“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.” (Doug Larson)

As my career wound down, I found myself becoming wiser in the ways of office politics and less willing to tolerate them. It is remarkable how much energy is wasted by those engaged in political chicanery and by those who become its victims.

How do you keep a lid on office politics? How do you keep people focused on what is important so that everyone benefits? I do have a few insights I can share based on years of observing the nonsense and nuisances of politics and - in the interest of full-exposure - becoming an adept politician in my own right.

I will focus here on vertical politics, including sucking up to and putting up with superiors. Future posts will look at horizontal or peer politics and political correctness (which is a whole ‘nuther thing).

1. You ain’t that smart

First of all, understand that most people are not that adept at the game of politics. You don’t need the thud and thwack of shoulder pads to know the game is on. The methods employed by those engaged in office politics are not so devious most of the time that they are not also obvious…especially to their superiors. It’s a case of been there, seen that.

People are, for better and too often for worse, people and, as such, there will always be those whose best and most subtle work has nothing to do with real work. So I don’t expect office politics to go away any time soon. I do, however, expect bosses to keep it from having an impact. At the end of the day, politics is about wending your way into the good graces of a superior or avoiding slipping into his or her bad books by hook if possible and by crook if necessary. That is why it is at the level of the superior that the opportunity to nip silly politics in the bud resides.

Bosses should be wary of any employee who claims all the credit for the successful execution of a complex project. Conversely, they should not accept finger pointing as an answer when things go wrong. Finger pointing is the reddest of red flags and one of the behaviors for which I have always had zero tolerance.

Employees could have legitimate beefs with the behaviour or output of colleagues, but how he or she deals with it is telling and will distinguish between those staffers worried about productivity or those about politics. I have actually had an employee twice removed come to me and ask why she had to work for a boss who was obviously not as smart as she was. Apart from the fact that it was not the case, what could she possibly have expected the outcome to be? How undiscerning did she imagine I was? Where did she imagine my loyalties lay? Sometimes, you really have to wonder.

Unless their noses are so far up in the air that their eyes can no longer face straight ahead, bosses should be able to smell toadies a mile away; they should make it obvious at the first whiff that they find the fumes noxious. Bosses should also slam the door in the faces of tale-bearers and gossip-mongers.

Politics take many forms. Few of these are attractive. Few escape notice.

2. Looking Good

There are two issues where the political and political correctness seem to overlap; there is making your boss look good; and there is arguing with your boss, where at least one of you will likely come out looking bad.

I once way-overspent on a bid to secure a major new account. A fairly low-ranking member of the marketing team at the time, I was given the assignment of putting the presentation package together. I had decided that we were being too timid as a company and nothing short of going all-out would do the trick. I figured that it would be easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. I was only partially right. We got the account, but when the company president got the bill, he was beside himself (and, based on the heat from his breath, not too far from me). The manager of the Division that would benefit from the new business willingly took the hit for me. I went to see him and told him he should not have done that. I said that I would go to the President and say that he was covering for me and that I, indeed, knew exactly what I was doing. The manager replied that he, too, knew exactly what I was doing and, by saying nothing, was equally complicit. As well, he could survive the hit much more easily than me. “And anyway”, he said with a smile, “we got the account, right? I’m more than happy to take the business.” In truth, of course, by taking the blame he also got the credit. Not too long later, I became his Marketing Manager and my career was on its way.

Was I being a suck-up? Was my offer being political? Was the willingness to fall on my sword the politically-correct way to behave? I didn’t think about any of that at the time. I was ready to take responsibility because I felt that the ends justified the means. I wanted that account and I knew that I could get it. I was young, overly zealous and just a tad too righteous. I was, I suppose, an ass, though it all managed to work out.

Should you try to make your boss look good? Why not? The fact is, if you do your job properly, your boss will get credit anyway…for selecting good employees and for giving them the opportunity to excel. Win-win. What’s wrong with that?

3. Argue Me Elmo

You are a manager attending a meeting to review a large and rather important project. Other managers are present. Your boss makes a decision you know is wrong. Taking your role seriously, you decide to speak up. In the politest voice you can muster, you say that, in your opinion, an alternative approach might be more appropriate. Your boss says he disagrees and in the firmest and politest voice he can muster, thanks you for your input. What do you do?

