Most major projects have both advocates and detractors. Even after organizations decide to fund enterprise-scale projects, even after staffing begins, and even during early execution, detractors can remain. In most cases though, voicing objections after the funding decision is in place entails considerable political risk. That's why detractors typically begin to limit their objections to confidential conversations with trusted allies. They might continue to oppose the project, and even try to subvert it, but always discretely, and usually under the cover of deniability.
In some rare cases, a major project's detractors might continue to operate openly even after the organization is committed to the project. They voice their skepticism, repeatedly predicting failure. They do so at extreme political risk, because the people who advocated for and approved funding for the project typically experience such opposition as attacks not only on the project, but also upon their own position and power in the organization. They know that if the project fails, they face embarrassment, possible demotion, termination, or other career-ending consequences.
Open opposition to projects underway often becomes protracted political conflict between advocates and detractors — a conflict in which the project becomes a proxy target.
Detractors know that unless they prevail, the advocates can use the project's success to consolidate their own power and influence, while they curtail the future influence of the detractors. When detractors commit to opposing the project openly, they do so with the understanding that project failure is the only outcome consistent with their own long-term well being within the organization. They must then act to ensure project failure. Here are some of the tactics available to project detractors.
- Delay
- At every phase of project development from initial proposal to late stage execution, delay can help detractors achieve their goal. They can raise issues to slow decisions and approvals, release shared resources later than expected, and if they supply deliverables to the project, they can supply them late.
- Verbal assaults on leadership
- Charges of At every phase of project development
from initial proposal to late
stage execution, delay can help
detractors achieve their goalnegligence, incompetence, ethical transgressions, and the like can distract project leaders and burden them with the need to respond. Such allegations also affect the project's ability to attract and retain highly capable personnel. - Budget constriction
- Constraining the project's budget obviously degrades its ability to deliver against an aggressive schedule. But even more deviously, detractors can work to constrict the project's budget after the budget commitment for a given period is made and spending has begun. This causes even more delay because of the chaos introduced by replanning.
- Vendor restrictions
- By imposing restrictions on which vendors can supply material, staff, or services, detractors can limit the project's access to reliable outside vendors. Even more devious: change the restriction policy at a critical juncture, forcing the project to switch vendors.
We'll continue this catalog next time, emphasizing tactics for creating project chaos. Next in this series Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- Devious Political Tactics: A Field Manual
- Some practitioners of workplace politics use an assortment of devious tactics to accomplish their ends.
Since most of us operate in a fairly straightforward manner, the devious among us gain unfair advantage.
Here are some of their techniques, and some suggestions for effective responses.
- When Your Boss Conveys Misinformation
- When your boss misspeaks — innocently, as opposed to deviously — what should you do? Corrections
are not always welcome, but failing to offer corrections can be equally dangerous. How can you tell
what to do?
- Three Levels of Deception at Work
- Deception in workplace politics is probably less common than many believe. Still, being ensnared in
a deception can be a costly and upsetting experience. A valuable skill is recognizing the three types
of deceptions: strategic, operational, and tactical.
- Cassandra at Work
- When a team makes a wrong choice, and only a tiny minority advocated for what turned out to have been
the right choice, trouble can arise when the error at last becomes evident. Maintaining team cohesion
can be a difficult challenge for team leaders.
- Exploitation and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I
- Exploitation of others is one of four themes of conversational narcissism. Knowing how to recognize
the patterns of conversational narcissism is a fundamental skill needed for controlling it. Here are
five examples that emphasize exploitation of others.
See also Workplace Politics and Project Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
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- And on May 22: Rescheduling Collaborative Work
- Rescheduling is what we do when the schedule we have now is so desperately unachievable that we must let go of it because when we look at it we can no longer decide whether to laugh or cry. The fear is that the new schedule might come to the same end. Available here and by RSS on May 22.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group