If you've ever run into roadblocks as you tried to get your work done, and if those roadblocks were due to delays and decisions by co-workers, you might have felt that some people were actually trying to block your efforts. Although intentional obstruction is probably rarer than it seems, the ability to recognize it when it does occur is nevertheless helpful.

Professor John Walker Gregory, D.Sc., FRS (left), and Sir Clements Markham, KCB, FRS. As head of the Royal Geographic Society, Markham led the creation of the British Antarctic Expedition (1901-1904). Encountering some difficulty in obtaining funds, he enlisted the aid of the Royal Society. Markham had envisioned an expedition led by officers of the Royal Navy, including the already-designated leader Commander Robert F. Scott. Scott had little command experience, and no polar experience. The Royal Society preferred scientific leadership, and was able to insert Professor Gregory, who was then a respected explorer and geologist, and who had been part of a team that had crossed Spitzbergen. Gregory formulated a sound plan that, in retrospect, was similar to that of Roald Amundsen, who later led the first expedition to reach the South Pole.
Markham, however, had a different agenda. He was interested in science, but more interested in having the Royal Navy lead the expedition. To make Scott the sole leader of the expedition, and to then place control of the expedition in the hands of naval officers, Markham successfully pressured Gregory to resign. The expedition was then firmly in the control of Markham and officers of the Royal Navy. Markham's tactics were a form of mis-promotion. By replacing Gregory with Scott, he gained much more control (in fact, nearly complete control) of the agenda of the expedition. The move, in effect, obstructed the influence of the Royal Society on the expedition. For more about the first British Antarctic Expedition, see Roland Huntford's The Last Place on Earth. Order from Amazon.com.
Here's Part II of a little catalog of obstructionist tactics. See "Obstructionist Tactics: I," Point Lookout for July 23, 2008, for Part I.
- Misrepresenting to regulators
- If the output or processes of the team are subject to regulation, internal or external, the obstructor can convey misinformation to the regulators. The information conveyed might contain a germ of truth, but it's usually packaged in a manner that creates or stimulates the urge to investigate. The investigation is then a source of delay and distraction to the team.
- Agitating stakeholders
- Obstructors who have contact with external stakeholders, such as customers, might elect to motivate them by disclosing information the obstructors consider to be influential relative to their own aims. The external stakeholders then attempt to accelerate the action of the group in the stakeholders' preferred direction, which, by the design of the obstructor, interferes with the group's progress.
- Mis-promoting
- A technique available to managers involves promoting someone into a position for which he or she might or might not be qualified, so as to gain political advantage for the manager. When this is done, there is an agreement in advance between the obstructing manager and the person promoted. That agreement makes clear between them that the manager's agenda is primary, and that the person promoted will take actions to promote that agenda, deniably, in a manner always consistent with organizational policy. That agenda can include obstruction.
- Career trashing
- Most visible, inspiring objectives have champions — people who have successfully communicated the inspiring objective throughout the organization. To delay, or even halt, movement toward those objectives, obstructors sometimes attack the person of the champion. By trashing the career of the champion, obstructors deprive the target task of its voice, sometimes fatally weakening the organizational will to continue.
- Disrupting
- Any complex group effort entails making a series of decisions, and then building on the foundation they comprise. Obstructors can disrupt progress by raising questions about previously settled decisions. The parts of the foundation with greatest leverage are those that underlie large numbers of subsequent choices. These decisions are the favored targets of obstructors who use this tactic.
- Misrepresenting the environment
- Obstructors can disrupt
progress by raising questions
about previously
settled decisions - Both organizations and projects require accurate, effective situational awareness. They must understand the competitive environment, their suppliers, and their customers. By propagating misinformation about the competitive or intellectual environment, or by delaying the transfer of accurate information, obstructors can confuse, mislead, or stimulate debate about objectives, tasks, or persons (especially rivals). The resulting discussions are at least distracting, and could lead to delays and bad decisions.
Now that we've surveyed the tactics, we'll be taking a closer look at them — and how to respond to them — in future issues. First in this series Top
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
The "What-a-Great-Idea!" Trap
- You just made a great suggestion at a meeting, and ended up with responsibility for implementing it.
Not at all what you had in mind, but it's a trap you've fallen into before. How can you share your ideas
without risk of getting even more work to do?
Illegal Dumping
- To solve problems, we change existing policies or processes, or we create new ones. We try to make things
better and sometimes we actually succeed. More often, we create new problems — typically, for
someone else.
More Indicators of Scopemonging
- Scope creep — the tendency of some projects to expand their goals — is usually an unintended
consequence of well-intentioned choices. But sometimes, it's part of a hidden agenda that some use to
overcome budgetary and political obstacles.
Telephonic Deceptions: II
- Deception at work probably wasn't invented at work. Most likely it is a continuation of deception in
the rest of life. But the technologies of the modern workplace offer new opportunities to practice the
art. Here's Part II of a handy guide for telephonic self-defense.
Problem Displacement and Technical Debt
- The term problem displacement describes situations in which solving one problem creates another.
It sometimes leads to incurring technical debt. How? What can we do about it?
See also Workplace Politics and Conflict Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 1: The Big Power of Little Words
- Big, fancy words, like commensurate or obfuscation, tend to be more noticed than the little everyday words, like yet or best. That might be why the little words can be so much more powerful, steering conversations where their users want them to go. Available here and by RSS on February 1.
And on February 8: Kerfuffles That Seem Like Something More
- Much of what we regard as political conflict is a series of squabbles commonly called kerfuffles. They captivate us while they're underway, but after a month or two they're forgotten. Why do they happen? Why do they persist? Available here and by RSS on February 8.
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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