AS LONG AS PEOPLE HAVE WORKED together, they have engaged in political games. Motivated by short-term gains promotions, funding for a project, budget increases, status with the boss people misuse their time and energy. Today, when many organizations are fighting for their lives and scarce resources there is increased stress and anxiety, and employees are engaging in games more intensely than ever before.

Organizational experts Mauricio Goldstein and Philip Read argue that office games those manipulative behaviors that distract employees from achieving their mission are both conscious and unconscious. They can and should be effectively minimized. In Games at Work, the authors offer tools to diagnose the most common games that people play and outline a three-step process to effectively deal with them. Some of the games they explore include:

• GOTCHA: identifying and communicating others’ mistakes in an effort to win points from higher-ups
• GOSSIP: engaging in the classic rumor mill to gain political advantage
• SANDBAGGING: purposely low-balling sales forecasts as a negotiating ploy
• GRAY ZONE: deliberately fostering ambiguity or lack of clarity about who should do what to avoid accountability

Filled with real-world, entertaining examples of games in action, Games at Work is an invaluable resource for managers and all professionals who want to substitute straight talk for games in their organizations and boost productivity, commitment, innovation, and ultimately the bottom line.

Mauricio Goldstein is the founder of Pulsus Consulting Group. His passion is to catalyze organizational transformations by creating a deeper connection of people and organizations to their essence. Mauricio has applied his innovative approach to a number of Fortune 500 companies, such as AstraZeneca, Cargill, J&J, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Sodexo, and Schering-Plough, in Latin America, North America, Europe, and Africa.

Philip Read has worked in a number of senior roles in human resources for Fortune 100 companies over the last twenty-two years. He has lived and worked in the United Kingdom, the United States, China, Switzerland, Germany, and Spain. Philip has won a number of awards for his work, including the PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Linkage, Inc. “Most Innovative HR Department” award as part of the leadership team of HR for Dow Chemical.

Games At Work

How to Recognize and Reduce Office PoliticsBy Mauricio Goldstein

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2009 Mauricio Goldstein
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-26200-9

Chapter One

Let the Games Begin What Games Are and How They Are Played in Organizations

Games would be easier for people to deal with if they were purely conscious activities, limited in number, and overtly played. Unfortunately, people are often unaware that they’re playing games, and a variety of games exist, many of which are covert and subtle in nature. Thus an understanding of organizational games is essential. If you’re aware of the particular games you or your people play and how they affect individuals and the organization, you’re in a much better position to handle them. A lack of knowledge about games allows them to thrive. The more you know, the better able you’ll be to limit their damage and turn the energy of your people in more productive directions.

Therefore, we want to focus here on helping you understand what an organizational game is and the common types. First, though, we need to define our terms.

The Theory and Practice of Games

At its most basic level, a game is a competition between two or more people in which the object is to win. No doubt, you’ve played board games, sports games, and the like, for which the rules of play are strictly defined. Games aren’t always so simple or transparent, however. A branch of mathematics is devoted to “game theory,” which was developed by John von Neumann in his book Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour ([1944] 2007, with Oskar Morgenstern). Neumann demonstrated that there was more to games than probability; he coined such terms as “zero sum games” and “payoffs.”

Of greater familiarity is the work of psychiatrist Eric Berne ([1964] 1996), the founder of transactional analysis, who wrote the book Games People Play. Berne suggested that many social interactions revolve around games-that is, the interactions seem to be about one thing, but beneath the surface are concealed motivations and attempts to gain payoffs. Berne posits that these games are dishonest and prevent more meaningful ways of living.

In short, the mathematical and psychological theorists recognize that games are more than they seem, that they are often driven by hidden agendas and personal payoffs, and that they can do more harm than good.

Now let’s bring this theoretical construct to life with the story of one particular game we observed being played in a large organization. The company had recently introduced a 360-degree feedback tool to foster manager development. Harold, a senior manager, received a significant amount of negative feedback from his team. Shortly thereafter, he contacted Stan, an HR executive in charge of the feedback program, and said he would like to have a meeting with his team. Harold explained to Stan that he wanted a better understanding of what behaviors he needed to change as well as more examples of behaviors that caused problems for team members. He emphasized that he wanted to communicate to his team that he cared about their feedback.

Given Harold’s comments, Stan thought a meeting would be productive. Nonetheless, Stan insisted that certain ground rules be observed during the meeting, including refraining from defensiveness or accusations. Harold agreed to these ground rules.

