When you think about people entangled in organizational politics, terms that come to mind include manipulation, self-serving, turf battles, power plays, and hidden agendas. Not terribly uplifting. But Neal Sample, former CIO of Northwestern Mutual, sees it a different way. “I think of a different set of words like influence, diplomacy and collaboration,” he says. “In reality, politics aren’t good or bad. It’s just how things get done in organizations.”
So how should we be more cognizant about office politics versus organizational politics now that the pandemic has shifted the former to the latter? Managers approach it in different ways but for tech leaders, it can be particularly challenging, something Sample calls the physics of IT.
