“Office Politics” is a common expression that is used and generally has negative connotations. 
    Jennifer didn't get promoted because Frank is the boss’s favorite. 
    Sally the new boss ignored Jennifer's idea in favor of John’s because Sally had worked with John previously. 
    Jennifer stayed loyal to her boss but when she quit no one realized Jennifer knew how to manage the team and should have been picked as the new boss. 
Do these situations sound like ones that you might put in the ‘Politics at Work’ category?

How about we re-frame the term ‘Politics at Work’ and use ‘Using your Organizational Savvy to Achieve your Goals’?

Sometimes I wish there were no grey areas. I wish there were perfectly aligned cascading objectives from management, the competitors of a product or service were static, and everyone was committed to the organization for the duration of a release cycle, and everyone delivered everything they said they would on time. Truth is most things are influx and we have to learn to adapt as they change.

Building your organizational savvy muscle will help provide some protection from churn. You may read this article and think there’s nothing related to being a woman in it, as this is advice for everyone. That’s true, except the three areas it hits on are: Networking, Self-promotion, and Negotiation – all areas women often find challenging. This article should help you realize the necessity of developing those areas in order to be better at using Organizational Savvy and not be afraid of politics at work. 

Here are three steps to help increase your Organizational Savvy

1. Keep tabs on the environment around you
Think of information as two types: formal information and informal information. Together they help you understand the organizational environment. Formal information is information provided on intranet sites about missions, visions, objectives, it is information provided in address books giving insights on relationships and organizational structure. It is the formal email organizational announcements sent division and company-wide. It can also be found in company press releases.

Then there’s informal information – the challenge of informal information is it’s not a fact, but access to informal information can help in several ways. It can help forecast possible directions of where a division or company may head, it can provide background information on a new leader and preference of work style, it can keep increase your awareness of possible partners or allies for the direction you want to move in.

Where do you find informal information? Try your network – and it isn't just talking with people who are already in your network but adding to your network – your network is dynamic and needs to be adapting as the environment changes.

So first keep in touch with people who seem relevant to the environment that may be able to provide additional perspectives. Second – build your network based on organizational change – if new players are moving into the organization be prepared to talk to them and learn about them, their objectives, how they work. Too often if we were previously in a comfortable situation making these new connections feels like hard-work or even disloyal but it’s all about having information about the environment you are working in. 

2. Make it easy for your campaign message to circulate without you
Have you heard of lobbyists? Again, often a term that feels negative when considered in politics but a lobbyist is someone who tries to influence or persuade a member of government to enact legislation that would benefit their group. The same process is used unofficially in the workplace – in order to influence change or support of an idea you need to have a message that is easy to communicate and understand, and can be appropriately modified to suit the audience you’re appealing to. These types of conversations may be formal and deliberate (presentation of an idea) but many are informal where an idea is raised casually and tested to measure its appeal. Feedback can help with refining the idea before moving to the formal presentation, or can be used for better informal conversations to help build support for the idea.

3. Be open to negotiating win-win situations
Naturally we focus on what we want and strategize how to get it which usually includes a logical argument of the value of what we’re asking for. However, many workshops and seminars on successful negotiations emphasize the need to understand what matters to the person you’re trying to negotiate with. The more you understand what matters to your partner and what outcome they are trying to achieve the better your position to negotiate is. The questions you need to be considering are, ‘To achieve my goal what can I offer my partner to help him/her get closer to his/her goal?’ and ‘What would I consider a reasonable outcome if a compromise is required?’
 
Now let’s consider the situations mentioned in the opening of this article. These are hypothetical but based on true situations. Some may say the outcomes were because of politics at work, but I want you to realize that we do have more ability to influence outcomes if we really step up our organizational savvy and learn to make the insights from our savvy actionable.

Jennifer didn't get promoted because Frank is the boss’s favorite.
Frank may have been aware of the organization environment and a change that was going to happen; perhaps he wasn't afraid to tell his boss and some influential people nearby an idea he had to help the team, perhaps he was able to negotiate the position by knowing what mattered to his boss.

Sally the new boss ignored Jennifer’s idea in favor of John’s because Sally had worked with John previously.
Sally was busy settling into her new job, she already knew John’s reputation and what he was thinking. Jennifer waited to be asked for a meeting with her new boss, and presented a formal plan that didn't map to how Sally was thinking about the organization generally operated.

Jennifer stayed loyal to her boss but when she quit no one realized Jennifer knew how to manage the team and should have been picked as the new boss.
Jennifer didn't renew her network as change was heading her way. She may have failed to tell the new management team that she wanted to become the boss, expecting them to come to her. No one told them she had the skills for the job. She didn't ask for the position or an opportunity for her to demonstrate her skills.

For each of these situations I have seen Jennifer miss out on opportunities because she didn't proactively get involved in responding to the changing environment, hoping someone would notice her skills or ask her opinion, or give her what she was asking for because it made sense to her. But I have also seen Jennifer take action and get results - it took courage to step up but she was able to get what she wanted through engaging. 

 


 

Here’s a term that doesn’t show up very frequently in the standard leadership skills list but is proving to be a success predictor: Grittiness. 

