What is acting political?

I know that an engine is a series of highly integrated and interconnected parts that have very small tolerances. And I know that oil is the main ingredient that buffers each surface and allows these parts to move very rapidly. And without this oil, the parts will be reduced to hitting each other. This creates heats and damage; eventually there will be a catastrophic failure and the entire engine will blow. Then you are left with a car that looks like a car on the outside but has zero functionality, save for the radio!

I get it, the oil is like politics; it’s the grease that ensures the proper movement of the smaller parts to produce the much desired resultant.  However, I never cared much for the political side of the business.  But, let’s take a closer look at this, because I fear we get confused. When I rethink the above metaphor, what I really see are the following components:

• An engine – well, this can be a company or organization or team of any sort
• Smaller parts – I suppose this represents the individuals or groups or departments of folks. The bottom line is that the small parts ultimately consists of people.
• Oil – In our example above, the oil is often referred to as ‘politics’. Let’s go with this for now.
• The resultant – Here the engine has a purpose or outcome. This is the reason the engine exists; for a series of purposes. In real life, the engine delivers power that sparks momentum (pun intended!) and with this inertia we receive a change in location (we were here and now we are there). This change in location could be a sales goal or business strategy and so forth along the analogy vector.

However, is it really safe to say that the oil is politics? I’m not feeling that one, sorry to bust your nice metaphor. But, what really serves as the layer of protection between people? After all, this is what we talked about when we were praising the magic of the oil. How do people work together at a high rate of speed with very low tolerances between integrated points?  The answer is found in leadership. This is the true oil. Leadership creates the necessary layer of ‘protection’,  if that’s the best word to describe it and I’m convinced that it is not, that protects people.

Leadership must create a safe space where people can trust. A place where people can have the right conversations. It’s a mechanism that produces highly invested people who share the resultant at the highest level. It’s a bunch of folks that actually care and are stimulated to action by their passions of doing what’s right and not afraid to share this information by being vulnerable and accountable to each other. Its understanding that you will elevate yourself only after elevating the engine by achieving the resultant!

Now that that is on the table, we are still left with that term ‘politics’ or ‘acting political’. Don’t sell yourself short by just assuming some level of magic happens that covers off leadership and label it ‘politics’. Don’t say, well it’s political so we’ll have to wait and see. Don’t think that anything is too political. Call it how you see it… acting political is really done by people who are very short sighted. These folks think that they need to elevate themselves by elevating themselves. They don’t see the power that the shared engine can bring. So, acting political is really the process of adjusting what you say to fit your immediate audience.  Doesn’t that really resound with you after watching ‘politics’ on TV?

Bottom line is: “Let your yes be yes and your no be no!” In other words, do what you say and say what you do. Be a straight shooter. Be honest and accurate. Follow through – make your words powerful by embracing them with action.  Sometimes, this crazy world makes sense when one person makes a stand by seeing the issue and being genuine about it.

~   Scott Felten