Power games are not necessarily a corruption of strategy, but an engine of execution.
Early in this week, I came in thinking that strategy as a power game is an approach used by selfish, egotistical, power-hungry people. After exploring this for a week, I can safely say not all power games stem from selfishness or ego — sometimes fear, uncertainty, and paranoia can also push people onto the defensive, scrambling for power so they don’t lose their position.
And seeking power — or influence, if I want to be politically correct — isn’t altogether a bad thing. Sometimes, that’s the only path to getting things done in the grand scheme of things. This is especially true when people are involved, making them stakeholders in the outcomes you’ve set out to achieve, and placing the onus on you to prove your mettle.
Think about Trotsky. Or any leader who’s had to navigate internal politics before their peers trusted them enough to follow. Or the mid-level manager promoted to a new position, now stuck in bureaucracy, watching nothing move.
We tend to assume that organizational politics disrupts efficiency and morale. Theorist Jeffrey Pfeffer argues that theories of strategy that lack a theory of power are fundamentally misleading. If you try to implement a purely objective, rational strategy without playing the political game, you will accomplish nothing. Without the exercise of power, “it was hard to move organizations toward particular goals and little of value might be accomplished.”
As I explored last week, perfectly rational strategies often fail because they lack the human energy required to execute them — what researcher Thomas Powell calls the difference between a Mercenary and a Romantic strategy.
Despite the shift in my thinking, I can’t imagine that seeking power and influence can be the only objective of any leader. There’s got to be a starting and ending point, right? But the bigger question is — how will we know when it’s time to approach strategy as a power game?