22 Best Lessons How to cope with Office Politics

This post was originally published by :
Jagdish Prajapati (CEO)- People First recruiting Solutions
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/22-best-lessons-how-cope-office-politics-jagdish-prajapati

“The person who says “I’m not political” is in great danger, as only the fittest will survive, and the fittest will be the ones who understand their office’s politics”.

Politics in the workplace is a fact of life in most companies and, even if you do not want to take part, it is important for your own survival and success that you are aware that it exists, that you can recognise the players, and that you understand how to navigate around it.
22 Best Lessons How to cope with Office Politics.

1. A PERSON SHOULD NOT BE TOO HONEST. STRAIGHT TREES ARE CUT FIRST AND HONEST PEOPLE ARE SCREWED FIRST.

This is the reason people who follow the ‘yes boss’ route are smart. Instead of being honest and axing on your own foot, try being diplomatic. Only because true opinions are painful and people don’t want to hear them. Being too honest and direct makes you come across as a rude person who doesn’t value feelings. On the contrary, being diplomatic doesn’t hurt anybody and you can easily get things done.

2. AVOID STEPPING INTO A GREAT MAN’S SHOES

Every organizations have their legends. Mr X who was incredible in their work and even after they left, people cannot stop talking about him. Avoid taking over a project started by this legend. Chances are you will never be able to live up to the standards and fantasy of the image created by this missing person.

Instead, take on a project which people have tried and failed in. If you are successful, not only do you break the preconceived notion of the “impossible project” but also become the new legend.

3. NEVER OUTSHINE YOUR BOSS

Turns out, this whole office dynamics exist on the single principle that you have to make your immediate superior look good. Leaving aside pride, somehow what your manager have to say about you has way more credibility that what you have to say about yourself. The worst mistake you can make is to try to do the opposite and outshine your immediate boss.

With your future in their hands, he or she can completely destroy you. You should try to stay out of the limelight and build your own network in the company. However, until that is complete, you have to keep making your manager look good.

4 BEFORE YOU START SOME WORK, ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF THREE QUESTIONS – WHY AM I DOING IT, WHAT THE RESULTS MIGHT BE AND WILL BE SUCCESSFUL. ONLY WHEN YOU THINK DEEPLY AND FIND SATISFACTORY ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS, GO AHEAD

Sounds like a foolproof plan to save your time from getting wasted, right? A smart worker will only do things that will yield results. They won’t do donkey’s work and, instead, will save their time by being productive at what they do.

5 ONCE YOU START WORKING ON SOMETHING, DON’T BE AFRAID OF FAILURE AND DON’T ABANDON IT. PEOPLE WHO WORK SINCERELY ARE THE HAPPIEST.

The sleep that you get after a hard day’s work is the most peaceful sleep. Hard work might or might not pay, but the satisfaction of working hard is the best feeling to experience. Proving your worth by sincere hard work makes you a valued employee who is important to the organisation.

6 THE BIGGEST GURU-MANTRA IS : NEVER SHARE YOUR SECRETS WITH ANYBODY. IT WILL DESTROY YOU.

Remember, it’s a workplace and not your college where you have selfless friendship with your colleagues. Watch out for how much you reveal about your personal life at work. Imagine what would happen if your secrets get passed on and you get stabbed in the back by your work BFF? Exactly. So avoid it and do what you need to to maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life by keeping your secrets to yourself.

7 THERE IS SOME SELF-INTEREST BEHIND EVERY FRIENDSHIP. THERE IS NO FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT SELF-INTERESTS. THIS IS A BITTER TRUTH.

This lesson not only applies to work life, but to life in general. We try to be friends with someone because we ‘want’ to share our interests with them, we ‘want’ to be in their group, we ‘want’ to make them like us. There is always a motive behind friendship because we are needy. Choose your company wisely.

8 YOUR BEST FRIEND AT WORK WILL TURN INTO YOUR WORST ENEMY

Too many times we make the mistake of making friends at work.

