Category: Corporate World (Page 3 of 13)

I recently wrapped up work on the Corporate Politics 101 series for this blog. At least, I wrapped up this phase of it. And I did so with a rebuke of office politics and the people who play the game. But I think there’s a bit more to say on the topic. I wanted to say a word about why I avoid office politics. And why readers should avoid them, too.

Let’s talk about all that.

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At the beginning of this year, I said I’d focus on an overview of life in the business world. I called it Corporate Politics 101. And it now has 9 short posts on navigating the business world!

In this post, I’ve collected links to the entire series in one place for easy navigation. Here you go:

1. Be Nice to Staff
2. Office Space was Right
3. The Peter Principle Now
4. Workers are More Competent than Leaders
5. Event Names are Ironic
6. Structure Hoards Power
7. No Bullshit Committees
8. ‘Best Practices’ are Anything But
9. CEOs are Roman Emperors
10. Special Projects

I hope readers have enjoyed the series. My idea was to present a set of very brief tips for navigating the business world. Especially for leftists who don’t have a background in it. I may add to the series in the coming months, but I see it as largely complete for now.

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Sometimes in the business world a company assigns a worker or (more commonly) an executive to a ‘special project.’ Companies call it by several names. They might call it a ‘special assignment’ or a ‘temporary assignment.’ They might relabel a person a ‘special adviser.’

Readers might wonder what all of this means. In short, it means one of two things. One, the company might be very gently firing the executive. As a nod to the phrase ‘quiet quitting,’ we might call this ‘quiet firing.’ In fact, this is the most common reason and one workers in particular should watch out for. If you’re suddenly relieved of all job duties and placed on a special project without much in the way of explanation or instructions, it’s probably time to brush up the old résumé.

Again, though, this applies mostly to executives. It often happens when a company buys another company. They, e.g., assign the executives from the other company to the role of ‘special adviser.’ That’s a very polite way to move them along. These days, companies usually just fire workers without warning. They rarely offer anything like a golden parachute or grace period.

Two, it might mean the company assigned the worker (or, again, usually executive) to clean up some sort of mess. Maybe another department has become dysfunctional. Maybe the company has a special need and put together a team to handle it. In contrast to the first scenario, this scenario offers benefits and career opportunities.

Readers who encounter this whole situation should first decide which of the two things is actually happening. That determination should guide next steps.

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Like many readers out there, I’ve taken an interest in Mike Duncan’s podcast The History of Rome. Among other merits, Duncan effectively describes the Roman world as it transitioned from Republic to Principate to Dominate.

This takes me to today’s topic in the Corporate Politics 101 series. For anyone who doesn’t know quite how to think about a CEO and their role, try starting with a Roman Emperor. Especially a Roman Emperor of the Principate era.

Like the Emperors of the Principate, CEOs usually don’t demand the total subservience of their employees. They take care to create at least the illusion of worker (or at least middle manager) governance. But they’re still CEOs, not consuls or (god forbid) tribunes.

And much like in the Roman Empire, the overall experience of what it’s like to work at a company can change quite a bit based on the whims of the CEO. The company run by a Caligua or a Commodus feels much different from one run by a Marcus Aurelius or Hadrian. This holds true even if – again, much like the Roman Empire – broader social forces govern the actual performance of the company.

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One of my most popular posts on this blog was an early one about leaving academia. I offered advice to people interested in taking up a non-academic job. But there’s a broader lesson here worth emphasizing. And I think academics often fail to heed it. The lesson is this: incompetence is far, far more widespread in the non-academic world than the academic world. Even though I’ve pointed out before (in this series no less) that incompetence often rises in the business world, I can’t emphasize this enough.

The truth is that there’s a lot of quality control involved when it comes to deciding who gets to be a professor at a college or university. All or almost all tenure stream faculty at most schools have a PhD (or at least a Master’s) in their subject area. And these days, even many adjuncts hold a terminal degree. The degree requirement – while it has any number of problems – keeps incompetence from becoming widespread.

We simply don’t see this in the non-academic world. That world does at times fall into credentialism of one sort or another. But business degrees or certificates simply don’t weed out incompetence like academic degrees.

Trust me: many a fool obtains an MBA.

So why does this happen? In most cases, the answer is office politics. Some people in the business world are very good at convincing those in power that they can handle jobs that they can’t handle and have no business trying to handle. How do they do this? In The Utopia of Rules, David Graeber suggests that they’re able to convince bosses that they believe the myths companies tell about themselves.

That sounds plausible enough to me. But the short story here: some people are good at talking their way into jobs they shouldn’t have. To succeed in the corporate world, you’ll have to figure out how to handle those people.

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