Political savvy is a vital competence for any executive, but it’s not taught
in leadership or grad school courses. In fact, the term “office politics” has
received a bad rap. (Words like “Machiavellian,” “manipulative” and
“conspiratorial” come to mind.)
Tales of political sabotage, power plays and turf wars are part of any
organization’s history. Nonetheless, political competence is the one skill
everyone wishes to have more of—but no one talks about it.
Until recently, few books explained how to use political competence to build
one’s career, improve a team’s results or boost the company’s bottom line.
Samuel B. Bacharach, director of Cornell University’s Institute for Workplace
Studies, recently published Get Them on Your Side. Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman have written Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success.
Political competence is the “ability to understand what you can and cannot
control, when to take action, who is going to resist your agenda, and whom you need on your side. It’s about knowing how to map the political terrain and get others on your side, as well as lead coalitions,” according to Prof. Bacharach.
Many individuals have good ideas that, if implemented, could yield positive
results for their companies. Sometimes, these ideas fall flat because the
leaders who propose them cannot gain support from key people.
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The full, 2000 word article discusses these concepts:
Defining Political Savvy
Ignore at Your Own Risk
Three Phases of Political Competence
1. Map Your Political Terrain
2. Get Others on Your Side
3. Make Things Happen
The Political Analyst
The Consensus Builder
Reducing Risk through Politics
The Politically Competent Leader
Two Political Styles
Organizational Savvy Continuum
Resources
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After years of reengineering, downsizing and optimizing operational
efficiencies, companies are now focusing on new ways to generate distinctive
competitive advantages. Strategic planning is back, but with a difference: it is
no longer the domain of the CEO and senior executives.
Smart organizations are changing the way strategy is handled. To keep the
planning process close to the realities of markets, today’s strategists say it
should include key customers, end-users and suppliers. Such a key element is a
revolutionary step in strategic planning but necessary to help produce what
customers really want.
Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, authors of The Strategy-Focused
Organization, are the originators of the Balanced Scorecard, a system for
measuring strategic performance. They emphasize the importance of making
strategy “everyone’s everyday job.”
Today, strategy is the concern of everyone from the top down through middle
managers, team leaders, and front-line employees. And it is even more so at the
critical interface between customer and company, i.e. customer services, sales
and marketing.
Important concepts covered in the full 2,000-word article:
Why Strategy Is so Important
How it Misses the Boat
Where Should We Put our Efforts (and Why)?
What Do We Bring to the Table?
Do our Capabilities Suit our Position?
How Strategy Is a Continuous Process
Failure to Execute
Measuring Strategy and Fallacies
The Balanced Scorecard
Resources on strategy
Here is the order link for this article with full reprint rights. You can use
this article as your own in your newsletters, ezines and marketing materials.
To purchase the full 2,000-word article (text-only) with reprint rights, $79: click HERE.
All word lengths are approximate.
