Will noticed rapid movement across the empty cafeteria, and looked up from his coffee. Marian always walked fast, but now she was walking fast even for her, so Will knew something was up. She slid onto the bench opposite him in the booth, and said, "They're spinning off Metronome as its own company."
Will was a little stunned, but more than that, impressed. Metronome had begun as a skunk works, and gradually morphed into a division and then to an operating company. "Lamson did it," he said finally, referring to Metronome's founder, then general manager and now Chairman and CEO. "He got so big that they couldn't hold onto him. Amazing."
Lamson had built an empire. Empires come in several varieties:
- Trusts
- Trusts are empires built around critical capabilities upon which much of the rest of the organization depends. An example is the IT director who uses the IT function as a power base, doling out favors to allies and punishment to the rest.
- Blobs
- Empires can be
costly to
the organization - Blobs gradually consume ever-larger segments of the organization. At first the consumed segments "make sense" but as the empire grows, it becomes more heterogeneous. Blobs tend to grow when there is a shortage of able leaders.
- Federations
- Federations are alliances of peers. Usually one of them is dominant, and the others follow his or her lead. Although they retain formal independence, the reality is more like the structure of the former Soviet Union — a dominant central power surrounded by dependent clients.
- Colonies
- Colonies begin life as outposts isolated from the parent organization. They gradually grow in importance, until the tail wags the dog. Lamson's empire was a colony.
Empires can be costly to the organization. Their rulers can shade decisions in favor of their empires, which can subordinate organizational interests to the interests of the empires. To maintain control, empire builders often duplicate functions that already exist elsewhere. And talented employees who happen to be attached to business units that suffer under the empire might be more likely to voluntarily exit the organization.
Empires present both opportunities and risks to the people in and around them. For the people of Metronome, the financial rewards and career opportunities can be significant. And shareholders can benefit too. But this is the brighter side of empire.
Empires can make the organization less competitive, and less able to offer opportunity to its employees. If the problems become obvious enough, interventions can include reorganization, replacement of management, or even disciplinary action. If you're working in an empire now, prepare for that future day. Refresh your network, and search for alternatives. Be ready to move much sooner than you think you need to. If you wait too long, you might become part of a stampede. And then you'll have to walk even faster than Marian. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- How to Get a Promotion: the Inside Stuff
- Do you think you're overdue for a promotion? Many of us are, but are you doing all you can to make it
happen? Start with a focus on you.
- Ethical Influence: I
- Influencing others can be difficult. Even more difficult is defining a set of approaches to influencing
that almost all of us consider ethical. Here's a framework that makes a good starting point.
- Why Others Do What They Do
- If you're human, you make mistakes. A particularly expensive kind of mistake is guessing incorrectly
why others do what they do. Here are some of the ways we get this wrong.
- Recapping One-on-One Meetings
- Some short one-on-one meetings produce important decisions without third-party witnesses. Instead of
relying on fickle memory to capture these results, send a recap by email immediately afterwards. Recaps
improve decisions and make them more durable.
- Asymmetric Group Debate
- Group debates at work can be difficult when the domains of expertise of participants don't overlap by
much. Communicating is possible, though, if we believe in our shared goals and if we tackle the hard
parts without an audience.
See also Workplace Politics and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
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- The Storming stage of Tuckman's development sequence for small groups is when the group explores its frustrations and degrees of disagreement about both structure and task. Only by understanding these misalignments is reaching alignment possible. Here is a framework for this exploration. Available here and by RSS on January 29.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group