How the exercise of leadership depends on understanding organizational politics

Leadership and the Politics of Organizations

The successful leader in an organization must upgrade his or her skills because the goals of change and improvement in companies are accomplished through "the use of power and politics" (Clement, 1994, p. 33). In his article, Clement asserts that changing a culture in an organization is not an easy task -- and it must be done through the culture. Moreover, on page 38 Clement hits the nail on the head when he writes that employees in search of a strategy to change a company must "watch out for political power plays" but on the other hand must be willing to use "power and politics themselves" -- in effect, learning to fight fire with fire. Political skills within an organization means that the advocate for change must have "direct interaction" with those who want to participate in the change as well as those who may wish to "hinder the change" (Clement, p. 38).

Focusing on culture, politics, and change

It is interesting that Clement waits until the last paragraph of his article to use hot-button words like "coercion" and "manipulation"; those are terms that certainly reflect on the politics of any organization, and usually they are the reason that employees (and many people in all walks of life) are turned off to politics. A classic example of manipulation and coercion has just played out in the months of November and December 2010, on the national political stage. The Republican Party in Congress has announced that it will block any legislation -- including legislation that would extend unemployment benefits for millions of unemployed Americans across the country -- until the Party gets its way with tax breaks for the top 2% of Americans -- the wealthiest.

Meantime, on page 38 Clement on page 34 points to the change that IBM and GM went through -- involving pressure from "outside board members" that resulted in hiring new top management teams -- and writes that "bringing in top management teams…may be what is needed to turn those two companies around." But he quickly goes on to say that if those new executives are attempting to change their respective corporations, they must understand "the network of relationships and dialogue among interest groups both inside and outside the organization" (p. 34). They must understand the culture they are being brought into. Later in the article Clement mentions IBM and GM but not Sears.

But did those new top management teams understand -- as Clement referenced on page 35 -- that "organizational renewal should start at the bottom rather than at the top"? The study that Clement brings to light, by Beer, Eisenstat, and Spector, involved a four-year window of time in which company-wide change programs -- run by "corporate staff specialists" at four corporations -- were "largely unsuccessful" (p. 35). There are several contradictions in Clement's article, which does not necessarily detract from the substance of Clement's themes, but simply offers the alert reader more things to question and challenge in the entire milieu of corporate culture, corporate change, and management.

For example throughout the article Clement emphasizes again and again how important it is for leadership to first understand culture, understand the history of the culture, before working to change it. But after reading through the article several times and returning to the first page the reader is thrown off a bit. Yes the leader must work "through and with the existing culture" but whether or not the culture changes "is secondary" -- is it really secondary? Indeed, changing the company for the benefit of a more efficient organization is more important than changing the culture, but doesn't the culture have to come along too, and embrace the change? And if the culture embraces the change, it has changed. Clement doesn't really go into that dynamic. He suggests that in some instances line managers have led the charge for change, once they have been motivated by top management. Isn't this the place where managers become leaders?

In discussing the relationships of politics and leadership Clement leaves a reader wondering if he is advocating some skullduggery on page 36 when he is discussing that the current view of how power works in organizations is "still somewhat simplistic." If Clement (using himself as the foil) presents "only the information that supports my view of a situation" and others accept his interpretation, then he has power over the decision-making process. This is how politics works in the real world. Pushing one's agenda as forcefully, as craftily, as effectively as possible, no matter the bigger picture or the consequences of narrow-minded power plays.

But at this point Clement should have reminded the reader that not only did he cajole his colleagues into accepting only the information that supported his position, but that he had intelligent, cogent, well-rehearsed rebuttals should any in the group of colleagues resist his pushy position -- that in fact part of politics is anticipating what the other side will argue and familiarizing one's self with the other side of the coin. In an organization that is "a political system" you learn politics and power struggles or you don't become a leader.

It might be nitpicking but in Clement's discussion of what a leader is and should be, he omitted the fact that managers are generally in place to "maintain established processes" and to "contribute to organization stagnation," as Karlene Kerfoot writes in a scholarly journal article on nursing dynamics. Kerfoot points out correctly that the discussion vis-a-vis leadership should center around the fact that managers are "maintenance thinkers" who are there to make certain "the status quo runs right, efficiently, and with as few problems as possible" (Kerfoot, 1998, p. 173). That is not a bad thing at all. Companies need managers because the organization is indeed a political system and has a culture within it and someone has to keep things flowing in the direction that will provide profit and success.

But, leaders are likely more important than managers because they are "creative problem solvers who use their imagination to visualize new connections between ordinary events" and to analyze critically what the company is doing to improve; leaders constantly ask the "what if" questions, Kerfoot asserts. But in the case of big companies like IBM and GM and others, it is much easier to teach managers than leaders. In fact picking up management skills is just a technical matter. Developing leadership isn't so easy; "leadership cannot be taught," Kerfoot writes, it must be learned through experience. (p. 173). It is also true that some executives fear the emergence of leaders within their ranks because leaders challenge decisions, and ask questions, and challenge groupthink.