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Managing Power & Politics in Organisations

Module: Module 3 — Strategy & Senior LeadershipCode: MPPO (MVI)Faculty: Prof. Mit VachhrajaniSessions: 3Status: ✅ Drafted

Big idea​

Power is the capacity to influence others; politics is the use of that capacity to acquire, distribute, or protect resources and decisions. Prof. Mit Vachhrajani argues both are neutral facts of organisational life — the question is not whether to play but whether to play competently and ethically. The classic taxonomy is French & Raven's five (later six) bases of power: Legitimate, Reward, Coercive, Expert, Referent, and Informational. Politics becomes destructive when it is covert, zero-sum, and goal-displacing; it becomes constructive when it is transparent, coalition-building, and goal-aligning. The senior leader's task is to read the power map of the organisation, build a coalition around the right answer, and act with integrity — because long-run political capital is built only on competence, reliability, and reciprocity.

Key concepts​

  • Power vs authority vs influence. Authority is the formal right (position); Power is the actual capacity to affect outcomes (often broader than authority); Influence is power applied to a specific decision or person.
  • French & Raven — bases of power. Legitimate (position), Reward (control of incentives), Coercive (control of punishments), Expert (knowledge), Referent (admiration, identification), Informational (control of information flow). The personal bases (Expert, Referent) outlast the positional (Legitimate, Reward, Coercive).
  • Sources of organisational politics. Scarce resources, ambiguous goals, technological change, low trust, high stakes, role overlap. Politics rises where formal authority cannot resolve the question.
  • Tactics of influence (Cialdini). Reciprocity, Commitment & Consistency, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, Scarcity, Unity. Useful both to deploy and to recognise being deployed against you.
  • Constructive vs destructive politics. Constructive: transparent, coalition-building around the right answer, expanding the pie. Destructive: covert, zero-sum, scapegoating, goal-displacing (winning the argument matters more than winning the outcome).
  • The political map. Identify decision-makers, influencers, blockers, allies, fence-sitters and their interests. Build coalitions early. Never surprise a senior stakeholder in public. Reciprocity is the long game.

Self-check​

A newly-appointed senior PM proposes a strategy that is technically correct but will cost three other directors visible scope. She presents it cold in the operating committee — the three directors push back hard and the CEO defers the decision. What is the political-competence diagnosis?

  • A. She should not have proposed it
  • B. She skipped coalition-building. Strategy work is also political work: before the operating committee, she should have walked the three affected directors through the proposal one-on-one, listened to and addressed their concerns, traded scope or sequencing where possible, and arrived at the meeting with at least neutrality if not support. The technical merit was real; the political execution was not
  • C. The CEO is weak
  • D. The proposal needs more analysis
Power vs authority vs influence
Authority = the formal right (position); Power = the actual capacity to affect outcomes (often broader than authority); Influence = power applied to a specific decision or person. A junior with deep expertise often has more power than the senior with positional authority.

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Continue learning​

📄HBR · ReadPower Play (Pfeffer)Jeffrey Pfeffer's HBR distillation of the realist view of organisational power — useful both as a guide and as an alarm system.🧰Cialdini · ToolCialdini's Principles of PersuasionThe official Influence at Work library on the seven principles — reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity, unity.🎥TED · WatchAmy Cuddy — Your Body Language May Shape Who You AreCuddy's TED on presence and non-verbal power — a useful complement to the verbal influence-tactic literature.📄HBR · ReadThe Leader's Guide to Corporate CultureGroysberg, Lee, Price & Cheng on the eight culture styles and how culture shapes — and is shaped by — the political dynamics of the executive team.
🪞 Apply it — reflection prompts
  1. For your top-three current initiatives, draw the stakeholder power map: decision-makers, influencers, blockers, allies, fence-sitters. Where is the coalition incomplete?
  2. Which of French & Raven's six bases of power do you over-rely on — and which would you most benefit from developing in the next 12 months?
  3. Recall the last time a proposal you supported failed in a senior meeting. Was the failure technical, or political? What pre-wiring would have changed the outcome?

📝 Going deeper. Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't (2010) is the most direct contemporary treatment. Robert Cialdini, Influence (revised 2021) is the classic on influence tactics. For the ethical-leader perspective, Jim Detert, Choosing Courage (2021) on speaking up in political environments.