Before Any Change Understand Your Company's Internal Politics - Part 1 of 3

Few months ago, I had the wonderful pleasure of being asked to create an organization change plan for a company which was recently bought by a holding company and was being integrated within another business in the portfolio. As I sat down with the new CEO for a discovery consulting session, I asked him about how he would describe these two company’s political landscape. His response and reaction was something that I have seen many times in the past. A denial at first - “we don’t do politics, we have a strong collaborative culture”. I followed up with genuine curiosity and his response was “Well, we don’t know how the executives of these two companies truly feel and how they view the changes necessary for the merger”.??

What is internal politics of an organization

Often bringing change not only fails to create value but actually ends up destroying value because leaders fail to understand the internal politics of their own organization. The word “politics” is often viewed as a loaded word, something sly and dirty. When people talk about organizational politics, these ideas or thoughts come to their mind:

• Politics is for politicians
• Manipulation
• The organization’s drama
• Under-the-table deals
• Deception
• Turf battles
• Brownnosing
• Looking good without substance in front of the boss
• The end justifies the means
• Power play
• Sneaky
• Unethical & involves lying
• Hidden agenda

However, politics, at its core, is a manifestation of our values, beliefs, ideologies and how we view the world through these lenses and choose to act. Employees’ and leaders’ political stand on what needs to be done, their advocacy or resistance to necessary changes can often make it or break it. That is why it is absolutely critical to understand the internal political landscape of key stakeholders for any change management. Ultimately, in simple words, it means do we clearly understand who are the change advocates and champions and who are the resistors at any point in the change implementation timeline.

Any politically savvy leader does not manipulate or seek fame or glory; rather advances the cause for the collective good of the organization. This is all about ethically building critical mass and support for the just cause and long-term sustainable benefit of the organization and its people.

In this three part saga, I will provide you with a step-by-step guide for -

1. Part 1 - When and where deep understanding of leaders’ and key stakeholders’ internal political standing and influence is absolutely critical
2. Part 2 - What types of political categories leaders fall into and political blind spots
3. Part 3 - How to create a structured political map for key stakeholders to gain a critical mass who advocates for the necessary change

The J-curve of change

Before we take a deeper dive into how to methodically analyze the internal political landscape of an organization related to a particular change endeavor, let’s take a look at what happens when we fail to identify between change advocates vs resistors and fail to convert resistors into followers and change advocates. In the diagram below, this is how we think change should occur.?

However, in reality the change process follows a timeline that looks more like an J- curve. There is a whole lot of similarity between the J-curve of change management and S-curve of innovation adoption.

Initially after change is started a dip in engagement and performance is often the reality. This is where our fear for any change from our comfort zone kicks in and rumors and speculations start taking biased roots. Soon after as the change starts rolling in employees become frustrated with the new normal and performance can temporarily dip. This is called the “valley of despair” or “chasm”. This is where change sponsors and champions need to be diligently watchful in understanding who are the resistors and who are the advocates for the change. They must ensure, through iterative process, buy-in and advocacy for the change turning resistors into followers.

As you realize by now that evaluation of internal political landscape and stakeholder analysis is a continuous evaluation process until the self-sustaining bandwagon effect kicks in after the change process crosses the chasm. This is the point where benefits from the change are observed by more and more employees and the viral growth of change advocates auto-convert resistors into believers. The change process now becomes self-sustaining until the new normal becomes a part of the sustained company culture.?

In Part 2 (click here to read), I will go over how different leaders’ political style intertwined with their leadership style can be classified and categorized and what kind of political blind spots can make positive and negative impact for the intended change. Stay tuned!

To be continued …….?

#organizationalpolitics #changemanagement #organizationalbehavior #leadership #changeleadership #innovationmanagement