Bouncing Back

In the past, I've written about those oh-so-painful days in my career when the organization was ruled by political hacks instead of worthy leaders. Fortunately, this was a smaller total percentage of my career than the more productive and rewarding days when I had good to great management. Since today is Friday, I decided to have some fun and write down a few of the absurd and humorous things I encountered during my days of ugly office politics.



So, just to confirm your worst fears, you'll know your office is run by evil politicos when any of the following are true:

1. Your executive-level leader in Human Resources is married to the evil boss, and somehow the employee is always wrong in every dispute;

2. The mid-level boss you admire (but who seems to be excluded from the inner circle) doubles his group's profits and productivity over the past quarter and is attacked viciously by the evil boss for not tripling profits and productivity;

3. The mid-level manager you despise (but who seems to be part of the inner circle) is congratulated for persevering in the face of significant quarterly losses, which were undoubtedly caused by the poor performance of the mid-level boss you admire;

4. You perform a herculean feat and successfully bring home a major win for your company, but since "it's all part of your job," there's no consideration of a bonus or promotion for you;

5. The peer you really hate comes in on Monday morning bragging about how he played golf with the "big boys" over the weekend, and a month later he is promoted;

6. The organization works really hard all year to achieve the stated company goals and earn the incentives promised in a published bonus plan -- then, management regrets to inform you that circumstances have changed in the new year and all funding for the bonus plan has been reallocated (except for executive bonuses, of course);

7. You and some of your very smart and dedicated peers produce a $10 billion, state-of-the-art communications system on time and on budget, and your reward is an afternoon off to attend a group movie event at the local theater -- oh, and by the way, even a clerk who arrived on the job a week ago gets the same reward because management is fair and values all employees equally!

OK, I admit it! That last example really hurt my head when it happened! After 5 years of high-risk entrepreneurial commitment (funding could have been pulled in the early years and we would have lost our jobs), I couldn't believe they weren't a little more respectful as to who the key contributors had actually been at all levels.

But then, that's the point of my list today -- management based on office politics is ugly, unreasonable, irrational, and wrong! However, afterwards, it's ever so wonderful to move out of the shadow of politics and back into the light of common sense and good judgment! If any of my list of tip offs sound familiar to you, you may want to seriously think about your options for moving to a better place.