?????? OD104: Political Games in Organizations

Curated resources on Strategy ? Org Design ? Org Development ? Adjacent fields

Starters

1 of 4 / Foresight in the Present: Foresight is not an approach - useful distinctions between foresight, futures consciousness, futures literacy, strategic foresight, futures studies and futures thinking, shared by Maree Conway.

(…) foresight is a cognitive construct, one that is grounded in an innate human capacity to imagine new futures. We apply foresight in any range of contexts to help people think about futures in the present.

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2 of 4 / Playing to Win: Strategy, Strategy Everywhere. But Can You Figure Out What to Drink? - Roger Martin offers a good overview about what business, functional and geographic strategy is.

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3 of 4 / Create a Future-Fit Culture: Influential Thinkers: Arie de Geus - Geoff Marlow writes about the author of The Living Company :

In my time working with him, I often heard Arie quote Spanish poet Antonio Machado as follows: “Life is a path that you beat while you walk it”. Quoting this in his book he concludes:

“To me, this line embodies the most profound lesson on planning and strategy that I have ever learned. When you look back, you see a clear path that brought you here. But you created that path yourself. Ahead, there is only uncharted wilderness. You do not navigate a company to a predefined destination. You take steps, one at a time, into an unknowable future”.

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4 of 4 / Prosci: ADKAR is a Change Management Model, Not a Methodology - Another good distinction, this time between a model and a methodology. Case in point: ADKAR as a model embedded in the Prosci Methodology.

Main

Political Games in Organizations

Source: ”Understanding Organizations… Finally” by Henry Mintzberg

My Oxford dictionary defines conflict as "serious disagreement" and politics as "activities concerned with gaining or using power within an organization or group." These two terms go together: disagreements arise when different actors try to gain or use power. Hence both will be used here.

In this excellent synthesis book by Mintzberg, we found a good summary of the 13 most common political games played in organizations. Which ones are played around you?

”1. The insurgency game is usually played to resist authority in an organization, although it can also be used to resist expertise or established culture, also to effect change. (…)

2. The counterinsurgency game is played by those with legitimate power who fight back insurgencies with political actions, or legitimate actions used politically (…).

3. The sponsorship game is played by using someone in a more senior position to build a power base: an individual attaches him-or herself to a person with more status, professing loyalty in return for influence.

4. The alliance-building game is played among peers, often line managers, sometimes staff experts, who negotiate implicit contracts of support for each other to advance their interests in the organization.

5. The empire-building game is played especially by line managers, to build power bases, not cooperatively but personally, by maneuvering to enlarge their units.

6. The budgeting game is played overtly and with rather clearly defined rules, to increase budgets. It is similar to the last game but is less divisive, since the prize is resources, not people. A common version of this game is to spend remaining funds on something not particularly necessary before they run out.

7. The expertise game flaunts or feigns expertise. True experts flaunt the uniqueness and irreplaceability of their skills and knowledge, also resist having their skills programmed by keeping their knowledge to themselves. Nonexperts feign expertise, or else try to have their work viewed as expert, ideally to have it declared professional so that they can control it.

8. The lording game is played by lording legitimate power over those without it, or with less of it. A manager lords formal authority over a member of his or her unit; a civil servant lords control of the rules over a citizen; an expert lords his or her technical skills over the unskilled.

9. The line versus staff game, of sibling-type rivalry, is played, not just to enhance personal power, but also to defeat rivals. It pits line managers with formal authority against staff advisers with specialized expertise, each prepared to exploit legitimate power illegitimately.

10. The rival camps game is also played to defeat rivals. Two camps form in the organization and challenge each other. (…) Being zero-sum, this can be the most divisive game of all, akin to civil war. The conflict can be between units (for example, engineering versus architecture on a building site), between rival personalities (two executives vying to become CEO) (…).

11. The strategic candidate game is played by individuals or groups determined to promote a favored strategic option through the use of political means. (…)

12. The whistle blowing game, typically brief and simple, is also played to effect change in the organization, but of a different kind. An insider, usually not senior, uses restricted information to blow the whistle on some questionable or illegal behavior within the organization, by informing influential outsiders, or some senior insider, even a member of the board of directors. (…)

13. The subversion game is played for the highest stakes of all, not just to effect simple change or resist legitimate authority, but to throw the latter into question, perhaps even overthrow it. A small group of determined insiders, sometimes close but not quite at the center of power, seeks to alter the organization's strategy, change its culture, or replace its leadership.

Dessert

1 of 2 / Medievalists: The 5 Most Common Jobs in a Medieval City - Sneak preview: farming, carpentry, butchery, shoemaking and Church-related work were most common in the 15th century city of Montpellier, France, according to tax records.

2 of 2 / Euronews: Siestas and late nights: How heatwaves could revolutionise the way we work - No comment.

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