The Most Damaging Process To Production...Politics.

It Takes Courage To Avoid Politics In Business

One of America's favorite pastimes is politics.  Just mention any candidates name in a small crowd anywhere and watch what happens.  If you do not hear comments mentioned about that political candidates name, you will at least notice some facial expressions telegraph that others have heard you mention that name.  Politics is a big time pastime for most Americans.

During an election year the advertisements on all media are flooding the airwaves and dominating the public exposure lanes with one political message after another.  Thirty minutes cannot run past our view without some bumper sticker, phone call solicitation, media advertisement or political message getting inside the center of our routine paths.  Politics is big stuff with Americans.

Take the evening news.  First run stories are usually prepared spins about how one of the politicians tripped on their tongue.  It is fodder for media attraction efforts.  Politics runs high on the popularity charts.  Millions upon millions of Americans run parallel with the world of politics.  It is such a severe process that many workers live in offices that carry on the political traditions inside their employee ranks.  Office politics is big business.  This is even true where young entry level employees pump gas in a filling station.  Politics is everywhere.  Try working in a government office!  Try working in a quasi-public office, one that provides service to other business models, a B2B operation...they have some serious politics going on.  Politics is everywhere.  It runs deep inside the halls of most places where people work.

How productive is the political environment?  I contend that it is not productive.  In fact, in my 40 years of retail leadership the political forces of most working environments has produced a lot of damage to the productivity of most working environments.  I have a long list of wonderful examples.  Furthermore, that list is in a constant state of growing larger every single time the winds of politics takes over.  Politics selects the leaders, the executive directors, the managers, the assistants and the key workers.  Very few of them are selected by the record they carry on the list of true accomplishments they have produced.  Most of the political winds make special arrangements to select who they prefer instead of promoting the workers who get the job done well.  That is not an unusual pattern.  That is how politics works.  It is not a world centered around production.  It is more interested in promoting favors from favorites.

The most damaging process to production is not poor bookkeeping, lack of product knowledge or poor sales and marketing abilities.  Instead, it is the insurgent permissions of high politics that does the most production damage to a business model.  Politics enters while productivity exits.  Favors and favorites become the king and queens for the day.  That is how politics works.  Play it and win the position, but lose in the production game.  Weigh the options.  This is usually how it spells out.

Who has the best opinion that carries the most weight.  That is the key to political victory.  Work that side of your effort and most likely the right stuff will happen to the right people at the right time.  The only thing that will not happen is a higher level of healthy productivity.  Politics will win out at the expense of lowering productivity.  Every business model that has practiced this concept for development has had to endure lower levels of productivity.  That is how it works in business.  In order to produce great success in the business world the numbers, the work, the effort, the pure leadership, the honest learning, the adjustment to errors, the risk of trial and the blood, sweat and tears endured will become the best ingredients for higher levels of successful production...not politics.  Skip the politics.  It produces less.

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The Best And Most Productive Results Require Great Courage To Produce

I have been in a position of leadership almost all of my business life and I can assure you that the most unproductive stuff I have ever done was performed next to my efforts to play politics.  Hands down, no comparison.  Politics does not promote great production.  Period.  End of seminar.  No argument needed.

So when you decide to save your job, get hired or secure your next promotion, remember this...if you decide to play politics to make that happen it will cost your resume' in production results.  One will have to play second fiddle to the other.  That is how politics works.

As disappointing as this may be some would just as soon play politics rather than risk more to work harder on real productive things and generate good real numbers.  One thing is for sure, the stage for looking pretty will need to be filled with a lot of clever spins to work the world of politics well.  If production factors were the lone criteria for determining your future fate of employment, politics would disappear.  Unfortunately, politics matters.  Remember, it is America's favorite pastime.

Every business leader understands this part of the ugly equation to success.  Politics matters.  It may not necessarily produce the most true and effective numbers, but it is as important as those numbers ever could be.  The world of business is littered with the force and dominance of politics.  It is what it is.  Many a great business leader has had to endure this truth.  Many a great business leader has had to watch their productivity become compromised at the expense of pushing higher for increased political awareness and success.  The process keeps many good leaders awake at night.  They truly know how compromising politics can become.

There is not an experienced business leader seasoned in the world of business leadership that does not recognize the truth in this statement...the most damaging process to production is politics.  Politics works its way into the highest levels of production and brings it down with conflict, confusion and unproductive spins.  Every single business leader has come to face this uncomfortable truth.  Every single business leader has had their share of rotten political experiences that have helped to destroy how well they worked their magic on the productive stuff they learned to do.  Not one business leader who got seriously involved with the politics of the day was able to avoid a compromise in productivity.

Favoritism, promises outside of reality, unfairness, cheating, prevaricating and equivocating are all processes of a political stance.  There is not one business leader who has not found a way to discover where they stand on this kind of work.  We all know what it is.  It carries no great secrets.  Politics produces compromise.  Compromise interrupts production.  The simple math of this equation is evident.  It is in the avoidance that is difficult to do.  The world is addicted to the world of politics.  We all play it to our own spin, our own favor.  Some are better at it than others.  The best ones playing it are usually the same ones who produce the least amount of great success in the productive stuff that really matters.  None of us are surprised at this truth.

The most damaging process to production is politics.  Know this truth when you decide to increase production.  Some politicking may need to be reduced.

Until next time...