Company Politics, and Survival

Politics — it’s everywhere, even (or is that “especially”?) in your company.
Mind you, I’m not referring to politics in the government / political parties sense.
Here, I’m referring to politics in the sense of “activities within an organization that are aimed at improving your status or position”. Mind you, these are typically considered to be devious or divisive, but that isn’t necessarily the case — think of this as everything you need to know to make sure that your career progresses.

When it comes to playing politics, there are two extremes — call them “Enterprise Politics” and “Startup Politics”. The key to survival and growth is to understand which is which, and to know where, on this spectrum, your company sits.

Enterprises, in this case, refer to really large companies — thousands of peoples, many many layers of management, and complex products/services in which any individual’s contribution is de minimus. The last bit is key, since it pretty much ensures that there is very little you can do to positively impact the company as a whole, and measuring your individual contribution as part of this goal is very, very hard. 
In this environment, the key is to not f**k up! To be a wee bit more diplomatic, survival consists of making sure that you can’t be blamed for anything, and growth comes from your ability to find fault in other’s work (“clearing the field” so to speak).

Startups refer to small companies — just a handful of peoples, who know each other, with virtually no management (lots of titles though 🙄) and straightforward products/services in which any individual’s contribution is pretty obvious (“Alice wrote the code, Bob marketed it, Carol sold it, and David does support”).
In this environment, the key is to deliver! Seriously, if you deliver, the company lives on to fight another day, if you don’t, well, no company, no politics 😑.

Your company lies somewhere in this spectrum, and for you to survive/grow, you need to know where. Ask yourself

• • How often do your peers (and managers) call out your wins? Your losses?
• • When something you do doesn’t work out, how much time do you spend “ass-covering”? As compared to introspection?
• • Do your peers make snide remarks about others in the company? Do you?
• • Have you ever pulled a “For Brutus is an Honorable man”? How about your peers?

The thing is, being human, you will make mistakes, and/or screw something up. Even if you don’t, the universe is cold and uncaring, and will ensure that a mistake will be made. If/when your company gets past the “deliver or die” phase of existence, the key is to make sure that the successes drown out the failures, that progress is being made, and that for every “one step back” there are “two steps forward”.
And that’s also just about when you start moving down the spectrum towards enterprise politics. Do note that this will happen, you can’t avoid it. Oh yes, you can be the most amazing “deliverer” in existence, and it won’t make one whit of a difference if, come review time, your bonus is slashed because of that one tiny hiccup in the delivery pipeline.

So yeah, pay attention to the politics, and internalize the incentives — especially if you don’t plan on switching jobs in the near future…