Any book or article recommendations on the subject of how power is created and traded in organizations? I'm fascinated by the subject but don't know the first thing about it. (Like many engineers.)
Some people have an aptitude for diplomacy and it comes naturally. Others don't. Some are completely turned off by the entire concept that quality work can't stand on its own. Intuiting and playing the power dynamics in an organization is a critical skill for managers especially (and in particular if they want to set their teams up for success). You can read all the theory and case studies you want but if it doesn't come naturally and/or you don't have opportunities to practice, it's going to be tough to make inroads. You can almost imagine it like the current US presidential nomination process. All the candidates are shit, on both sides, but astute folks know it only matters a little bit because there are plenty of smart people behind the scenes who actually pull the strings and make the important decisions. Those are the career diplomats, who are supported by specialist analysts, who are in turn receiving data and insights from technical staff.
One of the easiest ways to "improve" in this area is to start by trying to figure out what the corporate BD strategy is (as well as the entire industry sector), then try to learn what individuals' agendas are, and finally connect the dots and figure out what critical role you or your team can play in the context of the bigger pictures. That's business. Business is not the same as making things. Business is the practice of instilling confidence and trust in other people, ultimately convincing them to give you money for something they find valuable.
well said! I consider that I fit into "Some are completely turned off by the entire concept that quality work can't stand on its own" group and want to move to "Intuiting and playing the power dynamics in an organization is a critical skill for managers especially.." group.
Sun Tzu it is :)
Our society has a difficult time talking about power. You're better able to get actionable advice from experienced people in an intimate setting, like a classroom, than you will be able to from books. Which is why an MBA may work better in this regard.
A good way to learn is to pay close attention to the way managers talk about it. Movies like Office Space and The Office cut close at the truth, but don't quite get you there. They're dramatizations, moving at the speed of narrative, whereas real situations move at the speed of conversation.
One of the key things to remember is that qualifications have very, very little to do with it. The main thing they're looking for is for other people to like you. "Like you" is manager-speak for the sort of respect that will get them to take you seriously as a manager. If you ask them to do something, will they do it? Even if it has nothing to do with their job duties? That's a quality of a good manager.
Second, they need to need your services and they need to get it at the right price. They once tapped me to hire a junior engineer under me. I could not find anyone willing to work for the prices they wanted to pay, so I couldn't move up. Eventually they decided to switch technology stacks rather than acquire human capital.
During these talks, it was all I could do to keep up with the hidden meanings behind the things they were saying. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it with the benefit of hindsight, there are aspects of that experience that clearly show why there's so much coded language around this process and how I screwed things up by not understanding the language and expectations beforehand. I regret nothing, as I've got way better options than middle management at a non-technical firm.
"it was all I could do to keep up with the hidden meanings behind the things they were saying."
I wonder if that is only a personal conclusion (about the very existence of the mentioned manager's secret social play to not be confirmed by other of your fellow managers), if that is something real but limited to the circle of the company you were employed (so the manager's secret play being nothing but a part of company's culture), or if that is something (almost) universal that is worth writing more about. It would be extremely useful to get more bits if it's the later.
"limited to the circle of the company you were employed (so the manager's secret play being nothing but a part of company's culture), or if that is something (almost) universal that is worth writing more about"
Having worked in multiple companies across multiple industries from multiple countries, and in multiple countries, I'd say it's more of the country/company/industry than an universal culture.
Management culture changes A LOT between industries, countries and companies. The way results are reported in a Mexican company is extremely different from an American company, just like human interactions are very different. In Mexican companies management is far more indirect, but hierarchical, than in American companies. Communication is also far more indirect, there's a very strong "saving face component".
The more a career is related to human interactions, the more it changes depending on the culture of the country, industry and company. Finance tends to be much more uniform across borders and companies than sales, for example.
Tech companies and careers enjoy something almost unique: there's more uniformity across industries and countries than almost any other industry/career. It might be because it is a recent development that spread quickly with its own culture, unlike management, which grew organically and slowly in most countries.
Well, think about power. What distinguishes power? One distinguishing factor is that lots of people want it, very few people can actually have it. The people that have it have to protect it, otherwise it will be taken from them. Power in a marketplace, power in a workplace. You have to protect what you have.
That's the primary reason behind coded language. You can't just come out and say what you want, because otherwise people will have all kinds of opinions about it. When you have power, what you do with that power is something everybody else is going to be concerned with.
It was a tricky class, a lot of it wasn't about explicit rules or frameworks, but reading chapters of biographies and other books, and identifying the sources of power and how they were used.
We didn't have a specific book, and it was a very unique class, my favorite after competitive strategy (essentially applied game theory).
Some of the readings were on Robert Moses, LB Johnson, the movie 12 Angry Men (Henry Fonda version), etc.
Essentially you can take any good biography of a powerful person and try to proactively identify the sources of power they had, how they harnessed and yielded it, and what impact it had.
It requires some suspension of disbelief, since power is usually seen as negative, so you need to be a bit cynical while doing it (just don't be cynical in real life, nobody likes an asshole).
You can do the same in you job (that was actually the final paper): who holds power (and which type of power) over you? Why? Where do they source their power from? Skill? Reputation? Formal authority?
What power do you have? Over whom? Why? Where do you get it from?
This was one of those classes where it would be hard to replicate the same learning by yourself. The other one was negotiations.
"The Power Broker" is very good, but I've only ever gotten about 200 pages into it. I'll have to try again.
You didn't happen to read Caro's work on LBJ, did you? It's surprising your class would use his work twice, but the guy is pretty fascinated with the sorts of powerful people that this topic of study would focus on as case studies.
The textbook we used for my organizational power class was Machiavelli's "The Prince" (yes, I'm being serious). Just replace any instances of murder/beheading with firing and it's a good parallel to the corporate world.
