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Doubtful, but office politics can be reduced by correctly aligning incentives. For example, when everyone had the same incentives (e.g., increase profits) then

Doubtful, but office politics can be reduced by correctly aligning incentives. For example, when everyone had the same incentives (e.g., increase profits) then there were fewer misalignments because you could at least try to point everyone in the direction of greater profits. I've seen a lot of organizations do silly things like make promotions purely dependent on how many direct reports you have (rather than impact/output/production)-- this creates a bad incentive -- people hire more and reduce profits however, increase their personal profits. (Obviously there is another set of politics of how those profits are split, but that is a separate topic.)

shados 8y ago
Feels a bit weird saying this, but the "problem" (I use the term loosely) is how lots of people don't care about money. As companies like Google are currently learning. When you have thousands of employees who don't give a damn about their salary, their title, or the health of the company they work for, you have to do things the hard way. It's not always a bad thing, mind you.
diminoten 8y ago
Another fun way to suppress office politics is to light proverbial (or literal!) fires that require cooperation to fix. This obviously has the negative property of not at all feeding and watering anyone involved, which leads to people burning out, quitting, imploding, exploding, etc., but if your sole goal is to squash office politics, continually having your team jump from fire to fire will do the trick!
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Another fun way to suppress office politics is to light proverbial (or literal!) fires that require cooperation to fix Strategic thinkers will use the fires to throw others under the bus. This negative behaviour will likely surface as management deliberately torturing employees drives the good apples away. You see this, too, at a national level. A single, meaningful crisis brings people together (think: Pearl Harbor.) A single, meaningless crisis makes people cynical (think: Vietnam). Repeated crises, regardless of meaning, inevitably tear societies apart.
  - diminoten 8y ago
    Good point! I wrote my comment to try and illustrate that politics, while often seen as evil, is critically important to a sustainably functioning team. Society, offices, all groups of people need politics.

shados 8y ago

Feels a bit weird saying this, but the "problem" (I use the term loosely) is how lots of people don't care about money. As companies like Google are currently learning. When you have thousands of employees who don't give a damn about their salary, their title, or the health of the company they work for, you have to do things the hard way. It's not always a bad thing, mind you.

diminoten 8y ago

Another fun way to suppress office politics is to light proverbial (or literal!) fires that require cooperation to fix. This obviously has the negative property of not at all feeding and watering anyone involved, which leads to people burning out, quitting, imploding, exploding, etc., but if your sole goal is to squash office politics, continually having your team jump from fire to fire will do the trick!

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Another fun way to suppress office politics is to light proverbial (or literal!) fires that require cooperation to fix Strategic thinkers will use the fires to throw others under the bus. This negative behaviour will likely surface as management deliberately torturing employees drives the good apples away. You see this, too, at a national level. A single, meaningful crisis brings people together (think: Pearl Harbor.) A single, meaningless crisis makes people cynical (think: Vietnam). Repeated crises, regardless of meaning, inevitably tear societies apart.
- diminoten 8y ago
  Good point! I wrote my comment to try and illustrate that politics, while often seen as evil, is critically important to a sustainably functioning team. Society, offices, all groups of people need politics.