A Detailed Guide to Cleanly Navigate Corporate Politics

While at Shopee, an ecommerce platform in Southeast Asia, I wanted to develop my stakeholder management skills. In order to stretch this skill, I would need to get assigned to lead cross-functional projects. There were plenty of managers at the same level within my department, however, after one year at Shopee, all major-cross functional roles fell under me. To get these roles, I needed to demonstrate that I was competent, but I can’t demonstrate that I am competent (e.g., develop skills) if I am not given prior opportunities (e.g., projects). You can see a chicken and egg scenario here. Cleanly navigating corporate politics can help break into this cycle of projects → skills, skills → projects.

Purpose

Historically, navigating corporate politics has a negative connotation and is often associated with backstabbing your way to the top — a dirty methodology. I believe in cleanly navigating corporate politics by developing a genuine supportive network between you and your goals.

Definitions

• Corporate Politics: relationships in the workplace that dictate how work is conducted
• Clean Navigation of Corporate Politics: developing fluid work relationships that are symbiotic and span in every direction, not just upwards to bosses, but also to peers, subordinates, and across other teams; these fluid relationships will then lubricate the path to achieving our goal(s)

Clean Navigation

First and foremost, clean navigation needs to have an appropriate intent. If we are always pushing our own agenda and use people to get to the top, we will not build genuine relationships. However, if we approach with the intent of building genuine relationships, the agenda will naturally progress.

Cleanly navigating corporate politics involves determining objectives, identifying connections, and establishing relationships. Structurally, there are two types of objectives that corporate politics can influence, which will then be discussed in the following two sections.

Determine Objectives

Before thinking about establishing relationships, we need to understand our objectives. People often think of objectives as a promotion, a title, or a future job which is fine, but we need to break this down into more achievable steps. To ensure we are covering our bases, think about the hard skills and the soft skills you will need to accomplish your goal. All of the aforementioned objectives will be derived from 1) excelling in our existing work and/or 2) getting new meaningful projects.

If there are many roles and the company listens to their employees and places them in their desired positions, then we only need to build broad connections to excel in our existing work and the new desired projects will naturally follow. However, if roles are limited or if the company does not actively place you in your desired position, you will need to build broad connections to excel in your existing work and select deeper connections to acquire new meaningful projects. Determining which of the two objectives, or both, will help us understand the type of connections necessary to identify.

For example, if we have am existing cross-functional project and our objective is to excel, corporate politics can help improve working relationships across teams. Specifically, when assistance from another team is needed, the other team will be more likely to promptly help an ally compared to a stranger in the office.

Alternatively, if you want to build new skills, corporate politics can help get the appropriate projects. For example, if you are working in a tech company, but want to run a farm one day, think about the translatable skills, both hard and soft, you can build now. Managing people and understanding operations are two skills needed for both tech companies and farms. After knowing what skills we want to develop, we can think about what types of opportunities would be helpful. If your end goal is far-fetched, like running a farm, or in your target niche, determine what skills you will need to build and what opportunities may help to get you there.

Outside of these two cases, if you believe both existing and new projects at your current role or company will not help advance towards your goal, then it may be time to consider a role or company change — an article topic for another time.

Identify Connections

Corporate politics boils down to making friends in the right places. So after we select what objectives we want to accomplish, we can identify pertinent connections that we should establish. The type of pertinent connections will vary depending on whether we are looking to excel on existing projects or looking to gain access to new desired projects.

If our objective is to excel on existing projects, we should be no more than one degree removed from any potential project teammates, which correlates to at least a few people per department. This way, we can be personally introduced to anyone we may need to meet. To do so, we should aim to connect with other individuals across teams to build genuine relationships and not to push any agenda. In my experience, personal introductions have made projects move more smoothly, since there is a starting basis of trust through common relationships. For cross-functional projects, more relationships with a lighter touch on each is necessary. Over time, we should always look to meet more people and add them to our broader network since we do not know who we might be working with in the future.

For new projects, developing the right connections is more intricate and the focus should be a smaller number of carefully identified relationships. To put yourself on the radar, we need to establish relationships with key individual(s) and their surrounding circle. Let us dig deeper into how to identify both groups.

We want to establish relationships with key individuals, the ones that have the power to assign us to our desired projects. When determining key individual(s), we need to look at their skill set, then their political powers. For new projects, we should first short list, who has the expertise in the area I am looking to build. If you work closely with the shortlisted individual(s) and know their capabilities already, you should already have a sense of who is the most qualified individual. If you do not work closely with them, you can build a short list by determining who leads interesting projects in your target skill area. From your short list, we then want to determine who has political power within an organization. Political power is associated with rank, but is not always the individual with the highest title in your selected area of skill development. If you are fortunate enough to have scheduled meetings with people on your short list, pay attention to who speaks and regularly garners the consensus opinion. The individual(s) who have the ears of everyone else in the room holds the most political power, which may or may not be the highest ranking individual. In the end, we should narrow down our shortlist to one key individual ideally, maximum of two.

