An overview of the topic.
In the recent past, power and politics at the office place is becoming popular at an alarming rate. Office politics are played to help the executives and managers to attain an added advantage for a cause they support. For a long period, the term, “office politics” has been having a negative connotation because it is highly linked to strategies used persons to seek advantage at the expense of others. On the other hand, it can be said that good “office politics” serves to help an organization achieve its objective and goals through effective networking and stakeholder management (Hickey & Mohan, 2004).
Describe a project you have encountered with power and political undermining
Working as an internship, I came across a project that encountered power and political undermining at the workplace. The CEO wanted the director of strategic management to implement a comprehensive plan for the firm’s realignment. The project aimed at putting together a team of highly qualified managers from each division in the comprehensive plan. The plan faced massive resistance from most of the top managers as the CEO, and the Director of Strategic Management tried to implement the plan without wide consultations with all stakeholders.
Describe the players, their actions, motives, and outcomes
The Director of Strategic Management was charged with the responsibility of implementing a comprehensive plan for the firm’s realignment. He was expected to conduct meetings with all the heads of department and express the desire of the company. The Director faced a lot of resistance from the top managers.
The managers from the finance, distribution and manufacturing departments supported the new idea. Each of them presented a proposed plan that could help the organization reduce its operation costs and offer highly advanced products to its consumers at a reduced price. It is sad that their ambitions never materialized because of disagreements within the group that ended up affecting the entire process.
On the other hand, the Director of sales and marketing. Mr. John vigorously protested the move claiming that at first, the CEO had failed to consult them. Most of the times when the meetings were held, Mr. John criticized the ideas of other managers claiming that the company has been successful since time immemorial without teamwork. In fact, he termed team work a vague process.
Describe what the effects were on others in the team.
The Director of Strategic management succeeded to consolidate support from several of the top managers, but the resistance from the part of the group interfered with the process. He presented his agenda in the series of meetings conducted by all top managers. On the contrary, the negativism from the Director of Sales and Marketing influenced the firm in a negative way. Since Mr. John had played an essential role towards the success of the organization in more than ten years, he felt there was no need to create a team of players. Rather, he preferred the top talented individuals to inspire other employees towards achieving a common objective.
Describe what should have been done to make the overall process more positive
For a team of top managers and other staff to work together as a unit, effective communication is always important (Sutter et.al, 2009). The CEO could have made wide consultations before deciding it was time to implement the plan. Also, there are high chances that success could have resulted from the decision of attaining a team of experts that would be in charge of the entire process. The CEO wanted the plan to be in place within six months, and that was a very short duration to consolidate support from all stakeholders.
References
Hickey, S., & Mohan, G. (2004). Participation--from tyranny to transformation? Exploring new approaches to participation in development. Zed books.
Suter, E., Arndt, J., Arthur, N., Parboosingh, J., Taylor, E., & Deutschlander, S. (2009). Role understanding and effective communication as core competencies for collaborative practice. Journal of interprofessional care.