Now, I’ve always been a bit argumentative and history will note that, in these very same circumstances, I reiterated my objection, reinforcing it with broader and ever more cogent reasoning. My boss, unfortunately, disagreed for a second time, with a considerably more pointed response. I knew it was time to stop arguing. At least time to stop arguing then and there. If I were to continue, it would force a showdown, an outcome with a winner and a loser. Both of us would, in this situation, come out losers. If I wanted to continue the debate, it would have to be in his office, out of sight and out of earshot. I would not necessarily win the argument (I did not, in fact), but no one would lose face.

So, did I compromise my principles? Did people see me as a hypocrite for backing off, if not a coward for backing down? To quote Sun-Tzu in The Art of War, “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” There was no win there and, frankly, what I was fighting for was not worth the fight. Best advice: pick your battles.

The End Game

If you are going to play politics, you had better be good at the game. And you had better be able to back up your politics with performance of equal or greater measure. In the end, though, if the performance is there, politics merely serves to clutter up the playing field. It will get in your way.

The bottom line is: do the right thing. Even better, go about doing it the right way. Don’t worry about The Politics. Because, somehow, one way or the other, they always manage to take care of themselves.

I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to say it, but Wayne Turmel is not really cranky. Feisty, perhaps. Persnickety at times. And he can bite when he has to. But, at the end of the day, Turmel is just too humorous and too caring to be really cranky.

Turmel is the host of The Cranky Middle Manager Show. A star in The Podcast Network firmament, the show is popular for good reason. Turmel is an engaging interviewer and his guests generally have something useful to say. The subject matter is management - for better and, every now and then, for worse.

A few weeks ago, he interviewed Aubrey Daniels, author of OOPS! The 13 Management Practices that Waste Time and Money. Among the discussion topics were forced rankings and stretch goals. Aubrey sees both as counter-productive. Forced ranking, he says, creates unhealthy competition instead of fostering teamwork. Stretch goals, almost by definition, cannot be met and so engender little beyond frustration.

I have, in my career, dealt with both, up close and personal. The forced ranking was done by senior managers behind closed doors. The purpose was not so much to filter out the poorest performers as the infamous GE program purported to do. It was done to bring to the senior managers’ attention the fact that they depend more on some staffers than others and yet they put all these employees in the same salary pool and try to treat them all equally. In other words, it was done not as a policy measure but to send a message.

Regardless of the motivation or the filter used, managers cannot help but rank their employees by importance. And, when push comes to shove (i.e., if you actually had to fire someone at the end of the ranking exercise), performance is not that important. Let’s face it, accounting clerks and customer service reps are disposable. Analysts are expendable. As you move up the food chain, experience and technical knowledge are harder to replace. You have, thereby, simply created a bell curve of importance. In any forced ranking, a top producing clerk would be vulnerable and a so-so performing employee higher up the food chain would be safe. There is churn at the bottom and status quo at the top. In other words, nothing constructive has really been achieved.

The way around this, of course, is to do the rankings not vertically (i.e., within departments) but horizontally (by level, across the organization). The competition, as you might imagine, would then be not with staff, but among the senior managers themselves.

It is obvious (at least I hope it is) that I am not a fan of forced rankings or bell curves. People should be rated on how they contribute relative to the needs and expectations placed on their respective positions. And they should be rated on how they perform relative to their own capabilities. (That is probably another discussion topic. In truth, my colleagues were always harsh on me when I came down on a good employee who would never go above and beyond.)

I also have strong opinions on setting stretch goals. Stretch should be meaningful (important and understandable) as well as achievable. Otherwise, you are not stretching the band, you are snapping it. If your target is far away, set a series of milestones and timelines to reach the milestones. As a colleague of mine put it, you eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Aubrey Daniels is obviously someone whose heart is in the right place. He is certainly spot on when he talks about Hell’s Kitchen’s Gordon Ramsay. Now there’s a cranky manager! That said, again I differ from Mr. Daniels: all the swearing, the tantrums and the abuse notwithstanding, there would be a line-up a mile long if there was an opportunity to be one of Ramsay’s protégés like Marcus Wareing or Angela Hartnett.

Anyway, do yourself a favor. Load up on Twizzlers and then download The Cranky Middle Manager Show.

Early in my career, I was sent on a problem-solving course offered by Kepner-Tregoe. Best I can tell, Kepner-Tregoe has been around for near ever, and deservedly so. Through consulting and training, it helps clients implement strategies by improving their problem-solving, decision-making, project execution and issue-resolution skills and processes.

My take-aways from the two-day course included a good understanding of root causes and a terrific mug that graced my desk for the next thirty odd years. Over the three decades, I sipped at least 20,000 cups of coffee from my KT mug, protected it zealously from grasping hands, and washed it at least… oh… a dozen times.

