Synopses & Reviews
"A terrific read not only for senior leaders and executives but also for employees seeking growth in complex organizations. Goldstein and Read dissect the interpersonal dynamics that affect a company's performance, provide a framework to understand the games that are commonly played in businesses around the world, and offer practical tools to correct these behaviors and improve the organization's effectiveness."
—Jacopo Bracco, executive vice president, DIRECTV Latin America
"Whether you are an employee, manager, or CEO, this book will help you uncover the games that are going on around you and in your organization and will arm you with strategies to combat the negative effects of these games."
—Corey J. Seitz, vice president, global talent management, Johnson & Johnson
"This book is a good warning sign for organizational life. A road map of potholes and wrong turns. Written in a clear and down-to-earth way, its strength is its concreteness."
—Peter Block, author, Community: The Structure of Belonging
"Play or don't play, your choice. But if you need to manage and aspire to lead, you must read Goldstein and Read's helpful treatment of the games going on all around you all the time. Prepare to be entertained and disconcerted in equal measure."
—Seán Meehan, Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management, IMD
"Goldstein and Read provide an accessible and penetrating discussion of the twenty-two most common games at work and their individual and organizational causes, business costs, and remedies. Every working person who has ever been a victim or perpetrator of political games will profit from reading Games at Work."
—Harvey A. Hornstein, emeritus professor of psychology; former director of Columbia University Organizational Development Programs; and organizational consultant
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
Synopsis
This books gives managers the tools to "diagnose" the games that people play in an organization, and then to free people's energy for more productive purposes, thus minimizing the damage to both the bottom line and the company dynamics. Some typical games include:
- Gotcha—where people act as if they receive “points” for identifying and communicating others’ mistakes.
- Gossip—the rumor mill is used to gain political advantage.
- Low Budget—where managers purposely low-ball budget requests as a negotiating ploy.
- Marginalize—effectively exile individuals from teams or groups because they challenge the status quo, aren’t one of the boss’ people or for other reasons.
- Blame—individuals seek scapegoats in order to excuse failure.
- Gray Zone—deliberately fostering ambiguity or a lack of clarity about who should do what to avoid accountability
- Pecking Order—people play favorites and put others in the doghouse as an exercise of power
- Pessimism—people artificially inflate the difficulty of an assignment in order to create lower expectations
- Big Idea—suggesting visionary strategies and concepts to communicate one’s creativity and vision without regard for the “implementability” of these ideas.
- No Bad News—avoiding or suppressing negative data in relentless pursuit of a positive approach.
Using a three step process entitled AIM (Awareness, Identification, Mitigation) with specific examples from global companies that illustrate both the games and their solutions, the authors provide a clear outline for managers to address and end the games people play in organizations.
Synopsis
How managers can put the breaks on needless games before they spiral out of control
This groundbreaking book gives managers the tools to "diagnose" the games that people play in an organization–Gotcha, Gossip, Blame, Pecking Order–and shows how to free people's energy for more productive purposes. Using a three-step process entitled ACE (Awakening, Choice, Execution) for reducing games, the authors also include specific examples from global companies that illustrate both the games and how to reduce them and offer a broader organizational perspective.
Mauricio Goldstein (Sao Paulo, Brazil) is founder of Pulsus Consulting Group, a consulting company focused on organizational transformation. He works with leaders in Fortune 500 companies throughout Latin America, North America, Europe and Africa. Philip Read (Lausanne, Switzerland) has held senior positions in human resources at a number of Fortune 100 companies over 21 years in more than 60 countries. He has won a number of awards for his work including the PricewaterhouseCoopers "Most Innovative HR Department Award."
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 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.
Table of Contents
Foreword (Kevin Cashman).
Introduction.
1 LET THE GAMES BEGIN.
What Games Are and How They Are Played in Organizations.
2 PLAYING TO LOSE.
The Negative Impact of Games on Core Business Activities.
3 FERTILE GROUND.
Why Games Are So Pervasive in Modern Corporations.
4 EYES WIDE SHUT.
Why People Don’t Deal with Games at Work.
5 AN EYE-OPENING EXPERIENCE.
Awakening to Games.
6 COUNT ME OUT.
Choosing Not to Play.
7 GAME, INTERRUPTED.
Executing Your Choice.
8 INTERCONNECTIONS.
How Games Are Linked In to an Ecology.
9 THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE.
Toward a Games-Conscious Model of Transformation.
10 GAMES AT THE TOP.
The Impact of Playing in the Executive Suite.
11 A SUSTAINABLE GOAL.
Transforming Organizations in Small but Signifi cant Ways.
Appendix: List of Games.
References.
Acknowledgments.
About the Authors.
Index.