I’m sure we all know someone who has succeeded at their chosen profession and yet when we knew them earlier in life we didn’t think they were the most skilled or talented person in the bunch. Apparently the personality trait called grit can sometimes triumph over the more familiar traits of talent, intelligence, and abilities. Angela Duckworth, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, defines Grit as ‘sticking with things over the very long term until you master them’. Your grit capability shows up when you experience a setback and rather than accept the result the world has dealt you, you persevere and inquire why that it occurred and how you can learn from the situation and try again. 

Researchers of grit are not sure how to teach grittiness or what makes some people have more of it. One hypothesis is that if an individual knows or recognizes that change is possible then that could be a predictor of the possession of grit – so individuals that don't dwell on the failure or think that they are stuck with the skills they have are likely to posess grit to help move them forward. 

Another insight on gritty individuals is that they have stamina for achieving over the long haul knowing the time frame for success is probably a marathon and not a quick sprint to a new skill or way of life. 

How can we translate this understanding of grit to our work situations? When you're experiencing a setback and you’re on the brink to blame the world around you, or assume it’s your limitations that have kept you 
from moving forward – think again, this is a moment to test your grittiness. For every negative statement your brain is telling you think of an optimistic learning question that can challenge you to learn and move forwards. Change is possible; we are all capable of learning and trying out what we learn, to follow up with a new situation and a new learning opportunity. 

If you find yourself setback in someway and catch yourself thinking any of the blue statements below, try asking the question instead and finding one small action that edges you in the optimistic learning direction – a marathon is run one step at a time. 

I don’t have all the skills – what do I need to learn?
I didn’t do so well today – why was that and what do I need to differently?
I don’t know anyone – who is one person I could introduce myself to?
I don’t speak up – who can I speak with to let them know what I’m thinking?
I can’t risk it – what’s the worst that could happen if I did risk it? 
I’m not liked – how can I get objective feedback on my performance? 
I can’t sell my idea – what other ways can I climb this mountain? 
I am behind – what can I drop, delegate, or focus on to catch up and move ahead?

Want to be more inspired on the subject of Grit? Then check out Angela Duckworth’s TED talk: Talk

If I had to rate the various skills I have what would I consider the most important excluding domain knowledge. I think one skill that would come close to the top is being character acting. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I have sat in my office awaiting a tough meeting thinking how would Meryl do this. Now truth is I don’t know if it ever made a difference in how others saw me, but it did make a difference in how I entered various work situations, from giving presentations to interviewing to dealing with difficult negotiations. So yes, Meryl is my go to role-model for when I’m figuring out how to get through a tough situation. I thought it was my little game to help me prepare and get through the situations but I’m now delighted to know there may be a scientific justification to my behavior. According to Amy Cuddy, spending 2 minutes holding a power pose can make a big difference on an outcome such as a job interview as it increases the right type of hormones for the situation (testosterone) and decreases the wrong one (cortisol). She had this hunch when she experienced public speaking fear. She has since completed research on the topic and the results actually support the ‘fake it till you make it’ saying. She is the lady who now has research rights to ‘ it’s not fake it till you make it, it’s fake it till you become it’. 

So today when you’re not busy I suggest you play the game below and aim for a 'She Can Oscar' nomination. 

Working hard and producing great results provides value to the company but unless you have an amazing manager it probably isn’t going to get you the career results you deserve. The trick in the workplace is it’s not just the final deliverable you need to care about but how others, such as senior managers see you get to the final deliverable. You need to be aware that your target customer (management) has limited bandwidth to pay attention to how you’re getting work done as they’re busy getting results and juggling the next set of problems, however the more they become aware of your skills and talents the easier it becomes for you to come to mind when new projects and opportunities are being assigned.

So how do you expose them to the skills you used to get the results they’re impressed with without boring them with the details. Tricky?

Exposing management to how you get to a result helps in you not getting pigeon-holed into one type of project or deliverable. If I see you produce a customer report, I know you can do it, so I may give you another one, but if I’ve had some exposure to what skills it took to get the customer report, and I have a project that requires dealing with complex scheduling and tricky people you may be a candidate for that project if I know your skill set.

As you’re working on the project take the time to explicitly list some of the challenges you’re facing in the project and the talents that you’re using such as:

- Skills to make it happen and getting favors/input from others

- Ability to make trade-offs and handle change

- Knowledge of the business and finding answers

- Ability to juggle priorities

Now if you were a product these would be all the cool features the product would have. However we know management isn’t going to want to hear a feature list. So your goal isn’t to explicitly list these things but to reference them in context. Your task is to look at the list you’ve created and come up with lead in sentences when discussing your project that highlight the talent or challenge but doesn’t get in the way of the business point.

- “We were going to go with person X, but when I heard about the new feature set we went with person Y”

- “We needed someone who had triple horn server experience to validate the approach. Frank was out so I had Joe review it from Team X”

- “We could have gone with X but considering schedule and compatibility with the chip now wasn’t the time so that’s why I went with Y”

This may feel awkward while you’re preparing it. But guess what? Going through the exercise figuring out what skills you’ve used and challenges faced, and actively turning them into statements like this raises your awareness of what needs to be communicated.

When you have time with your boss you should let him know how your talents were leveraged to achieve the project in more detail.

The bottom-line – if you hide what it took to produce results, they might not learn to associate you with certain skills and talents you have. They may learn over time, but that’s if you choose to believe the business world will reward you for hard work and output – and I would love that to be true but appropriate personal marketing can definitely help get the results you deserve sooner.