The KT approach to problem-solving involves five logical steps that sound just like the Scientific Method you learned in high school; despite this – or because of this – it has been incorporated into Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and ITIL (the Information Technology Infrastructure Library). It is, in my opinion, both too simplistic and too complex a methodology. So, despite the whole build-up, the truth is I seldom, in fact, used KT for my own problem-solving. I’ve always found that nothing is that simple and, when you get down to it, seldom is any problem so complex.

So, what was my approach to solving seemingly intractable problems?

Step 1:

When faced with the most confounding problems, I have learned that you’ve got to go deep – yes, to the root – to find the cause. In that, KT and I are aligned. The first step - before you start digging - is to clear away all of the rubble. You’ve got to be honest with yourself and with your colleagues. You’ve got to put aside not only paradigms and prejudices, but also personal pets (people, products and projects). Otherwise, you will reject the obvious. Believe me, when you look back on a tough problem that has been solved, the cause will inevitably, in retrospect, have turned out to be obvious. (Note: In retrospect, everything is inevitable.)

Step 2:

For this, I refer to Murphy’s Law. Actually, two laws from Murphy’s Law, Book Three. Here they are:

Hoare’s Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.

The Schainker Converse to Hoare’s Law of Large Problems: Inside every small problem is a larger problem struggling to get out.

To illustrate these seemingly paradoxical laws, I will, with apologies, use General Motors. Certainly enough ink has been and will continue to be spilled on this colossal corporate quagmire and commentary has and will continue to come from many closer to the scene than I. But I am a ‘car guy’ and can hardly help myself.

GM presents a very large problem indeed. The problem (if it makes sense to consider it a single problem) seems to be insurmountable. But, if you dig a little, you would find that the crux of GM’s problem has been, fundamentally and for some time, poor design. This is a very specific issue buried under an avalanche of crises. (Hoare’s Law) The poor design reflects a misunderstanding of the market caused by management arrogance as much as anything else. Management arrogance is a very large problem that is easily glossed over because arrogance, by its nature, is amorphous, subtle and self-propagating. The problem of design in this case (and, frankly, in many others) is really a symptom of the disease of arrogance. (Schainker Converse)

It all started back in the Alfred Sloan era. Sloan led GM from 1923 to 1946. He was a management and marketing genius. Credit Sloan for inventing brand families, annual model changes, planned obsolescence, and the market for used cars.

Sloan gave each car division its own price and style categories. Decades later, demographics changed, as did market dynamics. But the old divisions remained, along with too many old ideas. As Buick’s prime customer aged, however, so did the brand message. And so did the car’s technology. Pontiac’s demographic didn’t age; it simply disappeared. Badge engineering not only removed Saab from its demographic, but made it impossible to figure out what that demographic was. Also impossible to figure out was Saturn’s value proposition, which changed as the Division tried to go mainstream. Meanwhile, in a market becoming increasingly compact, GM could never figure out how to make a small car. Or, more precisely, couldn’t really see the point of putting a lot of value into such a small margin vehicle. Think Xerox and Canon.

The fact is that better design would go a long way to saving GM. The Enclave SUV saved Buick from extinction and the new La Crosse (Allure in Canada) will safeguard its survival. The CTS brought Cadillac back from the brink, but the STS and DTS are so long in the tooth that even the ancients won’t bite. Chevrolet has a little bit of everything, though not enough of anything really special. Malibu, like all the GM cars built on the Epsilon platform, is pretty good. The Camaro is competitive, though no major threat to Mustang in the pony car wars. The Volt, however, could be a game changer.

Bringing Bob Lutz out of retirement was a terrific move – even if Lutz is a Neanderthal. It was a great move because Lutz is very good at what he does. He saw that the various divisions had a lot of similarity but little synergy. He fixed the product development process. His appointment also showed that senior management recognized a very specific issue midst the clutter and was willing to sacrifice the comfort and challenge the slow pace that was the status quo.

Which brings us to Step 3.

Step 3:

Fix the problem fast and, if possible, fix it once and for all.

Epilogue: On April 1, 2009, Lutz stepped down on from his position as Vice-Chairman of Global Product Development and will retire from GM at the end of 2009. Lutz said that one reason for his decision was the regulatory climate in Washington that would force him to design what the feds want rather than what customers want.

Postscript: Lutz is back, this time in a marketing role. This makes no sense. Lutz is a design guy. His way of being and his way of talking make him far from an ideal marketing guy. Oh well.

Note: The 1960 Corvette pictured above is a classic example of good design.