Corporate Politics

Society Business and Career
1

What had your experience been in terms of corporate politics.

My worse experience was working as a consultant with a major bank where the different area VP’s i.e. operations vs business vs technology and vp’s etc within the groups just wanted to latch on to their power and give people the run around.
Tenure had its power and some of the Jurassic bank officers had too much weight to really do anything about it.

To prove this one guy wrong that his database was corrupt, I had to use temps to pull actual files from vaults for institutional assets and compare them to database records, which showed the guy was wrong.

he still claimed that it was by chance and majority of the info was correct.

The fallout from the project was that although the project completed successfully. 3 vp’s were let go and a senior VP bailed before they got to him.

I have conculded that the biggets red tape problems are in the operations group because most senior ppl have worked their way up from the bottom rung and are rather dumb but want to assert their power..especially in financial institutions.

whats your take?

2

where i work, which is the government we have a very unusual setup with 2 managers 1 supervisor and three employees and one temp receptionist....makes no sense to anyone yet my manager is the favourite of the division director so i doubt this situation will change....we call two two managers queen and princess because all they do is talk and noone seems to know what about...when my superisor asks me questions about timelines with respect to my projects it makes no sense because of the complexity of the project and what is being asked, but all he says is that my manager will not ask me directly (she gets him to) because (he says) she doesn't want me to know how stupid she is...)

she is the what you call the one who has worked their way up and have been there for 20 years started out as an office clerk and now is manager.

so our politics is that this unit receives a lot of resentment because firstly our manager is the favourite and there is a lot of posturing, favouritism in terms of hiring practices, secondments, work loads within the division.. on top since it is a unionized environment there is little that can be changed... thank God I am leaving soon!

3

I have personally experienced that working atmosophere at a govermental job is entirely different than at corporate world, with former being more laid back and less productive.

4

Not so Roman. Politics are worse at bureaucracies, (but you are right about productivity). I have been involved in many studies done at Governmental departments and agencies in many countries, and governments tend to be overly political and everyone is either a political appointee or with some connection thereof. My experience in corporate world is pretty positive (in terms of it being less political), but generally speaking, it is all the same shit. Politics everywhere. I personally deal with it on case by case basis (case being that of imported beer). I don’t miss a chance to put political azholes in their place. Fraudia has valid points about it being more intense in operations, than in other departs of an org. My first job with an English Bank was an eye opener for me. But that was 12 years ago, and now I know better.

5

Citicorp or as I call it ShittyCorp has one of the worst operations groups in terms of workplace quality and red tape.

The common practice was that if I wanted something from you, I will CC my boss and your boss to make sure you get it to me in time.

The very first day i was there another of mah brit-pak bredren Fahim told me, dewd save all emails until you are positive you dont need them, and then print them, and file them, you may still need them. This was especially true becuase we were in syndicated securities trading in secondary markets and people from all sides could make errors that would nto be caught for days..sometimes weeks.

I have experienced politics in other institutions but none worse than Financial institutions including Citi

6

i agree with you roman about the laid back part, and the productivity part, but it is also a generalization too... i wonder what the stats are of a comparison of unionized and non unionized envioronments because it makes a difference... you have to remember that a lot of the old timers who are within the public service cannot leave and will not leave unless they are offered an attractive package to retire early, so new talent cannot be hired and if they are (at least here)its on a contract basis or they are were contracted out... i have to go through so much red tape, levels of approvals to get anything agreed to and i always get everything in writing to the point where i would rather communicate through e-mail then over the phone so that i can have a hard copy for my records for all the purchasing stuff... :)i guess politics happens everywhere....i try my best to stay clear from it, and if it affects my job then deal with the issue directly... but i'm learning as i go along.....(my first experince as a summer student was horrible!)

7

I know of ERP consultants that hate doing implementations for govt and public institutions because the contract and money is not worth the headache.

Not only do we have different accounting standards for government institutions, but the level of incompetency is amazing. One major city was supposed to give a contractor 110K instead kept paying them 110K on a monthly basis and had no idea.

anyone who has dealt with public entity and the whole "encumbrence" issue will know.

8

Aah office politics... heh...
been there...

I gotta agree when Amber says it is a generalization that Govt. offices are more laid back than private business environments.

I happened to have worked at Queens Park last year as a full-time intern through my University Co-op program. I had ta go thru the same crap every single day.
My immediate manager was one of those ppl who would make his staff do everry little thing and all he cared for was his image of being "verrrry parrticular" about minute details. It didn't bother me that much then though but I understood as time went on that he would sometimes delibrately ask something to be done and later deny any such orders...

Furthermore, what I hated most about the environment was when in an inter-department meeting you present a viable solution, it is not accpeted... however if on a later date, a superior says the exact same thing, it is!!! and wo gets the credit... not you!...

Well, I only worked for the Govt. for a year... and it was my choice over working for IBM at that time, cuz the pay was better and the job was challenging. Now, I know that I ain't gonna work for no big company and neither the Govt.

[This message has been edited by Umar Talib (edited April 18, 2000).]

9

Amber,

I see your point, but I think within government sector, things are a bit different for more narrowed down departments. For example, it might be different for legislative related department compared to, say, education department.

