous experiences working in different in-house situations. There are lots of difficult conversation happened within my work that revolves around the concept of office politics.
I meant to put in more context and broader understanding of “office politics”, outside of its pejorative meanings, in order to give a new perspective of how to see it wholly.
With this perspective in mind, hopefully one can be less anxious when discussing about office politics. To actually take away the bad context and association, and focusing on the key activities of understanding the play of influence, it can be helpful for any individual to really take part of the play. (Of course, when talking about the ways of establishing certain influence, that’s a deeper discussion on ethos, or whatever’s “appropriate”. )
Bringing this new perspective, I also hope that for the most of us, navigating office politics can also be a more bearable activity. When we say that politics is the main cause that hinders individual growth, the better way to go isn’t to abolish politics whatsoever, or to blame it on the concept. The better way is to slow down, increase mindfulness, and re-examine the people landscape. To re-map the play of influence that’s happening between one function / department with the other, between one individual and the other, and assess whether that influence are aligned with the organizational goals (or even individual goals) or not.
Easier said than done? Yes. But I think understanding the key concept is a big start.