For most managers, the real competition is not in the marketplace. It is sitting at a desk nearby. Managers compete with each other for limited resources — money, promotions, bonuses. This is healthy for the organisation, even if it feels unhealthy for the manager.
Organisations are set up for conflict. Each department has its own priorities and agendas and has to make its voice heard over competing voices.
This is the world of the real manager. We can all identify smart and nice managers who languish harmlessly in the organisation’s backwaters while those who are neither as smart or as nice rise to the top using their colleagues as doormats to the boardroom.
The missing element is PQ: political quotient. PQ is not about stabbing your peers in the back. It’s about understanding how the organisation works and developing an ability to make things happen in a world of increasing ambiguity.
Converting ambiguity from a challenge to an opportunity depends on building a set of core PQ skills.
There are 10 laws of building power.
- Take control
- Build your network
- Act the part
- Strike early
- Pick your battles
- Be selectively unreasonable
- Go where the power is
- Embrace ambiguity
- Focus on outcomes
- Use it or lose it
Want to know more?
Jo Owen is author of ‘Power at Work‘ (Pearson).
