Do you want to succeed as a boss, an outgoing legendary CEO, chairman, or president of a group? It’s Office Politics.
Career life either in the public or private sector isn’t simple or straight anymore. It’s convoluted with a lot of ordeals: political, spiritual, and physical. There was a time when it wasn’t so. There used to be times when things were got on just merit and hard work. At that time people entered organizations from the bottom, worked hard, and at each level of the ladder got promoted to another on merit of hard work and achievements, until the person got to the top, and became a Chief Executive Officer / Managing Director. It may be the General Manager, or whatever designate. Now, it is not so. It is no longer at ease. It used to be in those days when my uncle became the MD of the British American Insurance Company of Nigeria Limited [later Plc] for years. It was around the time when his elder brother used to be a Chief Judge in the Imo State judiciary. It was used in the days when lecturers grew and became Vice Chancellors, Provosts, or Rectors in universities, colleges of education, and polytechnics respectively as they started lecturing as graduate assistants.
Today, a VC, Provost, or rector is employed from anywhere and imposed on you by the visitor of the institution: governor/president. Today, as a graduate assistant, you may not grow beyond lecturer 2 before retirement if you don’t play the “game.” Every juicy position in the institutions: chief librarian, internal auditor, bursar, registrar, Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Rector, Provost, Council Member, and Chairman of Council, are all appointed by the party order or governor or president as the case may be. I mean, they are all politicized. The career path is fuzzy and not simple if not dead. I don’t know what Human Resources Management or Human Resources Consultants will tell people about Career Path Management.
There are more, a lot of threats to the corporate world in the world today – mergers, acquisitions, globalization, downsizing, rightsizing, job outsourcing and offshored, and job cuts. This chaos including the ones technology, changes in customers’ tastes, post COVID-19 pandemic, and Artificial Intelligence, AI are causing poured sand in the eyes of the HR syllabus. This state has turned the workplace into a minefield of treacherous personalities, unexploded resentments, corporate robbers, and tickling egos merchants. Who can you trust? Merit is intentionally [deliberately] and unintentionally [inadvertently] destroyed. Again, who can you trust for rise, for promotion, for assisting you achieve your career dream?
Most importantly, how can you get ahead, and to the top meritoriously? What do you need to do or say, to get to the top? Men and women at the top don’t know, do more, or have more than men and women at the bottom, or middle, or anywhere in the organization’s ladder, BUT there is something, one thing they know, do, play on that favour the odds and place them on the top. They play a GAME…Office Politics.
Read me, and read me well: there are opportunities here and there, everywhere. If you have the ambition, if you are interested, if age is on your side, you can play the game.
Please what I’m writing is strictly for careerists already on the employment roll, possibly who want to eye bosses’/CEOs’ jobs. The good news is you can move around and seek bigger pay raises, greater responsibilities, and more interesting challenges, but it comes with a price for the prize. At that level, it is not IM [ima madu], SA [sleeping around], AD [acquiring degrees], or KC [killing colleagues] but a humane game called Office Politics, call it Organizational Politics [but the former is better].
Many people feel somehow bad on hearing the word politics. Many refuse to play politics, believing it requires underhand tactics and malicious intent. Yes, maybe, because we allow bad people to hijack public politics, that’s why they made it bad. If good people had hijacked politics, it would have been a good game.
But politics is not automatically bad. Politics is like any other game: good and bad. Politics, perhaps including other games is bad if the person playing it is bad. A money game that produces billionaires is bad if the person playing it is bad. The same is religion. Sex is bad if the person playing it is bad [or bad-intentioned]. And on and on. The reverse is true if the person playing any of the games is good: politics, money game, religion, and sex. Without politics, there is no way political leaders will emerge. Without money games, there is no way billionaires and super-rich will emerge. All of us would have been sustenance income earners – from hand to mouth, low to average people. Without sex, you and I wouldn’t have been conceived. True religion which is taking care of the fatherless, and the widow wouldn’t have been possible.
Politicking merely describes the act of scrutinizing relationships at work or in society and learning how to influence others more effectively to get their likes, approvals, or mandates [Ihezuo, 2023]. Politicking is propaganda put together with the intent of seizing the machinery of power [government]. Politicking is what people who dream of power and control use to get into the seat of power by using available means to sell their promises commonly called manifesto to people. Politicking usually involves going through informal channels rather than officially sanctioned ones, but that does not make it bad or good in and of itself, or does it? After all, it is about knowing the relationships that matter most; one to play, with and one to ignore.
Politicking is the act, action, and the verb. Politics is the game, the noun. A politician politick politics.
Politicking is not intrinsically good or bad – it is only a tool. People can choose to use their understanding of politics to influence people and achieve goals that are good for the organization and themselves. Even in the most friendly and supportive of organizations people don’t always agree – so having an understanding of politics and how to play it becomes a handy tool, to achieve one’s goal.
In every organization, sadly there are limited opportunities, qualified and over-qualified and experienced individuals. These qualified, overqualified, and experienced individuals are overlooked/ignored by their own making most times because of politics they could not play. Like it, hate it, it is uncomfortable anyway, politicking happens everywhere [family, church, mosque, organization, teams, group, even between husband and wife] whether you like it or not. Some are gentle, noble, and quiet type, and refuse to play the game and focus on the job, working hard, and praying hard [which is good], in the hopes that one day they will be noticed and rewarded for their efforts. Sadly, they are overlooked. And those who played the politics are rewarded. Why? It is because all workplaces are really about competition, sometimes spoken, unspoken, and subtle. I’m lying?
Nearly every one of us in the workplace is competing on budgets, allocations, resources, and opportunities for juicier projects or assignments. There is competition for promotions, [not all staff will be promoted at the same time any time promotion is to take place], time with key customers or key company executives, prestige, recognition, bigger salaries, better conditions, better office space, more travels, more expensive quarters, and better cars, and the ultimate power, the greatest of it all – being the CEO of the organization. The mere fact that people plot, ploy, scheme, and kill illustrates one truth about politics or politicking: it delivers results.
Dr Mike Ihezuo is a noiseless political animal, with a penchant for helping people and CEOs succeed. Do you want to pay the big league? Do you want to succeed the outgoing legendary CEO? Do you want to succeed your boss, or any Chief Executive or Director? As a CEO, do you want to anoint a successor by yourself who will by company policy face others in an executive interview but your candidate doesn’t know the politics? Do you want to know why your juniors have passed you and you now want to pick them up? Do your questions bother around this area, politics? You don’t need the master’s and PhD degrees you are gathering. Master’s and PhD degrees don’t do any work. Corporate consultants who advise your company’s Management and Board of Directors know PhD and a Master’s are useless in succeeding a Chief Executive. You need them if you want to lecture i.e. in academics. But there is something you need: knowledge, and a skill. The knowledge is called Office Politics. The skill is called Office Politicking. Office Politics is not taught openly and is not sponsored by any organization. It is like Laws of Powers and The Seductions [which Dr Mike Ihezuo teaches also]. Individuals eyeing top posts privately arrange it with experts like Mike Ihezuo. Contact Us.