Although we spend close to 50 hours a week in the office, we should always remember that it is work and should not confuse it with the rest of our lives. That guy or girl you hang out with at the pantry area, go for lunch with and meet after work for gym may soon become your worst enemy, given the right circumstances.

At some point, only one of you will get the attention of your manager and get promoted and that is where the problem starts. The closer the friends you are, the more of a betrayal it will feel like. You do not want to cultivate enemies in your workplace. The solution? Be professional at your workplace and treat people as your acquaintances, not friends.

9 CREATE AN AURA OF MYSTERY AND EFFORTLESSNESS

There are those types in the company, who constantly look distressed and in a mess. Keep your troubles and insecurities to yourself and guard it well. Create an aura of mystery where you look like a super genius who have to put minimum effort to get the work done.

Nobody needs to know that you spent the entire weekend on your laptop on Google trying to find the solution for the problem or called your friends in the US for the solution. Never brag about how much effort you put, because in the last 100 years, we have moved from the sweat shop mentality where hours were respected to a more result based reward system.

10 THERE ARE THREE GEMS UPON THIS EARTH ; FOOD, WATER, AND PLEASING WORDS – FOOLS CONSIDER PIECES OF ROCKS AS GEMS.

Apart from bread, butter and house, ‘pleasing words’ are also a basic necessity. At first, if you can’t solve a problem by a stern instruction, try being soft. Chances are your work might get done easily. If not, you will have to twist someone around that little finger.
IDENTIFY THE SOURCE OF POWER: BE CLOSE TO IT

In any organization, there are two types of people: some who get promoted quickly and some who have to forever wait their turn.

The people who get promoted are not necessarily the more talented ones or the one bringing in the most profits. Deep inside the framework of the organization, there is a constant power struggle in place and your job is to understand the power dynamics. You have to identify the people who yield the real power and create a personal network with them. You need these “Godfathers” for the future, your visibility to them will determine all the progress in the company.

Even if your manager absolutely loves you, if he yields no power, you and him will be stuck there forever.

12 AS SOON AS THE FEAR APPROACHES NEAR, ATTACK AND DESTROY IT.

Do you get scared and nervous while giving a presentation in front of a tough audience? Or do you fumble while pitching your ideas to your boss and your team? Well, if that’s the case then this point is for you. Fear is your fierce enemy. It’s standing in between of you and the goal you’ve been dreaming of. If you muster up some courage, give it your best and go the ‘que sera sera’ route, then you will overcome fear and show it the exit door.

13 THERE IS BUT ONE RULE: HUNT OR BE HUNTED

Call it “Survival of the Fittest” or anything else, it is a war out there. Once you leave the protective umbrella of home, you must know that nobody really cares for you. Every time you get a pay raise or a bonus, it is not because someone likes you, but rather it seems profitable according to someone’s cost-benefit analysis. Remember while negotiating, it is pointless to appeal to someone’s sentiments but useful to illustrate to them what benefit you can bring.

14 BE INDISPENSABLE

We are in a world where you and me are dispensable and easily replaceable. To survive, we have to crawl out of the crowd of dispensable and easily replaceable office drones.

“Be So Good That They Cannot Ignore You”. Keeping this mantra in mind, be amazing, always do work that probably justifies twice or at least one and a half times the salary you earn. People should be so dependant on you that the whole system should almost collapse once you are on vacation or you resign. For your survival, do not volunteer all the information you know but withhold some. Armed with the complete information, your manager might think you are replaceable.

15 TILL THE TIME YOU DON’T DECIDE TO RUN, YOU ARE NOT IN THE COMPETITION.

A no-brainer here. If the competition is tough, then you’ve got to be tougher. You’ve got to be one step ahead of your competition. That’s how it is when it comes to winning the corporate race and climbing the corporate ladder.

16 EVEN IF A SNAKE IS NOT POISONOUS, IT SHOULD PRETEND TO BE VENOMOUS.

Otherwise society will take undue advantage of you. Being intimidating helps because people won’t run over you. If you come across as an over-friendly, people pleaser, then you’re sending out a wrong message.

17 DISCOVER EVERY MAN’S WEAKNESS

In the quest for self survival, be an astute observer of human nature.

