Corporate Politics - The Elephant in the Room
Corporate politics are everywhere. They inflict every company. In fact, you’d be hard put to find a senior manager out there who has completely avoided the fray. Depending how far you make it up the corporate ladder, you’ll feel the heat the higher up you go. Executives and professionals talk about it all the time, especially over cocktails, but rarely in formal discussions or meetings. If it does come up in a formal setting, it is likely brought up as “We need to reinvigorate culture.” And if you are running a new business in a large company that is developing or trying to develop a product or solution that is disruptive to the mainstream business, then you are likely drowning in corporate politics. That certainly was my personal experience in running a business group that was creating new computers and devices for people living at the bottom of the pyramid. Any product we created would match Clayton Christensen’s definition of a disruptive innovation: i.e...