The Empowered Manager, 2nd Edition

Part OnePolitics in the Workplace:Rekindling the Entrepreneurial Spirit

There is no more engaging and volatile aspect of work life than the dimension of organizational power for which the word politics is shorthand. In most places, people are not comfortable discussing politics openly. We know it is woven into the fabric of our work, but to get reliable information about it is next to impossible. In fact, the first rule of politics is that nobody will tell you the rules. When it is discussed, it is basically a negative process. If I told you that you were a very political person, you would take it either as an insult or at best as a mixed blessing.

The breeding ground for organizational politics as we know it is the patriarchal mind-set that pervades life in our workplaces. The essence of a patriarchal way of doing business is the choice for safety, predictability, and control. In our search for positive political acts we are forced to confront those forces in the organization that support patriarchy and make the internal entrepreneur a rare species.

This book offers an antidote to the patriarchal mentality that is bred in organizations. Patriarchy is a state of mind and exists regardless of the size of the organization or the level at which you work. The core of this mind-set is to believe the world and its people are fundamentally chaotic and self-centered and therefore have ...