Identify those tell-tale signs which demonstrate personality flaws in your coworkers and superiors. If your manager cannot complete a sentence without throwing in a jargon like some MBA textbook, he or she might be trying to hide perhaps their lack of solid domain knowledge.

To the manager who is using jargon to cover up, be a crutch to them with your knowledge and become indispensable. Once you know everybody’s weaknesses, they are like play dough in your hands, ready to be molded into anything you want.

18 YOU WANT TO CAST A SPELL ON AN INTELLIGENT PERSON THEN TELL HIM THE TRUTH.

They are going to find out the truth anyway, so you better not fool around in front of a bright person. For instance, if you’re at an interview and a highly qualified person is asking you questions, avoid bluffing. Chances are that you might get caught and make a fool of yourself.

19 LEARN FROM THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS…. YOU CAN’T LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE THEM ALL YOURSELVES !!

The most important of them all – learn from the mistakes of others. It’s a great opportunity to learn from someone else’s failure. You have to see to it that it’s someone else is making a mistake and not you. Learning from someone else's mistakes will help you climb up a step of the progress ladder to reach the top.

20 WORDS MAKE A POOR STATEMENT, CHOOSE ACTION INSTEAD

If you occasionally have to defend your position in the company, do not choose words but actions instead.

Instead of arguing that you are doing the job to your best abilities, results you have already achieved will speak volumes. Too many times we get over emotional and make the mistake of arguing our point of view. However, if we temporarily retreat and use our work to demonstrate, this will hold way more credibility.

21 WHEN IT COMES TIME TO DEFEAT YOUR OPPONENT, CRUSH HIM COMPLETELY

This is perhaps the last option left to you. Your superior and coworker had probably made your life a living hell, you cannot leave the company due to some reasons and you really need a job. For survival, you have to take them out. You have slowly gathered evidence against them, an email trail which probably shows off their incapability and lack of professionalism.

When you need to eliminate them, perhaps in front of the higher management, you need to defeat them completely. You should perhaps attack them from more than one direction and perhaps during a time when they are busy or on vacation, when they cannot defend themselves easily. A completely defeat is necessary because if your opponent is allowed to recover, you will end up leaving the company.

22 DISILLUSIONED WITH LIFE ?

After reading this, if you feel that the whole human existence has no meaning like I felt then, working in an office laced with politics may not be the best for you. As I always say, if you cannot change things, setup your company and run it with the child-like idealism you had.

The harsh reality is that organizations are hierarchies, and the social science bears out uncomfortable truths about politics and interpersonal relationships: We make initial snap judgments of people, often based on appearance, that can carry on over time;we favor those who are similar to us; we get promoted or gain valuable information by making our boss feel good and building relationships with influential people; we form perceptions based on a speaker’s appearance, body language, and voice more than the content of the argument; and we are more likely to be perceived as competent if we are judiciously critical or show anger (at least,men are). There is strong evidence that our work ratings, bonuses, and promotions areweakly correlated to actual performance — in fact, performance may even matter less to our success than our political skills and how we are perceived by those who make the decisions.

So why wasn’t Jill spending more time managing up, especially if it was in her own self-interest?

Five Things to Do If You Get a Bad Review

Everyone has received a bad performance review in their careers, but that isn’t the end of the world. Everyone’s circumstances might differ, either in terms of the culture of the company to the general personality of the boss. Honestly, everyone knows whether the appraisal was true or not. But sadly it’s the person receiving it that has to bear the brunt. The first thing to do is be Calm, just relax (something that I have trouble doing usually), no point getting defensive. Focus on what you’re being told and save the rebuttals for later.

As always rely on facts, control the environment to make it a conducive one, appraisals are supposed to lead to growth and not de-motivation. Make sure you understand the problem and come up with a solution. The key is, however, to keep it professional.  

Act but Don’t React

It’s okay to feel angry; maybe you didn’t expect such an outcome. Take some time if it’s not already given to you, a day or two if required, reflect and develop a plan. Let the boss know you’re willing to change and ask for direct actions. This should get the boss on your side.  

