
How to Minimize Politics in Your Company  - dwynings
http://bhorowitz.com/2010/08/23/how-to-minimize-politics-in-your-company/
======
abalashov
At least he used the term "minimise," rather than "eliminate." There are
certain problems that exist among people, particularly in organisations beyond
a certain size, that simply cannot be solved or mitigated entirely, no matter
how much you may want them to be.

In the end, only the first piece of advice - "hire people with the right kind
of ambition" - really matters. You have to build the right kind of
organisational culture from the beginning.

A few points to add:

1) I would take a page from 37 Signals' general mantra and suggest that one
should really try to avoid unnecessary hiring where marginal productivity of
labour cannot be clearly shown to exceed marginal cost of labour, and try to
keep the organisation as small as possible. Not only does the likelihood of
"politics" increase proportionately with the size of the organisation, but
there is a lot more room for strategic machinations and more time for people
to contemplate how to grab a larger piece of the pie when they occupy roles or
hold titles that don't _really_ need to exist, strictly speaking.

If a company people that would likely be trimmed in a downturn purely on the
basis of general "uncertainty," rather than an objectively steep and
protracted decline in sales, it's gone too far off the staffing cliff. This is
particularly true in technology. Really, don't hire more people than you need
just to feel like you're running something big.

This element tends to be well-considered when a company is very small, but
usually forgotten once it gets to "mid-size" (say, 75+ people -- I know that's
still "small" from many people's point of view, whatever).

2) One of the most persistent and agonising problems I have seen in my
experience is small companies (say, 25 people or less) that--led by executives
that come from mid-size or large-business management cultures--reproduce, in a
fractal manner, the same kinds of pathologies that afflict large
organisations.

Systems and processes that can be replicated at decreasing marginal cost are
an essential and unavoidable aspect of significant business growth, but can be
far more harmful than they are beneficial if enacted prematurely. I've seen
companies of ~20 people with ~5 VPs, I've seen complicated and overblown and
overly abstract departmentalisation methodologies imparted on companies of a
dozen people, and, my favourite, the pervasive belief that if you blow big
dollars on certain kinds of investments that are conceivably beneficial to a
large company (six-figure accounting systems or project management systems),
you will make big-company revenue.

I cannot believe how many times I have seen it claimed that a company of 1-2
dozen people should buy an enterprise-level project management suite because
"that's what the big guys use." Yeah, well, that has no imaginable evidentiary
relationship to what you should be using.

This idea that problems can be solved with ambitious throwing of fistfuls cash
at them is naive and misplaced, and tends to warm the plate for a lot of
political dynamics to play out.

Once people see that major strategy and/or purchasing decisions are made on
the basis of bling or something read a half-hour ago on Delta in-flight
magazine on return from Acapulco, they see the entire decisionmaking process
of upper management as wide-open for gaming, as it is clear from that point
that the primary objective of anyone seeking anything is to define and nurture
a perception in the manner of textbook marketing.

Even worse, it even incentivises otherwise benign people to more cynical
behaviour by setting undesirable common denominators; if you don't game the
system, somebody else will. There are some people that have never had a
cynical thought, and there are some people that always have cynical ulterior
motives, no matter how benign and transparent the organisational culture, but
it's the middle 80% of the bell curve -- the ordinary human being, who is
pragmatic and given to occasional, circumstantial opportunism -- that you're
really moving in the wrong direction by showing them that government-by-vague-
impression, or worse yet, cargo cultism, does in fact drive most of the
significant decisions.

3) In general, organisations with engineering-driven cultures (in the sense
that engineering defines the primary discursive space and the central agenda)
tend to do better with politics than sales-driven ones.

However, this must be balanced with the reality that to get high sales
performance, you need to harness a lot of the kind of ambition and energy that
only sales sharks have. If they feel marginalised or undervalued in an overly
nerdy company that, from their point of view, spends much of its time on
technical navel-gazing and twiddling its thumbs, they won't stick around long.

------
zeteo
There are still some leaks in the advice given. One, it might well be that an
employee's skill set has suddenly increased in market value, or that the
employee has essential knowledge but genuinely has a better offer from a
competitor. Telling her to "wait three months until the next review process"
will probably lose that employee.

Two, the general tone of the advice is "plan things well in advance"
(compensation, structural adjustment etc.). The fact is that you can never
plan everything well enough in advance, especially things like structural
adjustment. The article doesn't address what to do when your plans inevitably
"collapse in the presence of the enemy".

Three, it is a fact that you can't simply fire an executive just because it is
obvious to the wiser people in the company that he's incompetent. He will have
plenty of friends and will be sure to raise hell for it. This is a sure way to
get lots and lots of politics, and of the most unpleasant sort too.
Oftentimes, the only reasonable solution is a "structural adjustment" - create
a sinecure for the guy where he has few responsibilities and can safely slide
into irrelevance.

~~~
lewstherin

       -> Telling her to "wait three months until the next review process" will probably lose that employee.
    

Is that really the kind of employee you want? The minute you cave in, you
start setting a dangerous pattern. I guess this is where your leadership
skills should come into play and you convince the employee to wait. In the
mean time you could perhaps plan to transition the employee to a better role/
add further responsibilities so that she feels like she has gotten something.
And come appraisal cycle, you better reward her for sticking by you. Anyway,
thats how I would do it.

~~~
brown9-2
What "kind" of employee are you referring to? The "kind" that feels they are
not fairly compensated for their skills?

