Petty politics expands to take all available space in an organization.
- Petty politics expands to take all available space in an organization.
- Up to the size of what the business model can handle.
- If it goes beyond, the business starts to die, and the existential pressure aligns the employees to want to avoid death of the org instead of what's good for them.
- This happens because every employee tries to get a slight edge over others.
- This compounds… if other people are competing to get an edge, you have to, too, and have to go a bit further to get an edge.
- The only way to have this politics not expand is to have a strong leader at the top that can see it and route around it.
- That's very, very hard, because petty politics is only visible in the dark!
- If you shine a light on it, the petty politics hides, out of sight.
- But as soon as you aren't looking, it comes right back.
- It's like cockroaches.