Being the 90s Part 4: Not Fancy Office Politics? Face It Or Leave It

@enjiewliew just shared with me on these infographics of the 90s working class traits that relate to me. Agree in some of the points which I had been experiencing since the start of working life. I am always keen to start my own startup at some point, but I wish to gain some market experience before doing so. In the meantime, I am also consistently gathering resources for the next leap which I am looking forward to the most. While working at my goal and getting more and more clarity at what I am going to do for the society, it is good to learn more about us especially my own generation, the 90s. it is important as this is the generation that will soon be taking over the world and becoming leaders in the next decades.

This is the continuation of the first post I posted today, the second post, and the third post. Now, the fourth one is about office politics. I think all of us who are working as an employee will be familiar with this. Let's look into it.

When it comes to office politics, is something really not fancy but it is a reality that we need to accept. We can’t avoid getting into office politics if we want to work in a big corporate or starting up some business in a more than 5 pax scale. It is either we learn it the hard way and acquire some skills to manoeuver around the mines of office politics or we totally avoid it by starting up our own business and deal directly with customers. Nonetheless, learning about office politics is something interesting whereby we could learn what’s in for everyone and why is everyone acts like that. It is just like the infamous drama, Games of Thrones whereby there are just so many characters with so many personalities under different houses that bare different ideology. Office politics is the same.

As for me, I worked in an office with around 30 plus pax (the most as of now) and experienced the mini office politics too. I would say there are three sides in the office with two big ones and one small group. However, there are times where different groups may merge for certain mutual interest. Well, it really gets messy if we said the wrong word at the wrong side. Therefore, we need to be streetwise when handling such a situation. No doubt, as a newbie, we are deemed to be the test pets of the seniors (but not all office culture is as such). As long as we are clear on our own scope of works and be diligent in producing good output for the company, it is the most basic thing we can do for the company. On the other hand, it gets trickier when it comes to teamwork with the mix of office politics. We really need to be wary and be committed to the group we are in, blend well and camouflage ourselves if we need to. Unless we are ready to leave the company anytime soon, it is wiser to have a mask on so that to protect our own personal interest rather being control by others.

Then, at a management level, we need to realize the existence of office politics with different gangs and with a different style of work and interest. With that, the management has to have ways to tackle each group differently, like being soft or hard in issuing instructions and different ways of follow up so that all could work as one at the end of the day. I would say this is really challenging and I have to salute those big corps HR elites who can categorize people and have the system to manage thousands over employees! There are just so much to learn.

So back to the slides here whereby it focuses on telling the company not to have office politics for the 90s which I personally think illogical and near to non-existence if a company has no politics at all. Unless a company has a flat management structure like Google whereby new staffs can bypass middle management and propose ideas to the higher ups), there are still politics existing even in such an organization. I still believe in where there is a bunch of people, there will surely be politics. It is easy to get people to work together in hard times, but it is hard when the good times come and everyone wants something in return.

So, don’t avoid office politics but try to face it. If we can’t, then see whether we could get some help from friends or family. There is always an exit for us to leave the company too. Fear not on the politics but let’s make a difference from ourselves.

Images credit to Nomazon