Office Politics: Why office environment is, to me, a WWE’s Royal Rumble
Ajanlekoko, an electrical engineer, is a Senior Manager in one of the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria. He earlier made same post on Nairaland.com
The office environment to me is like WWE’s Royal Rumble, only with a twist – everybody starts in the ring. In fact, most people, especially the young entry level types, usually spend their first few days at work determining what’s up for grabs and just who to take down on the way to the grabbing. In the beginning I like to play dumb, so that I can watch everybody’s strategy while no one’s watching mine. Maybe even become everyone’s good pal, and establish a reputation as the Westside Gangsta – the guy wey no send. That tends to get even the baddest among the bad to drop their guard where I’m concerned. Everybody will want you in their ‘cliq’. Don’t join any, just be good friends with them all, so you can get the grapevine gist easy without having to do the old trade by barter, i.e. drop your own info before I drop mine.
The good thing about this tactic is that (1) everybody is too busy with the struggle to focus on what’s important – which is equipping yourself to deliver on the job, and (2) people tend to forget that you’re actually as smart as they are, maybe even smarter. By the time they figure it out, it is way too late and you have moved on. Of course, you placate them and pacify them, and try to keep the balance.
I am a huge fan of Prison Break. How I’ve been able to survive and come out on top most times is by adopting the Scofield way, i.e. I make sure I put the game together, or modify the game to run according to my script, and deploy the various ‘teams’ or ‘cliques’ to assist unbeknowingly to further my objectives, or at least factor in my objectives with theirs. I rely more on superior intelligence, as Scofield usually does, to take my enemies down on my way up. Whether you like it or not, you probably have enemies, else you’re a threat to no one. We all want to move up the career ladder, remember?
Then, most importantly, I avoid the heavy hitters, cos if you cross their path, they don’t take chances, they basically gun you down in a jiffy. I’ll give you a short example. I have been in a situation once where I was in direct competition with a chic that was actually sleeping with the overall C-Level in charge of our group (not rumour, confirmed gist) . Now that’s a heavy hitter for you. The babe was ambitious, vindictive and a totally proud machine, cold and dangerous. I just generally went into my Dumb Joe mode, while I watched her decimate all her competitors and the others who tried to suck up to her. My hunch was that with her attitude, she has to step on nails at some point. No need interfering with the course of nature now, abi?
At the end? Well, eventually, after a couple of years of her looking virtually indestructible, there was a reshuffle and the oga was moved out of the operation entirely. Before you could say ‘payback’ our girl was suddenly kicked out for defective certificate reasons. Just like that.
Regarding your superiors, I notice some peeps like to take on their ogas. I have a theory of ‘live and let live, it’s their time, wait for your own’, as far as ogas are concerned. I would advise all office politicians to take a page from Handel’s book. In his time he had words with the ruler of Hanover, George, who was his patron at the time. They had issues and Handel left for England in a huff. Do you know what happened later? George the Elector of Hanover in 1714 was asked to become King George 1 of England! Something very similar has happened to me in the last year or so. An oga everyone felt was a total asswipe (xcuse my French), but wasn’t directly my oga in my previous job, ended up becoming my boss in my current job. Lesson learnt? Never let a senior person at work know exactly how you feel about them. If possible make them think the exact opposite. Remember how Michael Scofield (Prison Break again, sorry!) always ends up teaming with the same set of obnoxious and vile critters, but he’s always one step ahead of them all, eventually.
Hope the post didn’t end up too cryptic.
Cheers.
