“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.

Andy Eklund is founder and Managing Director of Aqus, an Australian-based consulting organization that facilitates creative thinking, be it for strategic planning or corporate communications. He has worked with over 500 clients around the world. And he has seen, all too often, sticks poked in the wheels of creativity, stopping even the best ideas in mid-spin.

Let’s face it, the market for new ideas is as bearish as that for IPOs. New ideas imply risk because they always come with elements of the unknown.

In his blog, Creative Streak, Eklund lists 10 ways ideas are stifled. I will expand on a few of these and then add a couple of my own.

Eklund Stifler #1: Lack of Oxygen

This seems to be a good place to start: are you capturing all the ideas available? Unfortunately, not all ideas get to bubble up to the surface. Shyness, uncertainty, lack of empowerment, fear of ridicule…any number of reasons, real or imagined, will inhibit people from coming forward and presenting an idea. In other words, ideas die in the womb. The fertility of these people’s imagination is wasted.

Corner Office Killer App: “Yes, But…”

When an idea is proffered up, there is an instant when it hovers weightless, somewhere between the rise and the fall. There is a silence, a tension, an apprehension. It is at that moment when the most common squelcher of ideas usually rears its ugly head. Someone says: “yes, but…”

“Yes, but…” is akin to the spider drawing prey into its web, wrapping it up in sticky goop, and then eating it at leisure. “Yes, but” means “nice try, but if you had thought it out first, you would have realized that it can never work.” The ‘but’ can be any number of things that have contributed, lo these many years, to corporate inertia: more important priorities; lack of resources; channel conflict; upcoming negotiations. It may or may not really be that important or relevant, but it is almost always deadly. Like a highway robber, it waylays, it leaves poorer, it spoils the trip.

“Yes, but…” is at its destructive best in the mouths of superiors. Regardless of the intent, a “Yes, but…” from your boss is a kick in the gut. It is now clearer to everyone in the room why he and not you is in the corner office. Everyone is now staring at that chunk of very green spinach stuck between your front teeth. If you are one of those shy, uncertain, unempowered, ridicule-fearing types, you will have nothing further to say.

If an idea is not allowed to breathe, to percolate a little prior to intervention, even a well-meaning attempt to improve it will likely hasten its demise.

Eklund Stifler #2: Budget

Budget is at the top of the list of Buts.

There are two ways the budget bogeyman makes its presence known. One is the zero sum expense game. There is only so much money available for, say, marketing, and while a good idea may move ahead of the pack, it cannot change the bottom line. If there’s no extra money, a new idea means cutting into a long-running campaign or cutting back on a new product launch or cutting out someone else’s pet project.

There is also the issue of capital. Some investments may have a good return and a relatively quick payback. But there is always a threshold at which the organization will balk. In my old company, the magic number was $1 million. Any project that Operations did not want to entertain suddenly required a million dollar investment. Even more magical was when the numbers were so attractive that the million dollars might not have been a deal breaker. Ta duh! Suddenly, without warning, the cost was $2 million. The hissing sound you may have heard was the air seeping out of the idea balloon.

Eklund Stifler #3: Mutilation

The natural successor to Budget. Most good ideas cost money. Not all ideas, to be sure, but most. And not necessarily a lot of money, but money nevertheless. Which means the idea has to be sold. Sometime in the future, I will discuss how to present an idea to Senior Management, but for now consider that the timing must be appropriate, the framing i.e., (rationale) impeccable, the excitement palpable, the packaging tidy (no loose ends), and the support (with the necessary documents and from the right people) fully in place. And, to Eklund’s main point here, you have to choose the right person to present the idea, the right person not necessarily being the one who had the idea in the first place. The key to the successful presentation of an idea is more often the presentation than the idea itself.

Corner Office Killer App: Where’s the Beef?

If you are going to put an idea out there, it should have some meat on it. It is easy to pick at the bones of a skeleton. It is somewhat more risky to take cheap shots at a 600 pound gorilla. If you know you are going to a meeting where ideas on a specific topic are to be bandied about, come prepared. Have numbers to back up you claims. Have answers for any possible objection. Have back-up documents. Have one or more colleagues in place to jump in with credible support. In other words, be prepared to bully your idea’s way into the spotlight and keep it there.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Percy Williams Bridgman, in his book The Intelligent Individual and Society, wrote “There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.” The real stupidity is wasting a good idea or dismissing what is, at least, the seed of a good idea.

