Games At Work: How to Recognize and Reduce Office Politics - Hardcover

Goldstein, Mauricio; Read, Phil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470262001 ISBN 13: 9780470262009

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2009

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Review

"There's nothing funny about mind games in the workplace, say the authors of this sober-minded guide to understanding underhanded office maneuvers. Simply waking up to games people play and rejecting them is a big part of the battle for executives, say the authors."
—Andrea Sachs, TIME magazine, April 30, 2009

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0470262001
• ISBN 13: 9780470262009
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256