After we have our one to two key individuals, we can then map out their surrounding circle. Their surrounding circle is often who the key individual(s) trust the most and goes to for secondary opinions. Therefore, if you have the support of the surrounding circle, they will push for you when the key individual asks for their thoughts on project assignments. In most cases, the surrounding circle is made up of five or fewer individuals. To determine the members of the surrounding circle, go about your work day as normal, but pay closer attention to the people surrounding the key individual during informal times (e.g., not meetings). For example, who consistently eats lunch with them, who consistently comes back from a coffee break with them, who consistently leaves the office / uses the elevator at the same time as them, and/or who laughs in meeting rooms or offices with them? To clarify, do not stalk the key individual. Proceed with your day as normal and simply pay attention to these things as your day continues. These individuals, up to five, spend the most informal time with the key individuals make up their surrounding circle. The key individual(s) and their surrounding circle make up our pertinent individuals for getting new projects.

Establish Relationships

We have determined our objectives, identified connections, and now can begin establishing the relationships with the pertinent individuals. For both new and existing projects, we can get our foot in the door by genuinely finding our way into their informal time. Informal time, as defined earlier, is any non-meeting time and can be segmented to pass-by check-ins and sit-down chats. We want to gradually spend more informal time with the pertinent individuals. As we spend more informal time with the relevant parties, we can begin to discuss our goals in further detail.

Pass-by check-ins includes chatting while walking, riding the elevator, or passing by each others’ desks. These should be natural parts of your day, so if you are short on time, focus on utilizing your pass-by check-ins effectively. We should start establishing a relationship via pass-by check-ins, as opposed to sit-down chats, because it is typically a lower time commitment for all involved parties compared to sit-down chats. Note that for excelling in existing projects, only pass-by check-ins is necessary.

Sit-down chats include coffee breaks, lunch breaks, or any other casual one on ones. For new projects, after testing the water through pass-by check-ins, we can now invite our potentially stronger allies to sit-down chats to further discuss our goals. The pertinent individuals will likely have different personality types and some may be more willing to help than others. Utilize these pass-by check-in sessions to determine which of the pertinent individual(s) can be your strongest allies by noticing who gives you their full attention as you pass-by and which one(s) have a track record of helping others. Often times, people can be busy, but we want to find stronger allies who wants to support others regardless of their schedule.

As with any relationship, the conversation during informal time should gradually scale from casual to more serious topics. The pass-by check-in discussion topics can simply be genuinely asking how people are doing both inside and outside of work. For people who do not like small talk, we will need to only approach them with topics that are interesting to them. Pay attention to what topics they are excited about and take it as a jump off point. For individuals with no apparent interest outside of work, we’ll need to approach them with intelligent questions about work. We can look to understand how they executed a complex project, what was going through their mind, and how did they make these decisions.

Clean navigation means our intent is to establish a better relationship, not to always have an agenda when meeting people. To make the relationship feel more genuine, I never ask for anything during the first few check-in sessions. When you visit their desk and say hi to them, they should be thinking, “Oh its ____ here to say hi again!” and not “I wonder what ____ wants this time.” Over time, if I visit a persons’ desk three times to chat, one can contain a request, but two should simply be check-in. Keeping this ratio will ensure people will associate you with interesting conversations as opposed to demanding requests. If we are simply looking for pertinent connections for existing projects, rinse and repeat the check-ins.

If we are asking for a new project from key individuals and their surrounding circle, we should execute the prior paragraph, but we also need to structure our thoughts for the sit-down chats. As previously mentioned, these sit-down chats should occur with our potential allies, a subset of the pertinent individuals, which I recommend limiting to two individuals at the start. After small talk, we can start by speaking about our overall goal(s) and the steps we see to get there. Then, ask for advice on what they think? Most people are keen to offer advice because there is a feeling of validation of their opinion. Giving allies the opportunity to help you co-create an idea, if done correctly, should result in them giving you the reigns to take on your desired project. For those curious, this is called inception, since we are planting an idea into their mind. Since they helped you come up with a plan, they will also be more invested in making sure it comes to fruition. By speaking about goals and asking for advice, we come off as genuinely looking to achieve our objectives. If we simply ask for a project or role, the relationship no longer feels genuine and symbiotic, but rather parasitic.

Lastly, I want to caution that establishing relationships does not entail supporting all of the decisions of the key individual(s) or surrounding circle. If you believe they are making a mistake, do not join them blindly, correct them with high impact and high EQ feedback. We want to continue to make best decision possible at any given moment, so do not prioritize corporate politics over the right business choice.

Closing Remarks

Circling back on my Shopee experience, I wanted to further my people stakeholder management skills, which I knew could be done by working across more teams and managing more people. I started by spending 30 minutes a week establishing genuine relationships with each department, including the head, all middle managers, and even a few the entry-level executors. Concurrently, I also paid attention to the key individual and their surrounding circle. I gradually progressed from check-ins to sit-down chats with my largest allies, where I planted the idea in their minds to place me as the person in charge for all major cross functional projects.

Do not intend to push your goals by using relationships. Intend to build genuine relationships, and the goals will follow.

Earlier, I mentioned, after receiving a project, it also takes competence to continue getting projects to advance towards your goals. Corporate politics will help you get your foot in the door (e.g., the project allocations) and lubricate relationships, but will not let you staying in the room (e.g., improve your competence). Ultimately, competence boils down to making good decisions. Next week, I will release an article on Refining Decision Making Capabilities via Solution Oriented Thinking.

Are there nuances that I missed? If you have any comments or questions, feel free to respond below or connect with me on LinkedIn. Please follow me on medium.com/@dhuynh2979 for more articles about leadership and management.