Office Environments and Children’s TV – A Lesson

Any parent of young children will tell you that your TV viewing habits change rather dramatically in the early years.  While the programming is not typically the most cerebral stuff on the airwaves, it nonetheless has its place and occasionally – very occasionally – it can make you think.

I had one of those moments this week while overhearing part of an episode of Engie Benjy.  In it, two vehicles were having a race.  They were both trying their absolute best but eventually tied.  The vehicle owners cheered and congratulated both vehicles saying, “Well done you two. You’re both winners!”.

Ordinarily I’m not a big fan of that sentiment; it’s so desperately overused on childrens’ TV programming that, as an adult, one can become very cynical about the idea.  It makes me cringe.  The real world doesn’t operate that way and that message, in my view, sets up an unrealistic expectation in children of how things work.  In school sports, exams or employment opportunities for example, we don’t all get to be winners.  Someone comes in first place and others miss out.  That’s just how life is.

But what about the office environment and corporate culture?  Is it reasonable to expect that there should be one winner and one or more losers?  Do we have to accept that office politics and judicious use of communication is just a fact of life in business?  I would argue that in a company (or at least on a team) there is an over-arching common goal that is shared among all staff.  While it might sound idealistic, working together towards a shared goal not only means that goal has the greatest chance of success, but ultimately will ensure everyone involved comes away a winner.

Corporate Culture and Office Politics

It should be noted that not all office politics is bad.  The process of building a community; making it healthy, cohesive and satisfying for its participants can be as much a political feat as that associated with negative connotations.  The difference between pathological and healthy, constructive politics is an important distinction to make.  To quote DeMarco and Lister:

An organization that succeeds in building a satisfying community tends to keep its people. When the sense of community is strong enough, no one wants to leave. The investment made in human capital is thus retained, and upper management finds itself willing to invest more. When the company invests more in its people, the people perform better and feel better about themselves and about their company. This makes them still less likely to move on. The positive reinforcement here is all to the good.

Individuals and teams alike are motivated and catalysed by the feeling of accomplishment; that delivering a quality product or result is worthwhile.  You can take pride in the workmanship or style in which that result was achieved.  If the sense of achievement and common purpose is removed through pathological politics, everyone very quickly begins to see that hard work and dedication – while being a nice organisational virtue – is not as important as butt-covering and protectionism.

If a team is assured that extra hours at the office will be well-rewarded and recognised if it means that a product can be delivered on or ahead of schedule they will likely put in the effort needed to achieve that goal.  This will be at the expense of time at home with the kids, out with friends or doing the sorts of things that give people respite in their own personal time and allow them to “recharge the batteries”.  Now assume that, having delivered the aforementioned product, the team is told that the recognition or appreciation promised won’t actually be in the form of a bonus, or won’t be an elevated pay rate for the additional hours, or will be merely remembered when the next round of performance reviews are due.  The motivation, enthusiasm and dedication of that team is immediately stripped and replaced with resentment.

If a senior manager is concerned that the team will collectively argue their case for, say, a promised day off or bonus, and decides to take each individual aside and explain that “we didn’t actually give specific assurances and you can either take what we’re offering or leave it”, politics come into full play.  Each individual on the team feels pressured and intimidated without any support from his peers.  People aren’t stupid.  They can see the divide-and-conquer approach being taken in the relative privacy of the manager’s office and react by becoming defensive, resentful, angry and disloyal.

People are by nature reasonably perceptive creatures and will interpret what they view as being unfair, unilateral or otherwise negative changes or initiatives (rightly or wrongly) as deliberate acts; thereby reinforcing a feeling that they need to guard or actively work against that person or their efforts.

Successful change comes from open and honest communication, genuine attempts to share responsibility and credit and by allowing each person on the team to make equal, worthwhile contributions to that team’s success.  A manager’s role is to motivate change, create vision and develop political support (getting the team’s “buy-in”) even before any transition occurs.  If a team feels excluded or disempowered, the task becomes an “us-and-them” issue and no matter how well-intentioned any project, idea or goal is, it will at best be a struggle to achieve as individuals work to achieve their own needs; or at worst actively work against the goal becauses they feel so removed from the decision-making process that affected them.

Office Politics is totally unavoidable in the workplace, but it can be a force for good so that everyone wins if all members of the team – at all levels of the hierarchy – recognise the contribution they each make and actively work together to achieve those goals.  Maybe my reaction to that children’s TV show was just me projecting my resentment that life wasn’t so optimistic and inclusive in more companies, in which case maybe I need to take steps to see if the relationships and communication within my wider team is improved to the point where everyone’s main goal is to help each other succeed above all else.  Ultimately, isn’t that the best option to make sure we’re all winners?

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