21 Dirty Tricks at Work

How to Beat the Game of Office Politics

Mike Phipps, Colin Gautrey

• Editorial: Capstone
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857084842
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Management

21 Dirty Tricks at Work is about lies. The type of underhand, pernicious and downright Machiavellian scheming that goes on in business every day. An estimated £7.8bn is lost each year in the UK alone though unnecessary and counter-productive office politicking. But 21 Dirty Tricks at Work is also a book of hope. It exposes the classic manoeuvres and gives practical advice on dealing with them to the vast majority who just want to do a good day's work.

21 Dirty Tricks at Work provides you with all the information you need to spot negative tactics and self-interested strategies. It shows you how to spot the games frequently being played and how to come out with your credibility intact and your sanity preserved.

So, if you are fed-up of being on the receiving end of constant backbiting and skulduggery from workmates, join hands with the authors and get Machiavelli on the run!

Chapter One

Destiny Beckons

In foul temper, Ben pushed his way through the revolving doors of Xennic corporate HQ. He hated revolving doors, mostly because you couldn't slam them shut behind you. Not that he was an ‘angry young exec’ but that the Xennic building was already starting to become the embodiment for all that was wrong with his shining career. Revolving doors are of course both impractical and metaphoric.

Ben was annoyed with himself for saying ‘yes’ when he wanted to say ‘no’. But what else could he have done? Jerry, his boss had strongly suggested to all, that to say ‘no’ to the weekend strategy workshop would be a ‘career decision’. Spending five working days per week with these characters was abhorrent enough, yet to cap it all, this was to have been the weekend when he had planned a special trip for the family! Strategic away days were important, but anyone wanting to discuss ‘work—life balance’ with Ben would find it a short topic of conversation today. In conversations around the water cooler Ben's colleagues had been quick to dub the strategic away day using the acronym SAD, which is both depressing and rather apt perhaps.

The rent-a-guard on the front desk barely acknowledged his presence, fixated as he was on watching something on a screen. Ben swiped his card through the slot allowing the turnstile to rotate him slowly into another day at the office. What fun awaited he wondered as he made his way to the lifts.

Alone in the lift, he quickly ‘adjusted himself’ only then remembering the new security cameras that had been installed. Ah well, another cheap thrill for the security guy. The cameras had been fitted ‘for your safety and security’ the small notice said. Ben had taken it as another sign of the organizations’ big brother culture creeping over them.

He wondered how and when he had got so paranoid and cynical. Originally he had been delighted to be headhunted for this job from a significant competitor where he had been working. Along with the increased salary and status he was especially pleased as he thought it meant that he could leave the power struggles, bickering and office politicking behind him. Ben now realized that this made him naïve as well as cynical, as at times this place seemed as bad, if not worse.

Not that he wasn't good at his job, he was, it was just that at times it seemed that unseen forces in the organization were conspiring in the shadows against him. He had genuinely wanted to do well, to make a contribution and to exploit his talents for the benefit of all, but as one colleague had confided to him recently in an unguarded moment, ‘being good is never going to be good enough, Ben’.

When Ben asked her what she meant she explained that the ‘great game’ was all about whom and what you knew. Critical was how you looked and sounded, rather that what you said. Style was now more important than substance and that anything other than toeing the party line would lead to ‘career shortening activity’ as the organizational immune system kicked in to expel the ‘virus’. Above all the ability to influence people and events was now the key skill required. Ben had originally dismissed these views as those of the bitter and twisted minority, but these days he was increasingly beginning to wonder.

Political correctness might be the order of the day, ‘respect and togetherness’ might be on the Corporate Values Statement, but other attitudes always lurked in the shadows, and these days the shadows seemed to be getting longer and darker.

Certainly anyone who had faith in the 360 degree appraisal process as a measure of who got promoted and how you got rewarded were deluding themselves. Everyone knew that the reality was that performance evaluations were rigged to fit the distribution curve, and that the politicking and negotiating around the process was more important than what you delivered.

Ben emerged from the lift — yes, they really were that slow in this building — and walked across the open-plan office to his desk. The floor was deserted except for Jerry in his goldfish bowl corner office, yelling down the phone at some poor unfortunate who had presumably dared to have an opinion of their own, and even more stupidly, had decided to share it with this mini despot at 07.30 on a Monday morning.

Ben plugged in his laptop and punched the play button on his voice mail. ‘You have … 17 new messages,’ the metallic voice chirped, Ben's heart sank. Mostly they were just small stuff, chaff that clogged up your day and got in the way, but one got his attention, a message from Spencer in Finance asking him why he had not attended the Project Genesis meeting last Friday. What the hell was Project Genesis? Sometimes he wondered if he knew what was going on, or if he was losing his grip. He was certainly out of the loop on this one.

Ben realized he should never have given up smoking. As a smoker you get to go to this hovel of a room in the basement to partake and inhale at regular intervals. The added bonus is that you get to mingle with the disparate band of other tobacco dependent individuals, many of whom were also senior managers and directors. In between lungfuls of stinking blue smoke, trivia and gossip, astonishing indiscretions were often made, and you really got to know what was going on. Had Ben realized that giving up smoking would lead to such political isolation he would never have stopped. Okay, so he might have died sooner, but at least he would know what Project Genesis was.

