Nepotism, Patronage, Vendettas and Workplace Espionage
by Rick Brenner
Normally, you terminate or reassign team members who actually inhibit progress. Here are some helpful insights and tactics to use when termination or reassignment is impossible.
hen a team member actually impedes the progress of a project, and direct intervention isn't effective, reassignment and termination are the best options. But sometimes, politics intervenes — you can't reassign or terminate because of a constraint from on high. Sometimes the offender is a relative of the boss, or might be politically connected, or might be spying for a powerful political operator. In some cases, the goal might even be vendetta-driven sabotage.
When you can't terminate or reassign the offender, what are your alternatives? Frustration? Madness? Running for Congress?
Often you can accomplish the mission within the constraints you have to deal with. Here are some insights and tactics that can help.
- The problem is bigger than you think
- It's unlikely that this situation is the first or last of its kind. A repetition is probable. Even if you find a way around it this time, you might face the same problem again. Possible nightmare scenario: the person who replaces this offender is even worse.
- Consider a course change for yourself
- Since the situation is likely to repeat, ask yourself, "Do I really need this?" If you have alternatives, think about trying one of them. If you don't have alternatives, get some. Always have alternatives.
- Work the politics
- Evidently, you need stronger alliances than you now have if you want to remove the offender. Build those alliances. Even if it's too late for this incident, you'll likely need them eventually.
You can often accomplish
the mission even when
you can't terminate
people who impede progress
- If you can't remove, reconfigure
- If you can't remove the offender from the team, reconfigure to insulate the offender from anything important. If you do, you'll need a plausible rationale, especially for the political operator(s) who prevented reassignment. Reconfigure in a way that seems plausible enough to divide the forces that blocked a more straightforward approach.
- Find an important-sounding new task
- As you devise the reconfiguration, it's tempting to remove the person from all work. But it's far more plausible to reassign the offender to something important-sounding that isolates him or her from the critical elements of the current effort. Off site is best.
- Identify an alternative resource
- If the offender was uniquely able to do work you absolutely need done, find a consultant, or a contractor, or consider doing it yourself. Make no moves or announcements until you have an alternative resource.
- Adopt a more selective meeting attendance policy
- Shortening and focusing meeting agendas gives you an opportunity to focus the invitation lists. By omitting the tasks of offenders from agendas, you can exclude offenders from meetings.
Most important, be comfortable with a level of performance lower than you normally expect from teams you lead. This problem isn't one of your choosing, and charging the entire performance penalty to your personal account is probably unjustified. It isn't you that isn't doing your best — it's the organization that isn't doing its best.
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The Cheapest Way to Run a Project Is with Enough Resources
- Cost reduction is so common that nearly every project plan today should include budget and schedule for several rounds of reductions. Whenever we cut costs, we risk cutting too much, so it pays to ask, "If we do cut too much, what are the consequences?"
Who Would You Take With You to Mars?
- What makes a great team? What traits do you value in teammates? Project teams can learn a lot from the latest thinking about designing teams for extended space exploration.
Team Thrills
- Occasionally we have the experience of belonging to a great team. Thrilling as it is, the experience is rare. How can we make it happen more often?
Bois Sec!
- When your current approach isn't working, you can scrap whatever you're doing and start again — if you have enough time and money. There's a less radical solution, and if it works, it's usually both cheaper and faster.
Emergency Problem Solving
- In emergencies, group problem solving is unusually challenging, especially if lives, careers or companies depend on finding a solution immediately. Here are some tips for members of teams that are solving problems in emergencies.
See also Project Management and Managing Your Boss for more related articles.
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