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  • Hi, I'm Stu Tubbs. I'm a professor at Eastern Michigan University, a former Dean of the College of Business

  • and I've spent 43 years

  • in higher education

  • and one of the things that's probably been the most frustrating to me has been dealing with

  • office politics

  • what I'd like to do is to invite you to come to our program on surviving

  • office politics

  • interestingly there was a study done years ago at M.I.T. and what they did was they took people who

  • had graduated from M.I.T., mostly in

  • engineering

  • and they brought them back every year for 15 years

  • to talk about what were the

  • things that they experienced

  • what they found was that their technical education was great

  • and all the technical problems were solved well, but all the problems that they had in terms of their career and becoming successful had to do with

  • the people side of the business, it had to do with what they called office politics

  • and then there's another study

  • published in the journal of accountancy that talked about all the different things that could potentially stress you on the job

  • things like at the top: travel or the amount of responsibility or how much work that you have to do

  • or how much too many meetings that you have to go to

  • what you see at the very bottom

  • the one thing that stressed people most at work

  • is office politics

  • and so in our seminar

  • we're gonna talk about what are the things that

  • make up office politics what are the things that you can do

  • to try to survive office politics and we're going to give you 10 different

  • influence tactics that you can how to influence other people to help

  • make you more successful when you try to

  • accomplish things at work and to

  • maneuver your way through the politics

  • and uh... then we're also going to talk about 20 different specific tips

  • in terms of surviving office politics

  • I can just give you a couple stories, one was Henry Kissinger

  • everybody knows very well was former Secretary of State also was a professor at Harvard

  • University, he said the reason that academic

  • politics are so vicious is

  • the stakes are so small and I think that

  • it's interesting compared to government or compared to

  • business things that we quibble over in academia are usually pretty

  • small potatoes

  • but they're still a big deal

  • when you go home at night and you're driving home and your mind is on your work or on your drive or on your home

  • laying around in bed tossing and turning because of the things that happened at work those are office

  • politics they may be small

  • in some way but they're still important to each of us

  • another example of positive politics I read a book recently called The Engine of Change

  • and uh... it was talking about during the time that the Mustang came out

  • in the 1960's

  • Lee Iacocca was the brains behind the Mustang

  • for Ford. General Motors wanted to come out with a car that was competitive

  • so there was a guy some of you may have heard of

  • John DeLorean

  • and he was at Pontiac and they had a car called the Pontiac Tempest

  • and that car

  • had a small engine in it so it really wasn't competitive to the Mustang, but there was a

  • corporate rule that said you could only have a 10 to one ratio of

  • cubic inches of the engine

  • to the weight of the car, so

  • 3,500 pound car no more than

  • 350 cubic inches well they had

  • a 389 cubic inch V8

  • developed and it was really just gangbusters

  • so he found a kind of a bending of the rules that said you can't bring in a new

  • car

  • that breaks that 10 to one ratio

  • but you can bring in a different

  • model of an existing car so he had the

  • Pontiac Tempest and he then

  • created the Pontiac Tempest

  • with the GTO package

  • well they originally thought they would sell 500 uh 5,000 I'm sorry

  • they originally thought they'd sell 5,000, they sold

  • 35,000 the first year

  • 65,000 the second-year over 100,000 the third-year and ultimately

  • Pontiac became the third best-selling nameplate

  • in the whole industry after Chevrolet and Ford

  • so there is an example of where they used politics in a positive way and

  • the organization benefitted

  • so that's the kind of politics that I'm going to talk about

  • how can you do things,

  • influence others in an ethical way

  • that are overall good for the organization

  • as opposed to Machiavellian politics which is where you work toward advancing

  • your own agenda

  • which may or may not appear to be in the best interest of the organization

  • so come and join us and we're going to ask you to bring a challenge that you are facing

  • and bring it to the session and we'll

  • show you these different 10 influence tactics and 20 different office politics

  • tips and put the

  • 30 of those together and then try to apply them to the challenge that you are facing

  • so that this can be a

  • very hands-on practical session

  • that you can take back home, and hopefully have it work for you

Hi, I'm Stu Tubbs. I'm a professor at Eastern Michigan University, a former Dean of the College of Business

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