Monday, February 16, 2004

Office politics can suck

Especially if you don't know how to navigate the political landscape. A great book that I just finished reading entitled Don't Sabotage your Success! by Karen Wood is a great guide to navigating the complicated political environment that is found in many businesses.

I must admit that although I may, on subconscious level, been aware that I was sabotaging my own success in my organization by not meshing with the politics in my office, it took reading this book to really coherently bring together all of the "rules" of office politics.

This books is very well-written and very easy to read. Important topics in politics are introduced and then driven home through the use of real-life examples and stories.

I shared many of the same frustrations and frames of mind that Ms. Wood expresses in her book, and now I have a roadmap to help work through complicated office politics. As with all change in life, I certainly expect my change to be more in tune with office politics to be extraordinarily painful, however, it is nice to have a reference to refer to.

As Ms. Wood says in her book:
"Make no mistake -- the road to happiness and success in most business cultures is not obvious to most of us. This is not well laid out for us in any education we might have received in school. What you may find in this book is some . . . "lessons" contradict everything you have understood up to this point to be valid on how to be successful.

No comments: