Wanted: A touch of Machiavelli

POLITICAL MACHINATIONS within organisations are blocking high performance and should be dealt with head on to ensure organisational effectiveness, a leading HR director has warned.

Speaking at a Staff & Exec/HR Partners breakfast networking event, Kelly McFadden, HR director of Becton Dickinson, said that rather than taking an ostrich-like approach, organisations are far better off trying to control the process and making it an integrity-based affair.

McFadden argued that while the term political has fairly negative connotations, this is not necessarily the case. Instead, she said that politics can be defined as “informal, behind-the-scenes influence efforts to sell ideas, impact the organisation, increase power or achieve other targeted ends”. Whether or not this process is destructive to an organisation depends on the intent.

To ensure that the process was more beneficial or destructive could be determined by two questions. Has the political behaviour been conducted in the interests of the company or the individual? And, have the influence efforts been conducted with or without integrity?

In considering the problem of office politics, McFadden has found what she terms an organisational savvy model to be useful. Utilising a continuum, she said that people within organisations can be either convinced of the power of ideas or the power of personal style.

Within Becton Dickinson, she said that examples of people who tended to be found at the belief in the power of ideas spectrum were scientists who frequently had great ideas, but often lacked the political savvy to sell their ideas effectively to people with decision making power within the organisation.

At the other end of the spectrum you can find your archetypal sales representative who could sell ice to Eskimos. Neither situation is ideal as both result in the wrong decisions being made within the organisation.

To achieve organisational effectiveness, it is important for company leaders to achieve a balance between the two in what McFadden calls the “savvy zone”, the area in which an individual is able to have an impact on the organisation. But this, however, needs to be done with integrity.

An organisation needs people who have both a high level of competence as well as the ability to gain other people’s trust. People who have one or the other are able to be trained or re-assigned effectively. Those who lack both should be managed out as soon as possible.

As a final caution to attendees at the breakfast, McFadden pointed out that “you are not as smart, funny or good looking as people tell you you are”.