Posts Tagged ‘ politics ’

The Cultural Guide To Fitting In

By | September 20th, 2019 | Category: Organizational Practices | No Comments

It depends. It always depends. Figuring out how to approach situations, address challenges or secure decisions is some of the most difficult work that we do. We might know the outcome we want, but the challenge is successfully navigating the culture of the organization to secure the support that we need. Culture matters. Success in navigating culture means understanding how it works and figuring out how to respond. That’s easy to say, but harder to do.


There Are No Rules To Politics

By | May 16th, 2019 | Category: Leadership | No Comments

We like rules. Rules make life easier. Knowing that there is a right and wrong answer means that we can figure out how to be successful under all circumstances. The only problem is that life doesn’t actually work that way, particularly when engaging in politics and managing in the face of complexity and uncertainty. That’s not to say that there aren’t strategies that can help, but those strategies inherently require adaptation, a willingness to be flexible, and acceptance that the only right answer in any given situation is, “It depends.”


Sussing Out Project Success

By | August 3rd, 2018 | Category: Project Management | No Comments

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague recently about how to represent project success, and to do so simply. He’s an accountant, and a municipal one, so he’s interested in money and politics are an inherent part of the equation. They are two ingredients that make the interpretation of success messy. It doesn’t have to be.


Exercising Agency: What To Do When Politics Gets In The Way

By | March 26th, 2015 | Category: Exercising Agency | No Comments

Politics is a challenging concept. We tend to view the term ‘organizational politics’ negatively, often seeing it as competitive, antagonistic, manipulative and dysfunctional. Certainly organizational politics can be all of these things, but it doesn’t have to be.


Process, Politics and Agency: Are They Mutually Exclusive?

By | March 16th, 2015 | Category: Exercising Agency | No Comments

A question that was raised in the book launch was whether or not these ideas were mutually exclusive. The specific query was, “Don’t most organizations use all three methods? I can see my organization doing all three, each with specific projects and departments.”