Politics

Matheus Lima explaining politics at workplace.

Politics is just how humans coordinate in groups. It’s the invisible network of relationships, influence, and informal power that exists in every organization. You can refuse to participate, but that doesn’t make it go away. It just means decisions get made without you.

Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some overcomplicated architecture, or choosing a vendor that everyone knew was wrong, or killing a project that was actually working. I bet if you dig into what happened, you’ll find it wasn’t because the decision-makers were stupid. It’s because the people with the right information weren’t in the room. They “didn’t do politics.”

Meanwhile, someone who understood how influence works was in that room, making their case, building coalitions, showing they’d done their homework. And their idea won. Not because it was better, but because they showed up to play while everyone else was “too pure” for politics.

Ideas don’t speak. People do. And the people who understand how to navigate organizational dynamics, build relationships, and yes, play politics? Their ideas get heard.

When you build strong relationships across teams, understand what motivates different stakeholders, and know how to build consensus, you’re doing politics. When you take time to explain your technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders in language they understand, that’s politics. When you grab coffee with someone from another team to understand their challenges, that’s politics too.

Good politics is just being strategic about relationships and influence in the service of good outcomes.

I too thought of politics at workplace is something to be avoided. But politics doesn’t meaning backstabbing your opponent. As per Wikipedia it means:

Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources.