What allows an organization to survive beyond its first year?
It must have a clear vision and a well-crafted strategy. Then it must evolve, mutate, and change when circumstances dictate. And it must adapt to the environment. It must be in a position to take advantage of opportunities and avoid threats. It must have within it the capacity to do so.
But to thrive, the organization must be strong, resilient, and focused.
Office politics is the virus that damages the immune system of any organization.
This framework details the chain of events that follows an infection from office politics. Rather than treating political machinations as part of the game, these offenses should be against the rules and out of bounds. Good leadership enforces rules of the game that benefit the entire organization rather than slanting the field in the favor of one group or set of people.
As office politics increase spontaneity decreases, information flow is diminished and the potential for great breakthrough ideas goes down. People are not free to talk and think when realpolitik the dominant paradigm in any organization. Information sharing is bottlenecked, shunted, and hoarded. Gaps in the vision once filled by open dialogue are hindered by clouded understanding and shrouded motives. Once the organization is taken over by the desire for individual status and power over the good of the group the organization will suffer. Maybe it will fight for its life for years, but this is the first link in a chain that will lead to extinction. The potential for novel, useful, and effective solutions is stymied and limited by office politics. This leads to greater rigidity.
Budgets, projects, and departments become fiefdoms when office politics reduces the potential of an organization. Employees can feel the tightness in their chest that accompanies honest conversations. Lying, forms of evasion and dissembling are the norm. Rigidity is the attribute of an object that is likely to break under extreme pressure. Nassim Taleb wrote about the property of being anti-fragile, beyond resilience or robustness. It is the opposite of fragility and different than rigidity.
A rigid object can resist some pressure but eventually will break. An anti-fragile object is based on a systematic approach to avoid catastrophic failure. This is similar to the tensile strength of steel, how much stress can be applied before elastic (temporary) - known as yield strength or plastic (permanent) deformation, resulting in ductile failure first and then brittle failure. When your body is too rigid you are more likely to pull a muscle, twist a joint, or even break tendons and bones. This reduces your ability to move.
In the VUCA world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity organizations must be agile. Agile software development encourages self-organizing and cross-functional teams to discover internal and external requirements through collaborative leadership. An agile organization is not an amorphous blob. According to McKinsey Consulting, it requires two things: “One is a dynamic capability, the ability to move fast—speed, nimbleness, responsiveness. And agility requires stability, a stable foundation—a platform if you will—of things that don’t change.”
In many ways the cheetah is the best example of an agile organization, it moves incredibly fast over short distances, and can turn on a dime to catch its prey. In terms of car racing, a drag racer is extremely fast but not nimble. It is literally not build to turn at all. However, to win at the Circuit de la Sarthe for the 24-hours race at Le Mans cars must be able to make adjustments and turns. At the Nürburgring in Germany, cars must not only be able to turn but do so at a great degree of speed and precision. This requires the greatest agility. If you are too rigid your acceleration and top-end speed suffer. In addition your turning radius and cornering decrease. Greater rigidity makes agility decrease and the ability to respond to and avoid threats decreases.
Therefore, you are more vulnerable when you are not flexible, adaptive, and agile. Vulnerability may be a good trait within interpersonal relationships, however, it is dangerous when it comes to your organization. Increasing vulnerability is like blood in the water for sharks - if they really could smell blood. But your competition can detect your flaws when they become public. A good general and chess master wait for their opponent to make a mistake, or induces one. Every business is scanning its environment for competitors and their weaknesses. One reason why an organization succeeds and another fails is that the survival of the fittest necessitates strong organisms eat weaker ones. This is the law of the jungle and Wall Street, the trophic level of organizational hierarchy, a chart of mergers and acquisitions. If you an injured gazelle the cheetah will track your down, your lifespan is threatened by internal weakness and a lack of health.
Therefore, if you become more vulnerable you become less viable. As injuries mount you become obsessed with survival even as your opportunities for growth and health are diminished. The best time to plant and a tree is yesterday, the second-best is today. The same can be said for managing your own health, your personal friendships and relationships, and that of your organization. Invest today to reap dividends tomorrow. This is the magic of compound interest and the danger of compound inattention. Leaders must have a clear vision for their organization, and define the values that drive it. Life is a gift, we must cultivate it. Part of that is creating the environment, the culture that encourages life to thrive.
An organization that puts down office squabbles becomes fluid and realizes more of its potential. Being flexible and agile means that can protect yourself and safeguard your organization. This increases the probability of short-term or long-term survival and likely avoids an eminent annihilation.
Once your business is unfeasible, extinction looms on the horizon. You are an endangered species and little help will be afforded to you. All of this is true, because of the toxic poison that began with office politics and created a disease within your organization. Seek life. Find a way to free people in your organization to become the best version of themselves, and enjoy their work. This is the goal of any good leader: help members of your organization feel that their highest calling and greatest responsibility is met in their contribution to the world found in their work.
https://fs.blog/2014/04/antifragile-a-definition/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-keys-to-organizational-agility