Leveraging Power and Politics

This text addresses power as a motive (good or bad) and power competition. The text contrasts rational processes with political processes and which decisions are subject to one or both of those processes. Leading with power is described with tips on the specific tactics to use. The loss of power is also discussed. Note that the upcoming sections are about change and change management in organizations. If leaders cannot leverage their power in the organization's political environment, they will not be able to change the status quo.

Power dynamics and the rational frame

The National Security Strategy apparatus exists to support the formulation of policy and implementing strategy and thus presidential decision making. George writes insightfully about both the demands of these processes, and obstacles to their effective operation-particularly those attributable to bureaucratic politics. He comments that political scientists of an earlier generation "were intrigued by the possibility that an overburdened executive might be able to divide his overall responsibilities into a set of more manageable subtasks to be assigned to specialized units of the organization. It was hoped and expected that division of labor and specialization within the organization, coupled with central direction and coordination, would enable the modern executive to achieve the ideal of 'rationality' in policy making". He goes on to say that this hope has not been realized because: Some problems of large scale are not amenable to fragmentation.

As an example, the task of central coordination and direction of foreign policy making has gotten steadily worse as the range, complexity, and scope of foreign policy problems has increased. The distinction between foreign and domestic policy has also eroded. George illustrates by noting that the deployment of US troops in Europe has implications for defense posture (DOD), balance of payments (Treasury), and U.S. relations with foreign nations (State). Such problems must be approached from a broader, holistic viewpoint, and there must be interaction among representatives of agencies with diverse viewpoints. This is prevented, however, by power competition within organizations, and between organizations and agencies within the government. As Jefferies puts it, individuals play politics within organizations, and organizations play the political game within the broader context.

Rationalist guidelines for good policy making would include something like the following (George): get all the information needed for incisive and valid diagnosis of the problem/situation; identify all dimensions of value complexity so there can be balanced consideration of value priorities; identify a broad range of alternatives, considering uncertainties; take into account the policy implementation factor; and arrange for feedback information. In a politicized structure, the dynamics of organizational politics impacts all of these by giving a "win-lose" flavor to information-giving and position advancement. Thus, mixing organizational politics with a rational decision making process will likely lead to the following consequences:

  • Each actor acquires information on its own policy issues and not those of others, thereby denying full, balanced information flow to the decision maker.
  • Its own parochial interests and goals shape each actor's participation in identification and evaluation of policy options.
  • Oversimplification and rhetorical exaggeration distort policy debate (overstate benefits of own position and risks of opponents' positions).
  • Actors use their own bargaining advantage to manipulate the flow of advice to influence the executive's choice of policy.
  • Actors may arrange compromises (logrolling deals) among themselves to avoid presidential decisions that might be damaging to their perceived interests, thereby keeping policy issues from rising to the presidential level.
  • Actors may seek to avoid an area, in order to avoid responsibility for it.
  • Actors rely on policy routines and SOP that were previously developed, but which may not be appropriate for novel problems.
  • Actors may be prevented from dealing incisively with foreign-policy issues by the time, energy, and attention expended on internal politics.

As George points out, while the rational frame to organizational decision making may be highly desirable to most decision makers, it is not immune to political influences. The fact is there are politics involved in innovation and change and successful strategic leaders must be effective politicians. The higher one goes in organizations, the more use of organizational politics becomes an important social process; politics are often required to get important decisions implemented in complex systems.