The Regenerate Web

Timothy Johnson over at Carpe Factum has proffered a post about office politics. While I agree with everything he said, I have some additional things to say. He was covering a post by David Maister which I also liked. Office politics, like all relationship games, is about hidden agendas. When you want to get things done, you need to find out who might be offended by that.

I hear most of you asking, "Why would anyone be offended by my getting things done?" Simple answers are the easiest:

1. They see the job as theirs to do. 
2. They see the job as cheese (more about that later). 
3. They simply can't see how they benefit from your getting it done. 

Those three reasons go along way to describe office politics and why reasonable people often present as roadblocks, or at least speed bumps. I can remember a time, in a meeting when I lost my patience and told someone who was blocking my progress that they were looking an awful lot like a speed bump. As you can imagine, they didn't like it too much.