He checked his other messages, rooted back though his online diary and inbox messages for any trace of Project Genesis. Nothing. Not on the company intranet, but no surprise there! Very strange. Perhaps Spencer was mistaken; perhaps it was a wind up? Ben decided that he had better discuss it with Jerry in their Monday morning ‘catch-up’ at 09.30. Quite why he needed to ‘catch-up’ with Jerry given that he had just spent the whole damn weekend with the ogre was beyond him, but at least Jerry would probably know about Project Genesis, being a 40-Marlboro-a-day man.

Jerry finally hollered for Ben at 11:10, close to two hours behind schedule. Ben had been sitting nearby during this time watching a stream of visitors being ushered into Jerry's office, and his time slot. Many were clutching large files but he also noted that they all carried the same ‘rabbit in the headlights’ look in their faces. Ben entered Jerry's office with some trepidation. ‘Ben, sit down,’ barked Jerry without even looking up from his papers. Could it be possible that Jerry had somehow risen to such heights without ever hearing about interpersonal skills, politeness, friendliness, respect, etc? Ben smiled inwardly, shifted uncomfortably and noted the extent of his optimistic stupidity.

Before Ben had a chance to draw breath, Jerry launched right in. ‘Ben, I've got a development opportunity for you.’ Ben was caught by surprise since he'd been steeling himself for some bad news. Perhaps he was getting too cynical in his old age. Maybe this was going to be the golden opportunity he needed to get into the ‘in crowd’. ‘I'm all ears Jerry’ Ben said in an unexpectedly cheery tone.

Jerry continued, ‘We want you to take control of Project Genesis’. Ben reeled and held on to the sides of his chair, he hoped Jerry wouldn't notice. Jerry blathered on… ‘As you know it is a business critical initiative which is a year late and we're nearly £12m in the hole, so we need someone to take over from Mark who has been leading it. Everyone believes that Mark has been doing a great job in difficult circumstances, the MD even said so at the last shareholders’ meeting, so the main task now is to sail the ship safely into port.’

Ben was stunned, too stunned to reply for a moment. Project Genesis was ‘business critical’ and he hadn't even heard of it. Either it's a well-kept secret or he really was out of the loop these days, and given that this organization was pathologically incapable of keeping anything secret … Ben's discomfort increased. During this mental sojourn he missed Jerry mentioning that the chairman had recently, very publicly, reconfirmed his support of Mark as project leader in difficult times, but despite this, for reasons not yet disclosed, a change of leadership was now thought necessary.

Ben focused back in on Jerry who was sledgehammering on. ‘…and you don't need me to tell you that the board have high hopes from Project Genesis and it is going to be a significant milestone on anyone's CV and career at Xennic. From today I want you to clear the decks, drop everything else and get over to the Luton office where you'll be based from the start of next week. Now, I'm running late for the board meeting, so no time to catch up on anything else now but I will check in with you later. Congratulations Ben, oh, and don't let me down.’

And with that, the whirlwind that is Jerry swept out of the office clutching a Marlboro. Ben half expected the huge plate glass window to implode in the vacuum. Ben was still sitting in stunned silence five minutes later when Jerry's personal assistant came in to see if he was okay.

Eventually he found himself back at his desk discussing Project Genesis over the partition with Lewis, a colleague with unbelievably bad hair. Lewis laughed and told Ben that Project Genesis was not some great corporate secret but was in fact Project Achilles. It had been renamed last week as part of a rationalization of initiatives, although the cynical Lewis really believed it was just to make it sound better and to stem the flow of people angling to get off it.

Ben knew that Project Achilles was indeed a big deal and he suddenly felt a bit better about the whole affair; well maybe not the part about going to Luton. How the hell was he going to convince Hanna — his wife — that Luton was a good move for the family? Yes, this might indeed be a great opportunity. Certainly Mark, who had been leading it had done very well out of it, because Lewis had heard that he was now off to Florida, to head up Project Horizons. Perhaps Luton would not be so bad in the short term if Florida became the next stop for him too.

Ben commented that it was good that Mark's hard work on Achilles had been recognized by the organization. Lewis looked at Ben with the sort of patronizing sympathy that politicians usually reserve for their constituents. ‘… And you don't think that Mark, being the MD's son-in-law, has anything to do with his Florida appointment?’ The brief moment of happiness that Ben had experienced evaporated.

CHAPTER ONE: MENTORING INTERVENTION

Whilst this first chapter is fictional it nevertheless portrays a scenario similar to one that is played in organizations of all types, all around the world. A bright, talented young thing, new into the job and full of high hopes, finds that their best efforts and positive intentions are gradually strangled by unhelpful establishment politics.

As we stated in the introduction, our main purpose is to equip people with critical career-enhancing knowledge about the complexities of organizations. We do not seek to encourage Dirty Tricks, far from it. Rather we aim to expose them for what they often are: self-serving tactics used by manipulative yet savvy people to get their own way, always at the expense of another, and often at the expense of the whole organization.

Before we analyze this first episode and we introduce you to the first three Dirty Tricks, treat yourself to a brief time out for some one-to-one political coaching. To get the most out of this exercise, view it as a real development opportunity. Ask yourself the following questions to check the levels of your own political savvy, astuteness, innocence or ignorance.

• What should Ben have done differently in his meeting with Jerry?
• Why do you believe that Project Genesis was re-named?
• What warning signs are there about Project Genesis/Achilles?
• Should Ben take up smoking again?
• What could it cost Ben if he takes up this ‘opportunity’?
• How might the organization suffer if Jerry contin...