Political Animals:
A Parable of Office Politics
By Mark W. Sheffert
March 2003
Once upon a time, long ago in a faraway underwater corporate world, lived a guppy. This was
no ordinary run-of-the-mill guppy; this guppy had dreams of swimming with the big fish someday.
This guppy was ambitious, hard working, and loyal. He always worked within the confines of the
school, doing what he was told, swimming in line with the others, and trying hard to please the larger
guppies. He felt his future would be safe and prosperous … but he wondered why he had few guppy
friends.
After his first year with the company, it was time for a performance review. He swam through
the maze of coral hallways to his supervisor’s cave, where he suddenly realized he was in trouble. When his boss started to speak, the guppy noticed for the first time the rows of sharp teeth in his
mouth – shark teeth! He heard the shark’s words, but noticed that his body language didn’t match
their meanings. He was shocked when he realized that his performance only mattered to the shark as
long as it made the shark look good to the CEO, King Triton – and the guppy hadn’t done enough to
make the shark look good.
The guppy swam away with an average performance rating and a paltry raise, certainly not
enough to live on brine shrimp! The guppy felt confused, perplexed, unmotivated and disappointed as
he joined the school again.
Meanwhile, King Triton was reviewing the routine reports that allowed him to monitor trends in the
organization’s performance. He was carefully watching the productivity of several new managers. It
had been the company’s tradition to use sharks as managers, but with sharks becoming few and far
between, he had recently been forced to promote some dolphins into management. They were experienced
dolphins, yet he was still surprised to see that their departments were outperforming the sharkled
departments. What were the dolphins doing that was different from the sharks?
His curiosity aroused, the king summoned his army of ribbon eels, invaluable for their ability to
hide almost invisibly in tiny coral crevices. King Triton ordered his eel soldiers to swim throughout the
corporate kingdom, make careful observations as to the management habits of the sharks and dolphins,
and report their findings back to him in one month’s time.
One month passed and the eel soldiers were summoned back to King Triton. After he assured
them of their safety (that old “don’t kill the messenger” thing), the king listened to their observations.
The eel soldiers concluded that sharks are primarily motivated by power.Sharks work hard to make
others look bad (thinking they can make themselves look good) and are even willing to swim over the
dead bodies of co-workers to get to the top. They like to partake in rumor mongering and back stabbing,
and waste a lot of valuable time doing so. Their negativism becomes a habit that soon spreads
throughout their departments, distracting everyone and diluting energy and focus.
Sharks do not maintain clear channels of communication. Knowledge is power, so they build
reefs around their departments and keep secrets within their close circle of friends. They don’t share
valuable information, and they encourage hypocrisy, secrecy, deal making, rumors, power brokering,
self-interests, image building, self-promotion and cliques.
For the guppies, sharks do not provide clarity of roles and responsibilities. No guppy knows
what he or she is supposed to do, or what other guppies do – they just figure it out as they go along.
Amidst the confusion, sharks like to exploit the guppies’ weaknesses, and relish games that create winners
and losers. They reward guppies who partake in subversive actions, gossip, and negative watercooler
talk. Among themselves and their employees, sharks do not stress responsibility and accountability,
but seem to have a lot of meetings and write a lot of memos without really getting a lot accomplished.
The eel soldiers concluded that sharks do not support corporate objectives unless they coincide
with personal objectives, and that these personal-power motivations have adverse results: low morale,
high turnover, more customer complaints, lost opportunities, reduced productivity, deteriorating corporate
performance, and an unhealthy organization.
King Triton was dismayed. During all these years, he thought that sharks had the management
skills he wanted for his organization. His father had always relied on them, and his father’s father
before that. How could they all have been so wrong?
Seeing their king upset was discomforting to the eels, so they quickly told him that they had
good news. His recent change in promotion policy was having promising results.
The eel soldiers had discovered that dolphins listen to good ideas, share information, build teamwork,
and accept recommendations based upon their merits, not because they like the guppy making the recommendation. Dolphins communicate all decisions that affect the workplace – promotions, new plans,
and bad news.
Dolphins are creative and imaginative. They relish in creating win-win situations. They like to
challenge ideas and then support implementation of all the ideas that are accepted (instead of accepting
all ideas and then challenging implementation). Dolphins have a reliable process for measuring performance
and reward performance fairly, not based on favoritism and cronyism.
The soldiers concluded that dolphins set a clear vision and strategic direction for the guppies who
work for them, and are able to develop a strong team spirit based on a set of shared core values.
King Triton realized that he had been oblivious to the office politics going on around him. He
had assumed that everything was as simple as it appeared to be. But office politics are the reality of
business. Organizations are composed of people, and people aren’t robots that operate formally within
the confines of rules. They have personalities, friendships, insecurities, and ambitions. All organizations,
therefor e, operate with two systems, a formal business system and a political system.
Shark politics – gossip, back stabbing, self-promotion, and power struggles – are to be avoided,
not only because of their ethical implications and de-motivating effects, but because of the waste they
create in terms of time, productivity, and profits. Shark behavior creates and fuels a dysfunctional
organization.
Some office politics are desirable, though: finding ways to get things done, getting collaboration
on a project, forming productive relationships, and cultivating teamwork. That’s the stuff dolphin
managers are good at, and King Triton vowed to promote more dolphins and encourage them to mentor
the guppies with ambition and dreams – like the ambitious guppy at the beginning of the story.
King Triton made changes in his organization quickly enough to rekindle the guppy’s enthusiasm and
loyalty. Under a dolphin mentor, the guppy learned how to navigate through office politics and had a
prosperous career.
And the underwater corporation recovered from its bad case of office politics by weeding out
the sharks and rewarding and promoting dolphins. As even most landlubbers know, a bottlenose dolphin
will smack at a shark that gets in its way.
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