Jordan looked up to see Stephanie standing in his doorway. She didn't look happy. With her eyes, she asked him for some time. Jordan rolled over towards his table and pointed to a chair, palm up. Stephanie closed the door, set down her water bottle and slowly sat.
False opportunities
appear to be chances
to contribute or achieve.
They aren't."Bad day," she began. "Marigold might be shelved."
Jordan had no words. Stephanie had created Marigold, and she'd hoped for a ride on its success. Marigold was a great idea, and she certainly deserved recognition. "I don't understand," he said. "Why?"
Stephanie stared at her water bottle. "Emmons mumbled something about new priorities from Diamond Square, that's all I know."
"But he must have known," said Jordan. "Why would he give you Marigold only to shut it down a month later?"
Lots of possibilities. Stephanie's predicament could be the result of having accepted a false opportunity. A false opportunity is a tactic some managers use to manipulate subordinates or to build empires. Here are some kinds of false opportunities.
- The rhinestone
- It glitters, but it's worthless. A rhinestone looks like an opportunity, but the grantor can undermine it in important ways: offering it too late; providing insufficient resources; requiring impossibly short completion dates or impossible amounts of work; or failing to remove conflicting demands.
- The diversion
- The offer might be less desirable than another opportunity that's out of your awareness or isn't yet announced. Once you accept, you're tied up, and unavailable for the really good one that comes along.
- The dead end
- It looks like an opportunity, but it's under threat of material change, such as reorganization, acquisition, or downsizing; or a new high-level manager might be about to appear — one who's hostile to the opportunity; or a related business line is about to be sold off or shut down; or a competitive project is about to begin.
- The foray
- The opportunity might be an attempt to infringe on the turf of another, using you as a pawn. Sometimes the Foray is covert. If the project works, the grantor might go public, claiming an achievement. If it fails, it fails secretly. If it's discovered before completion, you might be left exposed, and bear some or all of the responsibility for the infringement.
- Calisthenics
- Some opportunities serve only to occupy the subordinate. Even if the project is successful, it will likely be shelved. This kind of "opportunity" is most often secret, because it could lead to demands from others for support for their own preferred opportunities.
You don't have to accept the False Opportunity when it appears — you can consider it a request for a favor, and ask for something in exchange before you accept. Remember to be careful what you ask for. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- How to Get a Promotion: the Inside Stuff
- Do you think you're overdue for a promotion? Many of us are, but are you doing all you can to make it
happen? Start with a focus on you.
- Power, Authority, and Influence: A Systems View
- Power, Authority, and Influence are often understood as personal attributes. To fully grasp how they
function in organizations, we must adopt a systems view.
- Kinds of Organizational Authority: the Formal
- A clear understanding of Power, Authority, and Influence depends on familiarity with the kinds of authority
found in organizations. Here's Part I of a little catalog of authority classes.
- Congruent Decision Making: II
- Decision makers who rely on incomplete or biased information are more likely to make decisions that
don't fit the reality of their organizations. Here's Part II of a framework for making decisions that fit.
- More Things I've Learned Along the Way: VI
- When I gain an important insight, or when I learn a lesson, I make a note. Example: If you're interested
in changing how a social construct operates, knowing how it came to be the way it is can be much less
useful than knowing what keeps it the way it is.
See also Workplace Politics, Managing Your Boss and Devious Political Tactics for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
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- And on May 22: Rescheduling Collaborative Work
- Rescheduling is what we do when the schedule we have now is so desperately unachievable that we must let go of it because when we look at it we can no longer decide whether to laugh or cry. The fear is that the new schedule might come to the same end. Available here and by RSS on May 22.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group