I worked for NY State Education department for three years as a co-op intern (NYAhmadi, no intern jokes) and I did not notice much of red tapism there. However, I also feel that the politics in government sectors occur more at higher level as compared to in the corporate world where even an administrative assistant is effected by it.

My designation at that time was basically equivalent to that of an administrative clerk, and I think that I was a bit too at the bottom level to get involved or even get the wind from others on office politics.

10

Roman Yar (just for you, I will let this golden opportunity to pass by) because my yara, I love you too much do that.

I hope that it was an educational experience for you.

11

haaN yaar, I learned a lot.

12

sorry been away..but dinn wanan let this thread go.

I wanted to hear horror stories at work and how people went about resolving such situations or what they learnt from it.

mine coming up soon

13

roman,

i kinda sorta agree with you...where I am if the Ministers office wants something...my boss runs around like a chicken with its head cut off quaking in her high heels...its kinda amusing since she doesn't do anything otherwise...
but seriously speaking...the political game in my office is played everyday...(we make ministerial appointments for arbitrators (judges) so if someone screws up and says something incorrect to say the union or company during the appointment then we can be held liable for that...but because we don't deal with the ministers office directly we have little grief from them..more from unions and companies..particularily companies... i hope i made sense. :)
amber

14

Well..

I have to agree that most people in goverment departments are dregs in the working world.. but it has to be realised.. they are not the best places to work and only the least ambitious people get left behind while other people leave in a few years...
The problem as i see it is, there is no incentive to work better as the salary increase just isn't there on top of that, forget about promotion after a few years unless you kill of a few people (well I just saw American Psycho so you may call it an overhang from it)

I work for the Environment Agency in UK which is a quango but used to be a govt institution in two different guises before.. The people have been working for ages and you get two kinds of people, technical who really know what they are doing and admin whose dept can be streamlined to a third of its size, but doesn't cuz 1. they are all union and 2. they are the people who do the budget..

Oh well.. there is no hope as they seem to be streamlining the technical staff..

15

Fraudia horror stories in offices ;-)...Now I understand why I had to take all those psychology and philosophy classes along with all the techy courses.

Being an ERP consultant (I must mention under paid in canada ;-)) I have to deal with lots of people cum Majay, gammay inside & outside the office. As u know, a consultant can be put under the gun any time, any where and at any place. Anyway, during my baby work experience in this 'save ur ass' world...I have decided to take the following approach to deal with office politics..... I have bought a bullet proof jacket for unexpected attacks i.e I keep a hard copy of all my corresspondence. I don't shy away from conversations & arguments (very contradictory to my personality) even if that means getting fired. As BoSS doesn't have any immediate boss therefore he only kisses president of the company's behind (just to feel psychologically satisfied... wierd!)...this approach is working so far as I'm learning to be more professional and less friendly with people.

ciao,
BoSS

16

You know what I cant stand, its the attitude some companies have. My previous life at citicorp saw such hell...

The company touts its work culture and all, but with no overtime (since you are an exempt officer dammit) and huge hours you kind of join in the rat race mentality.

No one there stops and questions, wait a minute...if 2 ppl are consistently putting in 60 hours/week should we not hire another one..its just expected that you will do it and its a part of your job. God forbid if there are weeks when the work load is slow and you want to leave 15 mins early, you have to go through that whole permission to leave early crap.

Its blatant lies by recruiters. Oh yeah you can move into that department after a year or oh yeah we have flextime etc. When you join you find out, oh you can move but it can be blocked by your seniors if they want. I saw one of my pals get screwed because he had personal differences with the VP of his dept and wanted to move somewhere else, she found out and put him on warning...thereby blocking a possibility of a transfer...and then fired him..

and yes they have flextime but it fully dependant upon your manager to approve it and you have to make a case for it. Why should you? If the company touts this flextime in its recruiting materials and all, the responsibility of the manager is to accomodate workers flextime or instruct HR dept to tell ppl before hand that there is no flextime in the group.

The stupidest thing I ever heard anyone say was the CEO of a chicago startup telling his people, we dont work flextime but fulltime...I wanted to take his kellogg business school degree and roll it up and then beat him up with it but then I did not work there. This was strange coming from this moron because all his company's recruitment stuff as well as corporate culture statement included flextime etc.
and no einstein has ever tried to equate flex time with part time.

I took a turn from consulting and business side to operations mgmt at Citicorp upon advise of some ppl that to be successful you have to have an understanding an appreciation of the various sides of business. I felt so trapped, sad thing is that the big bureaucracy pushes ppl below them to do the same to shine..I did not like who I was there or how i had to treat ppl, saving emails, constant finger pointing and power plays..I bailed in a year...but it served its purpose and now more than ever I am sensitive to company insiders power struggles etc at client sites and act accordingly in the formulation of solutions.

I do really think that in operations people are abused since they are a cost and not profit generating. I talk to my pals working in the operations world and the only aspiration that keeps them going is that they soon will be in mgmt and be bossed around by higher up idiots.

The best feeling is when you are at a client site where there are corp politics and the goons there try to treat you the same way and realize that they have no control on you..pathetic

17

I experienced similar situation when I was offered to work for gov. The manager wanted me to "look busy but do nothing" I ended up doing some "research" there and made contacts :)