Chapter 4: Master the Political Chessboard-Engage Your Supporters, Embrace the Opposition
Situation: You want to make a difference. You have gotten some strong support from above, but now there is mounting opposition. You know you have to deal with this, but as you see it, playing politics is beneath you. Get over it.
Jim Taylor, is a 39-year-old assistant secretary at the U. S. State Department dealing with the Middle East section. He has dark hair, deep-set eyes and a prominent chin, like Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. "I focus on making a difference and I am not political." Yah right! I joked with him saying that John F. Kennedy once said, "Every mother wants her son to be president, but no mother wants him to become a politician in the process." He laughed and explained that, while he was capable of employing political tactics, it was not his natural way.
His tendency was to talk to his superiors and discover what the "red hot issues" were and then completely wrap himself in thinking about them until he came up with a breakthrough solution, after which he would execute like mad, counting on political cover from above. However, he would sometimes neglect to build the necessary coalitions on Capital Hill or with other agencies or governments he needed to work with to get things done. "I have a tendency to run over people," Jim told me, "But the things I am touching now are so big that I don't think I can do that anymore, and these are things I am passionate about."
Jim and I had worked on a Source Document for his organization that envisioned a paradigm shift for dealing with a variety of Middle East issues. This was different than the conventional approach of shuttle diplomacy of U.S. diplomats to the Mid East that had been practiced for years under the Kleig lights of the media. The approach involved bringing leaders at all levels together in collaborative gatherings in low-key settings to engage in ongoing dialogue about tough issues, people who normally wouldn't talk to each other. In this process, people would build a shared understanding, which would then lead to shared solutions that could actually be implemented.
"Jim," I said, "you are a great guy and your approach really does sound brilliant, but to make this work, you are going to need a breakthrough, starting with shifting your views and attitudes about being a politician. It seems clear that you are a master of the political chessboard when you are dealing with people above you, never getting crosswise with your leadership. You find out what issues are on their political and economic agenda and then find innovative ways to move them forward. The problem is that you have not mastered the whole political chessboard, or are able to even see it, when dealing with those at a peer level, people below you or in other venues! You either try to force people to accept your conclusions, and if that doesn't work, resort to embarrassing them in the press. That's got to stop."
"Yes, you are right. But look, I am a fairly bright, highly aggressive person without a lot of patience and I don't suffer fools gladly, whether they wear a business suit, military uniform, or a dessert robe and headdress. Once I see a logical solution that is in the best interest of all concerned, I expect people to accept it and if they do not, I start thinking of them as idiots. Frankly, I see what you are talking about, and I would like to change this, but I don't know if I really can. Is this really something that is transformable?"
"C'mon, everything is transformable. And there is always a path forward. First, you need to start looking at politics as the 'art of the possible,' not what Winston Churchill called the smartest person dominating everyone else with their solution. Second, you have to see the whole board, not just the "king" and the "queens," taking into account all the different players and contingencies involved. Third, you need to realize that, in taking a stand to make a difference, you will create a widening arc of support and opposition. You engage support by speaking to people's rising needs and expectations. You engage the opposition by recognizing that people have different interests and staying in dialogue with them until your interests begin to coalesce.
"Okay, great," said Jim, looking at me as if he had come to a moment of true insight, "I am on for that. Please coach me."
Teachable Point of View: Master the Political Chessboard; Engage support by speaking to rising needs and expectations; Embrace the opposition by focusing on interests, not positions.
The closer you get to the top of any big organization, in business, or in government, the greater the competition is for top positions and scarce resources. It is by aligning yourself with the CEO, president, or boss, making their agenda your agenda and supporting their decisions and actions, that you will wind up in a top position and garner the most resource. You don't get there just because you are the smartest, or the most accomplished, or most controversial. In other words, you succeed and perhaps even make a difference in large part because you accept that life in all big organizations is political. It means that you play the game and, in so doing, get ahead, rather than you thinking that it is beneath your dignity to do so.
Stand for something. All great leaders take a stand that a difference can be made. FDR took a stand to end the great depression. Winston Churchill took a stand that the British people would not be conquered by the Nazi's. Martin Luther King took a stand for Civil Rights. Taking a stand to change the face of things not only requires courage and commitment, but also a willingness to take bold and unreasonable action. Master Politicians with a capital "P" like FDR, Nelson Mandela, or Gandhi, took a stand and pursued it both diplomatically and relentlessly, even while wheeling and dealing. Not so politicians with a small " p," who take stand then get wishy-washy. Depending on how they read the political tealeaves, these leaders stand for something one day, something else the next day, yet deceiving themselves that they are actually standing for the same thing.
