the.com/office politics
The art of winning meetings that were never actually about the agenda.
means The informal jockeying for power, credit, and advantage that happens inside a workplace alongside the official job duties.
from 'Office' traces back to Latin 'officium' meaning duty or service — ironic, given how little of that survives in the modern usage. 'Politics' comes from Greek 'politika,' meaning 'affairs of the city,' rooted in 'polis' (city-state) — the business of governing people who live together. Mash them into 'office politics,' a phrase that really took hold in the 20th-century corporate world, and you get the affairs of a tiny city-state where the currency is cubicles instead of citizens.
- core skill
- reading what nobody says out loud
- currency
- credit for your idea, in someone else's mouth
- best defense
- being too useful to replace
- paradox
- ignoring it is itself a political move