Going independent: A good way to escape people problems?

A weekend outing with some buddies got me thinking. Ron and William (not their real names) were quite amused that I had chosen to break my promise to 'do nothing' after leaving my former job. They thought I would be enjoying a complete and unbridled lepak, a Malay term for laid back and doing nothing in particular. Instead what did I do? Write a blog, and on office politics at that.

"So you want to spend your time writing about how the secretary and the finance clerk backstab one another eh?" they laughed. "Ha ha, nice try," I said. Well I don't blame them at all. When you're at the top of the hierarchy, the air thins and perceptions change. You no longer eat. You dine. You don't attend meetings. You grace them with your presence. You don't figure things out. You contemplate.

Ron had of course completely forgotten about how he was passed over for a promotion to CEO back in '99. That episode left him deeply embittered and I remember being dragged out to god knows how many late-night rant sessions with him. He ended up getting into an argument with his chairman and subsequently resigned. William is a board member of another company. He had been at loggerheads with another board member over what he thinks are suspicious contract awards. He complains about being kept out of the loop on certain things.

But these are not really office politics they say. Just unpleasantries at work, things all leaders have to deal with. Office politics are for people downstairs in admin and operations and people at their position don't go there.

Like I said before, politics is like having sex. Everybody's into it but few admit to what they do. Or they coin interesting euphemisms to make it seem thay're not doing anything un-CEOish. Because they create and control the system, industry captains like to believe they're above the mud patch. Its the typical god complex. Of course they leave out things like board appointments that are shuffled by unseen hands, manipulations in subsidiary funding and exco members getting voted out through underhanded means. Yup, that's not politics.

But William knew where I was coming from and popped an interesting question. If office politics is so unpleasant he asked, then why not just create your own organization and your own set of rules? Be king of your own hill. Have everybody kow tow to you. Problem solved?

Its nice to dream about having complete control. I always say if you ever need a role model for that, go ask your parents. Let them tell you how much much success they had in controlling you when you were growing up. See, people are people. Each are subject to their own influences, values and karma. But being the egocentric species that we are, we like to believe that these will fall in line with ours. Invariably, we often find they do not.

Are businesses any different? After all by controlling people's salaries don't you have them by the short and curly? Well money buys you their time but sometimes not much else. Anyway there's more to business than non-compliant employees. How about non-compliant shareholders, partners, directors, customers, licensing authorities, landlords, suppliers, merchant bankers, the taxman, legislation, competitors, the economy, bla bla bla... Each one is equally capable of throwing a spanner into your works, politically and otherwise. Still think you can have absolute control in your domain?

So while the thought of going indie to escape office politics appeals to the Indiana Jones in me, I beg to differ about it necessarily giving you better control over people. No doubt the issues can be managed. Companies do that every day and make millions in the process but that's not the point of this topic. The point is will running your own ship set you free of people problems? I'm saying no, it will not.

One thing is for sure though. When you're no. 1, the drop down the mountain is much further than if you were an admin assistant. I do think however, the rewards can be well worth the pain.