The Politics You're Already In

I hear it all the time, "I don't do politics."

It's one of the most common things people say at work. Usually with a slight shake of the head, as if distancing themselves from something grubby. I get it, 100%.

When most people picture organisational politics, they picture manipulation & backstabbing. People saying one thing in a meeting and another in the corridor.

But here's what I've noticed across nearly four decades of working in large organisations:

The people who say they don't do politics are almost always doing politics.

They've just convinced themselves they aren't.

What We Actually Mean by Politics

Organisational politics gets a bad name because we conflate two very different things. There's manipulation, which is using people as instruments for your own gain. And there's navigation, which is understanding how your organisation actually works and operating accordingly.

If you read last week's piece on why good ideas don't always win, you'll recognise the gap. The best idea in the room doesn't automatically become the decision. It needs a carrier, a moment, and a path through the organisation. That path is politics. Not the dirty kind. The structural kind.

Navigation is knowing who influences a decision before the meeting starts. It's understanding which battles matter and which ones just burn energy. It's the difference between being effective and being right. Most organisations reward the first one more consistently than the second.

The Three Political Positions

Whether you like it or not, you're already in one of three positions relative to your organisation's political landscape. Naming them can help you see which one you're in, and whether it's serving you.

• The Absent. You've opted out. You focus on your craft, deliver good work, and assume quality speaks for itself. This feels principled, and sometimes it is. But it also means other people define your narrative, allocate your opportunities, and interpret your intentions without your input. Absence isn't neutrality. It's delegation.
• The Reactive. You engage when you have to. When a decision goes against you, when credit lands in the wrong place, when something unfair happens. The problem with reactive engagement is that by the time you notice the politics, the outcome is usually already decided. You're responding to a game that was played three moves ago.
• The Navigators. You pay attention to how things work. Not to manipulate outcomes, but to understand the landscape well enough to move through it with intention. Navigators read the room before they try to change it. They build relationships laterally, not just upward. They understand that influence is something you earn consistently, not something you deploy in emergencies. I wrote about the mechanics of influence a couple of years ago, and the core message hasn't changed: influence is a practice, not a tactic.

Why This Feels Uncomfortable

For a lot of people, especially those early in their careers, the word "politics" triggers a moral alarm. It feels like you're being asked to play a game you didn't agree to. That's a fair reaction, the discomfort usually comes from a false choice: you either stay pure and ignore politics, or you get dirty and play them.

That binary doesn't hold up in practice. The best navigators I've watched and worked with are people of deep integrity. They're not gaming the system. They're literate in it. They understand how decisions flow, how coalitions form, how timing affects outcomes. Then they use that literacy to advocate for their ideas, their teams, and their values more effectively.

There is a version of you that engages politically without losing yourself. It starts with being honest about what you want and why, and building the credibility to be heard when it matters.

Three Things You Could Try This Week

If this resonates and you want to start navigating more intentionally, here are three small moves.

• Map the decision landscape. Pick one decision that's coming up in your organisation. Before the meeting, ask yourself: who has already been consulted? Whose opinion carries the most weight? What concerns are likely to be raised? You don't need insider access for this. You need observation.
• Build one lateral relationship. Most people network upward. The navigators I admire build sideways. Find someone in a different team or function whose work intersects with yours and start a genuine conversation. Not about politics. About work. The political literacy comes as a byproduct of real connection.
• Name your position. Ask yourself honestly: am I absent, reactive, or navigating? There's no judgement in the answer. But knowing where you stand is the first step toward choosing where you want to be.

The Real Choice

"I don't do politics" feels like a principled stance. In practice, it's a decision to let other people shape the environment you work in every day. The real choice isn't between doing politics and not doing politics. It's between doing them consciously or letting them happen to you.

You don't have to become someone you're not. But you could become more deliberate about how you show up in the systems you're already part of. That delta between intention and action could be where your next step lives.