General rules are usually helpful, because they simplify life. But when we accept them uncritically, and apply them unquestioningly, we risk eliminating valuable choices that, if exercised, could transform our lives for the better. Here's a small collection of workplace maxims that too many of us are a little too willing to accept as true.
- If it worked there, it will work here.
- If it didn't work here, we did something wrong when we tried it.
- If you read it in a book, it must be true.
- The value of a consultant's advice is proportional to the consultant's fee.
- If it's logical, and internally consistent, it will work.
- People always pad their estimates. Never give them what they ask for.
- Working smarter is easy. That's why we tell people to work smarter not harder.
- Managers are people who couldn't hack it doing real work.
- Executives are people who couldn't hack it as managers.
- The cure for our financial problems isn't better products, or more revenue, or new investment, or training people, or listening to customers — it's reducing expenses.
- Making people compete for bonuses, raises, perks, honors, or promotions won't hurt our efforts to create high-performance teams.
- How we dress is at least as important as what we do.
- Anyone's total output is proportional to the hours they work.
- To increase productivity, don't let people use company facilities for private purposes.
- Much of what we accept
uncritically as true,
just isn'tI have a right to appropriate company resources for my own ends. - With the right technology, we can go paperless.
- We don't need people to deliver training — computer based training works just fine.
- The cause of our problems is (pick your favorite): incompetent managers, overpaid consultants, government regulation, foreign competition, unions, lazy workforce, …
- Eliminating theft is so important that the cost of controlling it doesn't matter.
- The typical female executive and the typical male executive manage altogether differently.
- Male (female) executives are more ruthless than female (male) executives.
- Workplace violence will never happen here.
- People who play politics don't really have anything of value to offer.
- The best person to hire for this job is someone who has done it before.
- People can get so angry that they "snap," like twigs bent too far.
- Meetings are almost always a waste.
- The only way to keep us all up to date is a weekly meeting.
- Organized people are more effective.
- Messy desk, messy mind.
- Share price is a valid measure of the company's health.
- Significant innovation always requires a visionary champion.
If you have some more like these, write them down on a piece of paper and tear it up. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- Suppressing Dissent: I
- In some groups, disagreeing with the majority, or disagreeing with the Leader, can be a personally expensive
act. Here is Part I of a set of tactics used by Leaders who choose not to tolerate dissent.
- Narcissistic Behavior at Work: III
- People who behave narcissistically tend to regard themselves as special. They systematically place their
own interests and welfare ahead of anyone or anything else. In this part of the series we consider how
this claimed specialness affects the organization and its people.
- Stone-Throwers at Meetings: II
- A stone-thrower in a meeting is someone who is determined to halt forward progress. Motives vary, from
embarrassing the chair to holding the meeting hostage in exchange for advancing an agenda. What can
chairs do about stone-throwers?
- The Illusion of Explanatory Depth
- The illusion of explanatory depth is the tendency of humans to believe they understand something better
than they actually do. Discovering the illusion when you're explaining something is worse than embarrassing.
It can be career ending.
- Would Anyone Object?
- When groups consider whether to adopt proposals, some elect to poll everyone with a question of the
form, "Would anyone object if X?" It's a risky approach, because it can lead to damaging decisions
that open discussion in meetings can avoid.
See also Workplace Politics, Critical Thinking at Work and Managing Your Boss for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming May 15: Should I Write or Should I Call?
- After we recognize the need to contact a colleague or colleagues to work out a way to move forward, we next must decide how to make contact. Phone? Videoconference? Text message? There are some simple criteria that can help with such decisions. Available here and by RSS on May 15.
- 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