About Politics

Tim Bryce asked:


When we join a new company, we’re all hoping for a fresh start and clean slate. The last thing we want is to get embroiled in political intrigue, regardless of how petty it might seem. Most of us just want to do our work and move along with our lives. Even if this were so, which is rarely the case, we must still deal with “political correctness” as defined by society; we have to recognize certain protocols in our mannerisms, language, and conduct. So, even before we get started in a new job, we have to recognize there is going to be some form of politics, like it or not. I remember visiting a manufacturing company in the Midwest where a Vice President proudly said to me, “You’ll like this place Tim, there’s no politics here whatsoever.” And I think he firmly believed it too. In reality, they had more cutthroat politics than I had ever seen before.

Whether you are a new employee or a visiting consultant, one of the first things you have to determine about a company is its pecking order. An organization chart makes a convenient road map in this regards, but it doesn’t truly define the power structure in a company. For example, a weak manager may actually draw his strength from a powerful assistant. Nonetheless, it is important to identify the fiefdoms of the company, who the key players are, and who the allies and adversaries are. Without such knowledge, you will inevitably trip into some political dispute or become an unwitting pawn in a power play. The best advice in the early going is to simply keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut.

Aside from the power players in an organization, the three most common types of political animals you will encounter are the Suckup, the Radical, and the Saboteur. The Suckup (aka “Brown Noser”) essentially has no spine and is the perennial “Yes Man” to the boss. The boss says “Jump” and the Suckup says, “How High?” But the Suckup has a political agenda of his own which typically is an advancement through the assistance of the boss. He therefore bends over backwards to please the boss at the expense of losing the respect of his coworkers.

The Radical represents “the bull in the China shop” or “loose cannon” and is best known for revolting against the status quo, not quietly but loudly, and is not afraid of stepping on a few toes along the way. In many ways he is like Sherman’s march to the sea. Perhaps his mission is correct, and perhaps it isn’t. Regardless, this type of person has a slim chance of succeeding as his detractors will work overtime to undermine him. When dealing with such a person you basically have two choices: either join him and hope for the best, or get the heck out of his way so that you are not run over.

The Saboteur is perhaps the most vicious of the three and can probably best be characterized as the “conniving weasel” or “backstabber” who schemes to make the lives of others miserable. He is driven by petty jealousy and wants desperately to be seen as a power broker in his institution. Since he has no real life of his own, the Saboteur gets his jollies by undermining anybody that garners more attention than he does. Whereas the Suckup and the Radical can be dealt with politically, the Saboteur is a pest that must be exterminated.

Office politics is about loyalty and trust. At some point, you will be asked to choose sides and this to me is what makes office politics ugly. I might understand this in government politics, but not in a company where we are all suppose to be on the same team. Politics is an inherent part of the corporate culture; some companies deplore it, others thrive on it. I guess it’s a matter of whether a company values the concept of teamwork or rugged individualism. I have found there is much less politics in companies promoting the former versus the latter. Either way, my advice to anyone joining a new company, be it a corporation or nonprofit organization, is actually quite simple: “En Garde!”

Howard

Jackson Kern asked:


Copyright (c) 2008 Jackson Kern

China recently demonstrated its willingness to brutally suppress stirrings of Tibetan sentiment. Angry protestors in Paris and elsewhere then seized the occasion of the Olympic torch’s passing to express their ire toward the hosts of this year’s Games. Some foreign dignitaries have acknowledged that they will not attend certain events, and others have refused to confirm that they will travel to Beijing at all. The big B-word has been vocalized.

However it is unlikely that a large-scale boycott will come to pass for two reasons. The first is that the fate of most economic powers is now more closely intertwined with China’s than they would care to admit; for practical reasons, they are not inclined to antagonize a Chinese government which has made clear that any boycott will be considered a national insult. The second is that more than three months remain before the opening of the Games. The human mind often maintains a very short-term horizon; it is likely that the current uproar will soon come to pass. China, newly aware of the foreign attentiveness, will defer further hammering of domestic political opponents until the closing ceremony.

But as the specter of a boycott is raised, what does the action of Olympic boycott really mean? “One of the basic principles of the Olympic Games is that politics plays no part whatsoever in them.” These are the words of Avery Brundage, then chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, in 1936. Brundage and the American political leaders of the time sent American athletes to compete at Munich in the Games hosted by Hitler’s rising Nazi Germany. The black American sprinter Jesse Owens claimed four gold medals; Hitler refused to shake his hand or present the medals to him on the stand. These were the early days of the Olympic stadium as the arena of high politics.

Athletes have since on various occasions used the Olympics for the articulation of political messages (or in 1972, once again in Munich, as a stage of political action; the capture of eleven Israeli athletes by Palestinian gunmen reached an ending only with their deaths after a botched rescue attempt). The first large-scale boycotts of the Games came shortly thereafter.

Most think first of the American-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow games when confronted with the notion of Olympic boycott. But the truth is that the first mass-scale politically motivated absences came at the previous 1976 games in Montreal. In that year, a group of twenty-eight African nations refused to participate in protest at New Zealand’s presence. South Africa had been banned from the Games since 1964 because of its apartheid regime of institutionalized racism, and these countries were angered by the previous year’s South African tour of New Zealand’s ‘All Blacks’ rugby union. Iraq and Guyana too joined the boycott when the International Olympic Committee refused to bar New Zealand from participating. Also in 1976, the IOC refused to allow Taiwan to participate under the name “Republic of China”, leaving only the People’s Republic of China (Beijing) to carry that name. Taiwan would only compete again in 1984 under a new flag and the name “Chinese Taipei”.

After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. President Jimmy Carter issued an ultimatum stating that the United States would boycott the Moscow games of 1980 if Soviet troops did not withdraw by February of that year. When Soviet troops remained, the boycott was joined by Japan, West Germany, Canada, China and sixty others. The United Kingdom, France and Greece were sympathetic to the boycott but allowed their athletes to participate of their own volition if they so wished. Italy’s government also supported the boycott. Those of its athletes who were members of the military corps did not compete.

In 1984, the U.S.S.R. responded by refusing to take part in the Los Angeles games, citing “chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in the United States”. The U.S.S.R. was joined by thirteen of its allies, while post-revolution Iran also joined, making it the only nation to boycott both the 1980 and 1984 games.

In any gathering of international delegations, sporting or otherwise, political tensions are bound to run high. My favorite story comes from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics in which Hungary and the Soviet Union engaged in an impassioned water polo match as Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest. The water was, the story goes, tinged red at the match’s end. Melbourne concomitantly saw the first-ever Olympic boycotts; the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland refused to attend because of the events in Hungary, while Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted owing to the Suez crisis.

For better or for worse the Olympics have become the playing ground of high politics. However it is a high politics that remains highly symbolic. Should any major powers eventually choose to boycott Beijing, it would serve only to showcase their unwillingness and inability to press for real change to China’s abominable human rights record.

Yolanda