Asking someone to wait several months is asking them to place their faith in
the fairness of the company and to trust that they will be rewarded for their
trust and faith at the "normal" time. An employee's ability to trust in the
company is going to be highly dependent on the company's past behavior, make
sure your employee's have reasons to trust in you before you ask them to. A
company needs to earn this faith, it'd be foolish to expect it blindly.

~~~
lewstherin
I was referring to the kind that constantly keeps trying to get offers from
elsewhere and uses that that to keep renegotiating their pay/ position. Of
course you need a trustworthy environment and taking such a stand for everyone
might actually build that.

~~~
brown9-2
I don't think this is what zeteo was referring to at all.

------
praptak
It looks like you have to be a master in politics to minimize the politics in
your company.

Keep your guard up at all times. Any attempt at being nice may be interpreted
as permission for god knows what. It read a bit like "The Prince" by
Machiavelli.

~~~
dpritchett
vgr presented this as "Information Parenthood" in his newsletter:

 _In other words, the "interpreting reality" part of leadership is rather like
parenthood. Call it "information parenthood." You have to sustain a happy
bubble for others. At the same time, as a leader, your own parent is reality
itself, and it isn't a very nurturing one. Drunk and abusive Father Reality,
not nurturing Mother Nature. Constantly facing the doubts and uncertainties of
unfiltered realities, while protecting others, can be brutal. When things get
hard, you will want to scream, "Why am I the only adult around here?"_

[http://us1.campaign-
archive.com/?u=78cbbb7f2882629a5157fa593...](http://us1.campaign-
archive.com/?u=78cbbb7f2882629a5157fa593&id=2005d6a5b8)

------
mseebach
So, I'm missing something from here: be a leader. Lead. When CFO-guy starts
telling people you're grooming him for COO, you'll have to reply that, no,
you're not (unless you are, but it doesn't appear so in the article). CFO-guy
will be let known that the leadership skills shown in his recent actions
clearly shows that he's not mature enough to be the COO. But most likely, if
you're a leader, he'd know not to tell people he's being groomed unless he
knows that's the case and knows you'll agree with him letting people know.

A very real path to lots of politics is creating a power void for others to
navigate in by not acknowledging and respect the power you have.

~~~
j_baker
The problem is that it's more like the old telephone game. The CFO might not
have explicitly told anyone else that he/she is being told that they're being
groomed for the COO, but by the time it gets around the grapevine that could
very well be what comes out.

------
studentrob
What about increased compensation transparency? Better communication?
Fostering a collaborative environment in every sense possible?

Politics is always a misunderstood interpretation of other people's motives.
"He's just in it for the money." "She only thinks of herself." These
statements are too general and not true. A person could not live a whole life
like that, it won't work.

People want to collaborate, they just don't know how. Seek to understand other
people, then help them understand your perspective, and you start knocking out
politics

~~~
tsycho
I have always liked FogCreek's policy
(<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html>) as a way to
minimize frictions due to compensation.

Trilogy (where I used to work a while back) used to do this.

~~~
ovi256
Never forget the reverse side of this kind of compensation: it's a brake in
the way of compensating outstanding performance. That intern that conceived,
championed and shipped the FogCreek job board that ultimately brought in $1
million ? Joel wavered in circles for 4000 words before explaining he only got
thanks. I wonder if he stayed at Fog Creek.

~~~
woodrow
In case you're curious like me, the story about the intern is here:
[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/how-hard-could-it-be-
th...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/how-hard-could-it-be-thanks-or-no-
thanks.html)

TL;DR: They gave him 10k shares in Fog Creek stock if he returned to work at
Fog Creek full time after graduating. He went to Google.

------
copper
> Similarly, if you manage a junior employee and they ask you about their
> career development, you can say what comes naturally and generally get away
> with it.

Somehow, the wording of that statement makes me reluctant to work for the
author as a junior employee.

~~~
staunch
His point was that you can be more open and easy going with junior employees.
Letting an ambitious programmer lead a project of his own is pretty low risk.

~~~
notauser
There's also much more room for creating opportunity for one person without
removing it for someone else.

In a business there's usually only one spot for a COO, but you can have many
senior developers. Therefore the stakes are lower, because other members of
staff don't see an opportunity vanishing when a promotion to senior dev is
announced.

------
Construct
The author raises some valid points, but I would add another important basic
principle: Maintain constant open and honest communication with the entire
company.

Simply interacting with employees either in person or through e-mail updates
every once in a while goes a long way toward making people feel appreciated.
Employees do want to hear about the company's latest big sale, the possible
new direction for the company, etc. in a personalized or semi-personalized
manner. Furthermore, these things provide a motivation boost and unified
company vision, as well as open up the possibilities of feedback from lower
level employees.

------
known
"Man is by nature a political animal." --Aristotle

------
j_baker
"As defined by Andy Grove, the right kind of ambition is ambition for the
company’s success with the executive’s own success only coming as a by-product
of the company’s victory."

I'm not sure I agree with this part. Yeah, I think it's important for the
executive to not seek personal objectives at the expense of the company's, but
it's unreasonable to expect them to look out for the company's interests
before their own.

------
ericboggs
The biggest takeaways I got from the article are:

\- Be incredibly thoughtful/diligent when it comes to new hires.

\- Make sure to set compensation/promotion/responsibility expectations very
early on.

If you can get all of the issues on the table during the hiring process (or
shortly after the new hire starts), then you can probably preclude a lot of
heartache down the road.

------
othermaciej
It sounds like his system for minimizing politics is to be inflexible,
secretive and dishonest.

------
vijaydev
Key techniques from the article:

1\. Hire people with the right kind of ambition.

2\. Build strict processes for potentially political issues and do not
deviate.

3\. Be careful with “he said, she said".