 Perspective is always subjective

You don’t have to accept every criticism as a fact. You can dispute what you feel is irrational or biased but in any case you need to be civil, but don’t roll over. You can share the difference in perspective which will help in making the conversation productive rather than attacking the evaluation directly.  

Getting Real

Evaluations can be a determining factor in job security and the basis of increments ,especially in Pakistan. It can also be a tool used by management to get rid of employees. So you got a poor review it is you who has to decide whether you want to stay in the current job, whether it is the right fit. Don’t leave the job in haste, you need to make a decision from a place of power and confidence and not fear.

Learn from Your Mistakes

When you land at your next job, you may feel extreme anxiety about your first evaluation. You can prevent this -- and getting another negative review -- by opening the lines of communication with your manager from day one. 

As an individual, the ethical aspects of a workplace are quite important to me. Whether it is the way I interact with colleagues or avoid office politics, these things are positives which sometimes come to bite me in the rear end. Although I have become flexible, there is still a long way to go. The amount of diversity that you experience in a workplace needs to be managed intelligently. Often we have to work with people that are just trying to save their jobs, so its best to be careful. Other than that it is important to know what you bring to the table in terms of contributions and know your place in the value addition process. 

Loyalty killed marketing... Or did it?

This could be just me, and my experiences in the corporate world or that the prestigious MBA degree just messed up my expectations. We aspire to be Marketing Managers and Brand Managers, the aim is just the title but we rarely want to do the work. Higher management usually wants people to just say yes, keep your ideas to yourself and especially those out of the box campaigns that will propel your brand.

I aspire to have a discussion which will help the brand grow, where the strategic implications of a decision are discussed and people are held accountable.  But sadly it’s the region that decides the brand direction. Therefore we are merely, facilitators to the clerical tasks associated with marketing. An HBR article “Marketing Is Dead, and Loyalty Killed It” deems marketing to be dead and loyalty being the prime focus, but the fact is that loyalty is a product of strong marketing practices. I believe if your definition of marketing is narrow, it probably is dead but if you define marketing as understanding customer and their needs and converting those into products they will buy I doubt it can ever die, its just an evolution, a new set of tools and broader understanding.

 Brands like Apple have achieved a dream loyalty due to the emotional connection made by Steve jobs and same has been capitalized upon, consumers remain loyal even when the brand makes mistakes and the product has bugs. But brand loyalty is not only about forgiving mistakes but ensuring the fact that consumers won’t switch at the first onset of competitors offering lower prices, which means company is ensured revenue, making loyalty a priority.

Apple is an easy brand to talk about, locally speaking (in Pakistan) I’ve seen loyalty programs which only mean points redemption, I need to give the company thousands of rupees of revenue to get a key chain, banks to some extent have gotten some leverage Faysal Bank for example, but still a long way to go.

If you want brand loyalty, figure out the function of each aspect of marketing, find a way to connect with your customer and more importantly believe it yourself. The rest will certainly follow

Circadian Rhythm

For people who travel a lot one must have heard the phrase body clock, and wondered if such a thing does exist. It does and it is called Circadian Rhythm. Researchers are worried about the wide range of implications a disrupted circadian rhythm may have which includes the risk of cardiovascular events, obesity, sleep disorders and many other neurological disorders

Circadian Rhythm and its applications have a vital management implication, especially on productivity. Managers will expect employees to be on the top of their game throughout the day, which is quite unrealistic, employers might want to perform at peak levels throughout the day but that too doesn’t seem viable. For most employees it takes a while to reach their peak maybe after their first cup of coffee, and this was last till about lunch time, hitting a low at about 3 pm. We usually blame this on lunch, especially the huge servings of Biryani, but this is a natural process of the circadian rhythm.                

Managers should tailor tasks of employees keeping in mind circadian rhythms like assignments, deadlines and expectations. It all boils down to understanding your employees and deriving the maximum from them at the right times. Employees should be well aware of their own circadian rhythms while planning their day to achieve maximum productivity. The best way to keep everything in check is taking naps, power naps as there are known. Keeps the mind and body table, also stay hydrated most energy dips are usually experienced due to lack of hydration.   

