Context

Any time we talk about human behavior such as "politics" and political process, we enter into the minefield of cultural differences. Simply put, different behaviors are more or less acceptable in different cultural contexts. Behavior that could be considered "borderline" in one culture could be considered so offensive in another that it would never happen. When I get into "good politics" and "bad politics" later in this chapter, we need to remember that the norm I am using here is a North American standard and, even at that, susceptible to many local gradations. Some of the behaviors described might be more or less acceptable in European or Asian contexts. The part of the discussion that I believe transcends national and cultural boundaries is the difference in the way technical people (and the organizations they belong to) view the political process. Here I have observed some common tendencies that are worth noting, independent of geography and culture.

Highly competent technical people often have distaste for politics and politicians. Although I'm no psychologist, I believe this may stem from their notion that technical matters are precise (black and white) whereas politics is messy (lots of shades of gray). By training and education, scientists and engineers have a very analytic, problem-solving approach to their work, which involves invoking "first principles" and applying data in the course of various inductive and deductive processes. Often, this leads to neat, "closed-form" solutions. And because many technical managers come from the ranks of scientists and engineers, they bring along with them not only a very strong toolbox but also some of the biases that come along with it.

Politics involves a great deal of ambiguity, which makes many technical people nervous. It forces them to play on "someone else's court," as it were, a place where they feel they are at a disadvantage because their technical prowess doesn't count for much. Seasoned managers, on the other hand, have learned to deal with ambiguity and have a relatively high tolerance for it.

While this is perhaps an oversimplification, it is fairly safe to say that technical people would prefer issues to be resolved on technical merits alone, or perhaps on some mix of technical and business objectives. What they react to, often violently, is the manipulation they see in various discussions and negotiationsa manipulation they associate with the darker, uglier side of human behavioroften characterized by self-aggrandizement and personal agendas. Technical people have a tendency to broad-brush this behavior as "politics" and, in so generalizing it, give it a very negative connotation.

On the other hand, regardless of its nature, just wishing politics away will not make it go away. There is the way we would like things to be, and the way things are. Ironically, some people view bridging this gap as itself a political process.

My point is that so long as you have human beings in the loop, you are going to have politics. Human beings tend not to all think alike; in order to resolve differences of opinion, a political process is unavoidable. So, rather than condemn it, it is better to understand politics as an effective means of dealing with the inevitable need to resolve differences of opinion.