We don't play office politics here

I remember my ex-boss's words on my first day on the job as a Malaysian hired in Singapore. As we walked towards a Japanese restaurant for my first working lunch with the him (he was the CEO) I thought it was rather odd for office politics to be up there on the orientation agenda. I learnt later that it was a standard pitch he would give to all new staff.

It was a small outfit owned by some Singaporeans and Hong Kongers (the term Hongkies was upsetting they said and so we used it more often). We had about 30 staff at our Beach Road office and another 30 elsewhere in the region.

"Remember, we don't play politics here," my boss explained in between lunch bites as he related his rules of thumb on politic-busting corporate behaviour -

a) Practice an open door policy and an open mind to match.
b) Be candid but respectful
c) Be careful of favoritism or even the perception of creating it
d) Never lose your head when the staff is around
e) Never ever use the phrase "I don't know" in front of the staff

From the conversation, it was obvious to me that my boss had been carrying this chip on his shoulder for a whlie. Once bitten twice shy I thought? To be fair he tried hard to practice what he preached, pulling us aside for some point-blank candidness whenever he felt we were out of line.

That was then. In hindsight, did the boss's rules prevent office politics? Hell no. We still had to contend with the office ogre (a she) and her supporters. We still had our share of brown nosers and vile schemers. Managers still used different tones and language when addressing different staff. The techies never sat at the lunch table with the sales boys. The sales boys would not mingle with finance. And in company functions, the CEO would only invite the PR manager to sit with him at the main table, a guy whom everyone agreed was NATO (no action talk only) and an all-round snake.

And that's my point. If there are more than 2 people in a company, there's bound to be people-associations and rules, written and otherwise. Where those exist, you have politics. Guaranteed. You can pretend its not there. You can adopt a life view and a bag of tricks to make it bearable. You might not even realize that you're the chief politician him/herself, the one that half the organization despises. But we all know it. Politics comes with the territory, period. The only question is how intense.

So while my ex-boss's plea to smite office politics was heroic, I admit there was a certain amount of naiveness in his message IF you take politics for what it really is - just a term to describe decision-making involving limited resources. But politics is a dirty word, no thanks to word association with the other kind of politics. Valid or not, that is the perception and perception is reality. On that score I agree, we don't want to play office politics here. I just happen to believe it requires a bit more than just telling people to straighten up and fly right.

So while you might think office politics is a topic of petty conversation, the damage it does to industry is anything but petty. It runs into the billions. Consider the effects of talent drain, project interruptions and cancellations, wastage of executive time and resources, bleeding of intellectual property, customer defection and the reduced productivity of a demoralized workforce. Sadly, these are issues of the dark side that few CEOs are willing to admit to, much less act upon.

I guess its safe to say that while everyone hates office politics, nobody seems to know how to eliminate it. Running off and joining another company doesn't quite cure the disease either but the utopia nevertheless exists. So if you've come across an organization that has no office politics, I'm sure may people would like to hear about it.