When the meeting started, Harold was humble and polished, and seemed eager to hear additional feedback. People opened up and shared their concerns. As everyone talked about possible solutions to the problems raised, Harold became a bit defensive. Still, he seemed committed to implementing some of their suggestions until he mentioned that he intended to talk to the company’s CEO, with whom he had a “close relationship,” about what might be done about team morale. Then Harold said that it was too bad that a few people were spoiling things for the rest of the team. Immediately, a look of fear appeared on the faces of several team members; they clearly took this reference to mean that he intended to get rid of or move out some people.

After the meeting, Stan debriefed Harold about how things had gone, and Harold said the meeting was useful because “I figured out who was behind this, and that these individuals were a serious drag on department productivity because of their negativity.”

In the following months, Harold created a tremendously antagonistic environment within his department, setting people against each other and focusing their energy on conflict rather than work objectives. Though Harold was eventually fired, his gamesmanship was very destructive.

The games Harold played included the following:

Token Involvement. In this game, you pretend you want the input of others but are actually pursuing your own agenda. Harold suggested that he wanted to hold the meeting for the good of his team and for his own self-improvement, but in reality his goal was to identify people who were criticizing him, and he ignored the feedback.

The Boss Said. In this game, you ally yourself with a powerful figure in order to intimidate others. Harold’s reference to his close relationship with the CEO had this purpose.

Gotcha. In this game, the goal is to catch and punish people who have “erred.” Harold obviously used the meeting to figure out who was behind the negative responses in the original 360-degree feedback.

We should add that Harold may not have been playing these games on a conscious level; he may have initially wanted to use the meeting to become a better manager. Once the meeting started, though, Harold reverted reflexively to games he had played throughout his managerial career. In Harold’s mind, he may have rationalized that he was simply protecting himself and his team from negative influences, but in reality, he was playing his favorite games.

The Traits: Signs and Symptoms That a Game Is Being Played

Defining something as a game can become a question of semantics. You can make the argument that just about any organizational activity is a game of some sort. When you take a few too many watercooler breaks, you’re playing the “delay” game. When you spend one day working hard in your office and don’t do your usual socializing in the hallway, you’re playing the “turtle” game.

We don’t define games so broadly. Or rather, our focus is on counterproductive games-those that drain people’s time and energy, involve more than one person, and have ulterior motives and negative consequences for the organization. The following are the five traits that characterize these games:

1. Manipulation. People exhibit dishonest behavior to achieve their objectives. Sometimes this behavior is obvious and provocative; other times it’s subtle. It may involve hiding information from a boss-telling only part of the story to make someone else look bad. It may involve making a problem appear more serious than it actually is, in the hopes of creating false expectations-the professional service provider who convinces a client that a goal is almost impossible to achieve, so that when he helps her achieve it, he’ll come off as a hero. A person who is playing a game is not being straight; there is always some deceit and underhandedness.

2. Paradoxical consequences. Games often involve short-term gain for the player and short- and long-term losses for the group (a colleague, the team, the department, or the company). For example, an individual plays a game to gain power over a peer, but most of his energy is focused on achieving this goal rather than on achieving a larger work goal. He may find himself being promoted and having power over his colleague, but he probably failed to take care of business on other fronts. Ultimately, he and the organization will pay the price for this neglect.

3. Repetitiveness. When certain behaviors become habits, they can also become games. For instance, most managers try to negotiate the budgets they receive from headquarters if they don’t believe they are feasible. This is normal. However, when a manager believes that the budget is feasible, yet continues to negotiate budgets as a reflex or routine response, this behavior has become a game. When you always engage in a certain type of behavior in a certain type of situation, you’re probably playing your favorite organizational game. Games create behavioral “grooves,” and people become dependent on playing them and having people around who play the same games.

4. Contagious effect. Games are viral and thrive in certain cultures. In other words, games don’t exist in one crevice of the organization and remain there. They spread throughout the company relatively quickly. We’ve seen such games as Sandbagging (managers knowingly lowball sales forecasts as a negotiating ploy) spread with surprising speed, because when the game appears to “work” for one manager, others follow suit (and may even feel they “need” to follow suit just to survive and compete).

5. Group activity. You need two or more people to play. This is a crucial trait to understand, as the games you play will trigger the games your people engage in. They will follow your lead.

Games people play can be “interlocking”-that is, the game one person favors can fit nicely with the game a colleague enjoys. When people say that someone is a good fit with the organization or with a team, what they are also saying is that the individual’s games interlock with the games played by a given group.

Beyond these traits, one frequent sign that games are being played is that everyone is pretending they’re not. People are either in denial about games, or they’ve decided that the game playing is limited to a small number of highly political players. If you were to ask them if the majority of employees are distracted and diverted (from their tasks) by games, they would respond that goals are aligned, objectives are clear, performance is managed, and conversations and decisions are rational. They may admit that some political animals who enjoy manipulating others do exist in the organization, but they would rationalize that this is true of every organization and that these game players are a distinct and identifiable minority.