See the whole political chessboard both support and opposition. Let's say you have put together a great vision in your Source Document and converted some true believers, but now you are running into a wall of opposition. You have begun to realize that whether or not you win the day depends not so much on having the smartest solutions, but on how much alignment you can create around them. This means seeing the whole chessboard from the "kings" and "queens," to peers and direct reports, as well as those from other communities. What are these other people's goals and intentions? How do you show up for them? Do you show up as someone aligned with their goals and intentions or as a fly in the ointment? You engage support of your most likely allies by speaking to people's rising needs and expectations. You dissolve the opposition by embracing their concerns-getting where you are going by helping others get where they are going.
Grasp the constantly and dynamic interplay of competing forces. It is important to keep in mind that, in a big organization, it is not only important to see the whole board with the different players and their competing agendas, but to maintain a constant grasp of the interplay of forces that this generates. For example, let's say the CEO of your company wants a functional organization with regional strategies and optimization to maximize synergies between functions. You want to move more toward a regional approach, but your colleague in manufacturing wants to be left alone to run his own fiefdom. Every step you take to move toward a regional strategy generates support, but also generates opposition from your peer. So what do you do? You take into account that "politics is the art of the possible," and try to find some kind of path forward. The best way is to reach out and engage people in a dialogue individually and collectively with a view toward building a shared strategy that will lead to a shared approach.
I have noticed that there are four political strategies that can be best illustrated by four leaders that used them. The diagram below shows each each.
[Insert diagram 4.1]
Develop an exquisite sense of political timing-think two to three moves ahead. Making the smart move is not only figuring out the right thing to do and building support, it is executing it with a shrewd sense of timing. Bill Clinton came into office with a vision of providing healthcare to all Americans. Yet he went about it somewhat arrogantly, shoving the whole bill down a Republican Congress's throat. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, said of Clinton that he had to learn that you can eat an elephant in small bites. According to Gingrich, if he had come with thirty percent of his health care bill the first year, they would have passed it. Then he could have come back the second year and got another thirty percent passed, and by the third year, he would have had everything he wanted.
Template for Action
1. Learn to be charming and disarming-someone who people can do business with. One of the virtues that the greatest leaders have is that they are charming and disarming to friend and foe alike, rather than belligerent or arrogant. They combine strong will and humility in a manner that is enrolling and engaging. Margaret Thatcher said of Gorbachev that, even though he took strong position on issues, he was someone she could do business with. Ask five people you know to rate how likeable you are on a scale of 1 to 5. Then rate yourself on how charming and disarming you are on a scale of 1 to 5. Notice any differences.
2. Stand for something Declare an Impossible Future through a rousing speech, declaration, or manifesto to the people in your group that addresses the stagnating conditions that have impeded progress and led to pent up frustrations. Include an empowering vision and values that address follower's unmet needs and wants and thereby mobilizes their support. Also include key initiatives and programs that you want to create buy-in for.
3. Engage supporters and embrace opposers. Include all of the key peers and opinion shapers and movers you need to engage and enroll. Think about the positions and the special interests of each person. For example, Joe needs to show up as a leader who stands for something. Bill needs more capital budget for his region. Engage potential supporters by joining with them as Clinton did when he said, "I feel your pain," offering a vision that speaks to their unmet needs and wants. Engage the opposition so as to establish a relationship, finding out about their positions and where their interests lie.
4. Create a political strategy and hundred-day plan. It is important to be bold at times, but it is often more important at the beginning when your support is tenuous to be savvy. In FDR's first hundred days in office as president, he enacted creative new deal legislation that he had support for and the opposition could at least begrudgingly accept. These programs represented transactional change. It was in FDR's second 100 days, after he was able to dominate public opinion with his uplifting vision and empowering values as well as by building powerful coalitions, that he would make the opposition irrelevant. This paved the way introducing sweeping transformational legislation, which amounted to an economic Bill of Rights.
5. Negotiate, broker, wheel and deal. If I do that for you, what will you do for me. In once had a conversation with the CEO and chairman of one of the U.S.'s biggest defense contractors, who we will call Biff Moriaty. He told me, "We are frequently in negotiations with government leaders where there is a lot at stake, big egos and many competing interests. To me, a negotiation is simply a process of engaging in a dialogue with others where you go past strong positions and try to identify interests. It's always temping to get pissed off at the guys on the other side of the table and say things that don't help matters. If you stay cool and stay in the dialogue, you will eventually come to a place where you suddenly discover that your interests have coalesced.
6. Dominate public opinion and build coalitions, paving the way for transformational change. It was in FDR's second 100 days, after he was able to dominate public opinion with his empowering ideas and values as well as to build powerful coalitions, that he would make the opposition irrelevant. This paved the way introducing sweeping transformational legislation, which amounted to an economic Bill of Rights.