I’ve probably made several hundreds of presentations in my time, too many times by my reckoning, taking up altogether too much of my time. They seemed to detract – or at least distract me – from the business of doing my job. My boss, the then CEO, told me that selling – which when distilled down to its essence was what my presentations were – was precisely my job…and indeed that of all senior managers. We sell our plans to the Board, he went on, to the banks, to employees. We sell ourselves to customers, to suppliers, to analysts. He was right, of course. Once again. This was a disturbing trait that I never got used to. Anyway, I did learn a few things over the course of these presentations, which I share here:

Five Dos:

1.    Control the conditions. If at all possible, do the presentation on your premises. There are several reasons for this:
-    You won’t have to worry about being waylaid en route by snowstorms, cancelled flights, or traffic tie-ups. You won’t have to worry about arriving late, stressed or sweaty. Forget the commercials; getting there is not half the fun.
-    You can prep the room in advance, control the lighting, check the equipment and, even have time for a last minute run-through. If you are off-site, despite all the reassurances, you can never be sure that the room or the equipment will work for you.
-    You can tack on a tour, bring in support staff as appropriate (you don’t want to be out-numbered), and have complete control over the menu and washrooms…in short, you have at your disposal all the advantages and comforts of home.

2.    A two parter: First, Know your stuff! I find most nerves are related not to discomfort with the audience but with the material. If you know your stuff cold, you will be much more relaxed. If you don’t, frankly, call the whole thing off. Part 2: Get your facts right. Nothing makes you look stupider than being called out on information that is inaccurate. Even incorrectly added columns of numbers makes you appear incompetent and your thesis untrustworthy. Check and double-check your material. Ensure that anyone else present is using the same numbers as you so that your own people don’t embarrass you.

3.    Provide a context. There might be a rhyme to your presentation but, more importantly, there has to be a reason. Everything should be part of a whole. A strategic plan, perhaps. Or a response to the economic or competitive environment. Even something like the launch of an important new product portfolio or marketing program, seemingly big enough items to stand on their own, can be placed in a larger context. Just ask yourself, what is the driver of change? I once did presentations to what some of us considered corporate raiders. Talk about mixed emotions. We didn’t want them to acquire us but, just in case they did, we had to look good to keep our jobs. I had to find a context to cover both eventualities. I came up with ‘value’.

4.    Make sure you have enough meat. Don’t waste people’s time. Present something interesting, something with take-aways. They should leave the room thinking about what you presented. I always worry when people don’t ask questions. It usually means that they didn’t get it. Or worse, that they did and were disinterested. Which brings up the corollary: Do let people ask questions…the more the merrier. Even if they are distracting. Even if they cut into your presentation time. Questions mean involvement. Involvement means commitment.

5.    Say it like you mean it. Show some passion. We had a bright young analyst who not only kept coming up with brilliant concepts, but was a master at Power Point and could capture and illustrate these concepts in a compelling way. The problem was, his presentation skills were lacking; he would stand in front of an eager audience and put them to sleep. I once made his presentation and began this way: “I am going to show you something incredible, something different and exciting. It will knock your argyle socks right back to the old country. This is highly classified information, however, so there will be no handouts. If you are caught with this material, we will have to kill you. Thank you.” The audience was mesmerized, not because I was so compelling or because they were so easily charmed. I had them simply because they came in receptive and I told them to be excited for me so they were. Try it.

Five Don’ts

1.    Don’t get cute. At least, don’t get too cute. You can have a prop. I always use props. They could be relevant quotes, nifty graphics, working samples, whatever. But you don’t want too many of anything. You don’t want to have too much animation, too many link buttons, too many distractions. Accents give flavor to your presentation. Too much flavor, however, becomes cloying.

2.    Don’t eat beforehand. At least, don’t overeat. You don’t want to be sick during your presentation. I once watched a senior sales manager make a presentation while his stomach was in the process of self-destructing. Needless to say, his mind was not on the material. As a result, neither was anyone else’s. And while we’re on the subject of food, don’t drink anything if you can during the presentation. At worst, drink water to cure a parched throat. Coffee is a diarrhetic. Soft drinks…well, let’s just say that the carbonation has a way of repeating itself.

3.    Slides should not be hard to follow or hard to read. Don’t use a dark background. Don’t put too many words on a slide. Don’t have too many ideas on one slide. Actually, one idea per slide is a pretty good guideline to follow. Don’t use massive spreadsheets forcing the audience to squint to read the numbers; almost assuredly, more than half your audience is of an age that finds small type visually challenging. As well, it will be hard to find and focus in on the two or three numbers that are actually meaningful. Show less and then highlight the numbers that are important. Make them bold, circle them, add arrows…whatever it takes. With one exception: the laser pointer. Use it at your peril. Nothing is more annoying than the laser dot zapping around the screen, shaking uncontrollably, circling herky-jerkey. The laser pointer is not high tech; it is the device of last resort for those who have not mastered technology.

4.    Presentations should not be too long. People get fidgety. You can get an awful lot in in an hour. You can probably distill an hour-long presentation down to three-quarters of an hour. Or a half-hour. Whatever you do, don’t surpass your allotted time. If there is an agenda, stick to it. Have someone friendly in the audience signal you when you are running out of time. It is unfair to cut into other people’s presentations because you are out of control; you are not that important. As for how many slides makes a decent presentation, plan on an average of three minutes per slide (with questions). That means 15-20 slides max. If you can’t cut your presentation down to 20 slides, you don’t really understand your material.

5.    Don’t worry so much. It’s only a presentation.