Page - 1

Lets Understand Politics

During World War II, Sir Winston Churchill asked Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then President of the United States, a disturbing question. The question read, "How long is the U.S. going to pretend that the world is not at war?" For reasons unknown, Roosevelt ignored
the question in the beginning. He was also simultaneously misled by the friendly but betraying behavior of the Japanese. Alas! Americans had to pay a heavy price to learn a very important lesson in "International Politics", THE PEARL HARBOR. We all know about this major attack. Japanese disillusioned the Americans, and stabbed them in the back, piercing right through their hearts. The U.S. did rise back immediately and retort heavily, but if at all they would have listened to Churchill in the beginning, they could have saved their harbor from destruction and, more important, they could have protected the lives of over 2300 people and also protected another 1100 from getting wounded.

Through this article, I would like to play a devil's advocate role and ask all the chiefs of small, medium and large organizations, "How long are we going to pretend that POILITICS does not exist in our organizations?" Day in and day out many corporate companies are paying huge prices to learn important lessons on "Internal Politics". Internal Politics in a corporate environment??? Yes, of course. I am sure many of you would agree with me on this. It is not a new term that I am introducing today but am just attempting to bring certain hidden facts to light. Irrespective of the fact that whether it is played at the international level or internal office level, politics is played by certain individuals who seek power, position and, needless to mention, money!!! It is definitely a vital game if it is played the fair way, but ironically, it is never played the right way, at least in the corporate environment for sure.

I have had a variety of experiences as far as office politics is concerned and I have also drawn interesting inferences and learnings out of them. I wanted to discuss some of them here and throw open a debate among leading professionals, and probably we should come up with a strategy to minimize this menace before it becomes another petrifying event like the 'Pearl Harbor' attack.

New Dimension

Many organizations have a CCPM team and most of you will be aware that CCPM stands for Career, Compensation and Performance Management. We must slightly modify the expansion of this acronym to Career, Conflict and Politics Management, and alter the goals of this team as well. It might sound hilarious but that is unfortunately becoming the need of the hour now.

Next

Dr. Dineshkumar Murugesan is currently working with Deloitte as Manager-US Human Resources at Hyderabad. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science Engineering and a Master’s in Human Resource Management.
This article expresses his own personal views and does not represent his current or any previous organizations' views. The characters mentioned in the story are imaginary and do not represent any real life characters.