“Politics is the skill of managing people and organizations. It is possible to be effective politically without resorting to unethical or sneaky behavior.
Overtime I learned that blaming “Politics” for problems I faced was a convenient way to dodge unpleasant but unavoidable aspects of working with other people. The same went for pointing fingers at management, engineering, or marketing and saying how stupid they were. Pointing a finger doesn’t make them any less stupid of ineffective.(If, in fact, that’s really what the problem is. It is always possible they are smart but just as constrained by the political factors as you.) The same goes for pointing fingers at any individual programmer, manager, or author. Blame simply doesn’t change anything, and it usually blinds you from the real causes and possible remedies of a situation.
Any political or management action that takes place, no matter how stupid or evil it seems, is always one of a limited number of possible choices managers have. The alternate might even be worse for the project than the choice that was made. Without understanding something of the constraints, judgment will always be based on venting frustration than on the reality of the situation.”
- Scott Berkun
Excerpts from his book Making Things Happen.