How Meetings Kill Productivity

 Every minute you spend in a meeting you can spend it doing something productive. Before I get into the specifics of meetings, it’s important to note that leadership styles and prevalent corporate culture plays an important role. Employees and managers go through phases in their level of productivity throughout the day (see Circadian Rhythm) therefore their times need to be utilized efficiently.  A variation of Parkinson’s Law applied to meetings goes something like this: “Meeting activities expand to fill the time available.” Ergo, more time, more activities. If you set an hour for the meeting, people will use the hour, regardless of how much is on the agenda.

Business meetings require people to commit, focus and make decisions, with little or no attention paid to the depletion of the finite cognitive resources of the participants--particularly if the meetings are long. So if that is true, the three or four hour project meetings may be counterproductive. In my experience the meetings were a way to give the owner the due attention, it rarely had any significance. Another experience where as a part of the marketing department I was asked to conduct daily progress meetings in an organization where people worked in shift, which meant some, had to come in early while others had to stay late. These are practices from former Managing Director of a top pharmaceutical company.

More time should be spent in communicating roles, responsibilities and KPI’s so that an employee is given direction and does not need to be micromanaged. Meetings should be held for absolutely important reasons with a fixed agenda and with a limited amount of people.

An excerpt from https://hbr.org/2014/06/yes-you-can-make-meetings-more-productive/

Recently, my colleagues and I heard a story about a U.S. undersecretary of defense who was managing procurement. She came to her first meeting with contractors and saw some 60 people in the room. So she said, “Let’s first create a big circle. We’ll go around the room, and everyone can say who they are and why they’re here.” Participants rolled their eyes  — did they really have to do something this gimmicky? —

After the first two had identified themselves, the undersecretary said, “Thanks for your interest, but we won’t need you here. You can excuse yourself.” Others met a similar fate. By the time she got to the 10th person in the circle, people all over the room were getting up to leave, knowing they had no real reason to be there. Eventually the group got down to around 12 members — and the human capital productivity of that meeting rose about fivefold.

Sources:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201204/why-meetings-kill-productivity
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130716145934-5799319-why-business-meetings-kill-productivity

Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success

The first day at a new job is very similar to your first day at school. The emotions, the uncertainty and mostly the stress. Each employee will handle these extreme emotions depending on their personality type; some will adjust fasters than others, while others might just take longer. There are many factors involved in the duration of acceptability, the most important one being past experiences, especially your last employment. If it was a positive experience, you carry forward the positivity, if it’s the opposite then the negativity sticks for longer period of time creating issues and may destabilize a candidate for a longer. A total of 25% of the entire working population undergoes career transitions each year.[i]

HR departments in Pakistan have yet to evolve into the function they are expected to perform. The change in the name from “Personnel Department” into the “Human Resource Department” aimed to have a strategic significance. New employee onboarding is an important process of getting employees adjusted to social and performance aspects of their new job. It’s through this that employees learn attitudes, knowledge and skills and the appropriate behavior to function effectively. Some organizations aptly have formal onboarding programs while others take up the “sink In” approach, which is highly risky. A good onboarding program is a major contributor to the overall retention policy. Organizational Best Practices for Onboarding: 

·         Implement basics prior to the first day on the job

·         Introduce a buddy system or mentor program to show the employee around.

·         Introduce the employee to other staff members in person as well as via email.

·         Make the first day on the job special

·         Design and implement formal  and informal orientation programs

·         Create and use written onboarding plans

·         Schedule trainings to familiarize the employee with company best practices and systems.

There is no better way to alienate an employee than ignoring them on their first week on the job. Human Capital is the one contributing factor in the success of the business, it’s not surprising that many companies are outsourcing their HR activities, but if HR delivers on its core functions, it could be a major contributing factor for the organizations strategic and competitive advantage.

[i] Rollag, K., Parise, S., & Cross, R. (2005).  Getting new hires up to speed quickly. MIT Sloan Management Review, 46, 35-41.