We should note that the prevalence and intensity of games played varies based on culture and situation. For instance, when a company’s culture favors transparency, intellectual honesty, teamwork, and open debate, the prevalence of game playing is usually rather low. In contrast, fear-based, strongly hierarchical cultures, for example, tend to encourage game playing-people see game playing as the way to climb the organizational ladder, and fear that if they don’t play, they’ll be “losers.” In these cultures, games become a way of managing the uncertainty and dependency that comes from being down the hierarchical chain.

Similarly, extreme short-term pressure and environments where disruptive change is taking place also tend to encourage games. In these situations, people use games to relieve the pressure as well as to deal with change; games provide an alternative method to deal with new people, policies, and processes.

Tangible or individually based activities also mitigate against game playing. When people are focused on creating program code or responding to a service center inquiry, for instance, they tend to work alone to achieve a clear, measurable objective. At the other extreme, project-based work, such as trying as a team to come up with a more innovative process to deal with slow customer service, can quickly deteriorate into a game; for example, team members waste energy on the Scapegoat game, scapegoating those who designed the original customer service process.

Now that you know the common traits of organizational games and the environment and situations that spawn game playing, let’s look at our list of some more frequently played games and what they entail.

The Names of the Games: What They Are, How They’re Played, and Why They’re Harmful

What follows is a sample of some of the more frequently played games in organizations. (In the Appendix, you’ll find a more extensive list of organizational games.) In every company, games will vary depending on everything from the corporate culture to work situations to personal proclivities. Nonetheless, the games on this list represent those that we have found to be played most often.

We’ve divided these games into three categories: Interpersonal, Leadership, and Budget. This division reflects the stakeholders with whom people tend to engage in games:

1. Interpersonal games-played with peers and bosses

2. Leadership games-played with direct reports and consultants

3. Budget games-played about the organization’s money

These categories contain some overlap; an individual playing a Budget game may also be playing it in a leadership capacity; or a game that we’ve placed in the Interpersonal section may have an impact on budgetary issues. Categorizing is, however, a good way to get a handle on the main purpose of a given game.

Table 1.1 is the list of some of the most frequently played games, which we will describe in more detail, including examples illustrating the behaviors typical of each game.

Interpersonal Games

I1. Gotcha

In Gotcha, people act as if they receive points for identifying and communicating others’ mistakes. This game is more likely to occur in companies that foster individual rather than collective recognition and that promote internal competition among employees to increase productivity.

Mistakes are seen as an opportunity to criticize others and put them down, and thus people hide mistakes rather than use them as learning opportunities. Also, any criticism will be seen as an attack, rather than as an opportunity for improvement.

Example: One CEO’s favorite game was to go through “prereads” of presentations and try to identify the mistakes in advance. During the presentation, he would point out that “on page twenty-six, bullet point three is inconsistent with the data table on page seventeen.” Even when the presenter was able to defend the inconsistency, the CEO would identify another and then another after that until he “caught” the presenter. Invariably, too much time and attention would be focused on analyzing the inconsistency, and the more important points the presenter was making were often lost.

I2. Marginalize

In Marginalize, individuals are exiled from teams or groups because they challenge the status quo, aren’t one of the boss’s people, or don’t “fit in” for other reasons. This game can be subtle or overt: leaving a person off distribution lists, not sending minutes to her, forgetting to call her. This cuts the person out of the decision-making loop and limits her effectiveness. People are often marginalized not because they’re failing to contribute or are a drag on teams but for personal or political reasons. This game is often played in a passive-aggressive manner-for example, a manager gives a direct report a thankless task that prevents him from working on a mission-critical piece of business, but apologizes profusely for having to give him the thankless task, explaining that “you were the only one available to do it; I really appreciate it.”

Example: The CEO of a food manufacturer had a favorite among her direct reports, a guy who was highly innovative and worked extremely hard. His peers, however, viewed this individual as the “teacher’s pet” and played the Marginalize game by leaving him out of informal discussions, “forgetting” to invite him to meetings, and often ganging up on him when he presented a concept. It reached a point where it became difficult for this individual to communicate an innovative idea; he was discouraged despite working hard and continually met with resistance from his colleagues. Although this story may give the impression that the marginalizing efforts of these colleagues were obvious, the employees were actually quite clever in the way they played the game. In the CEO’s presence, they seemed to treat this teacher’s pet like everyone else. In private, however, they schemed against him in small but significant ways. Ultimately, he ended up resigning and taking a job with another organization.

(Continues…)

Excerpted from Games At Workby Mauricio Goldstein Copyright © 2009 by Mauricio Goldstein. Excerpted by permission.
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