#66 Workplace politics are getting worse

I used to think workplace politics were a personality problem.

Like, some people just love drama. Some people are wired to scheme. You learn to spot them early, stay out of their way, and mostly you're fine.

Then I watched something shift in the past 18 months. The politics I was seeing — in my own world, in conversations on this podcast, in DMs from people at companies you'd recognize — got louder. More personal. More exhausting.

And I started wondering: is it really that people got worse? Or did something about the environment change?

I think it's the second one.

Two things happened at once

Orgs flattened. And AI came for the middle.

These two things feel related, because they are. When leadership decides to cut management layers, they're partly betting that AI can absorb some of the coordination work that managers used to handle. Fewer handoffs. Faster decisions. Leaner org.

Which sounds great on paper.

But here's what actually happens on the ground: you take a bunch of people whose identity and career trajectory were tied to headcount, and you suddenly tell them that the game has changed. The path they were on — IC to manager to senior manager to director, measured mostly by how many people reported to them — no longer works the same way.

And when people feel like the ground is shifting under them, they start to protect their territory.

That's where the politics come from. Not pettiness. Fear.

The visibility scramble

Here's the specific dynamic I keep seeing.

When roles blur — when it's not clear who owns what, who's accountable for what, who gets credit for what — people start optimizing for visibility over output.

They schedule more syncs. They CC more people. They make sure their name is in the room when the right thing gets discussed. They become very invested in being perceived as essential.

And the cruel irony is: this behavior often works. At least in the short term. Because in a flattened, ambiguous org, being loud and present can genuinely substitute for being good.

Until it doesn't. Until there's a reorg, or a new leader, or a moment of real pressure where the output actually matters — and you find out who was building and who was performing.

Where AI makes it worse before it gets better

AI is accelerating this in a way I don't think gets talked about enough.

When one person can suddenly do the work of three, it changes who is visibly necessary. For the people who lean into that — who actually expand their craft, who use these tools to ship more and think more clearly — it's genuinely liberating.

But for people who were coasting on coordination, on being the person who holds the context, on being the layer between two teams who need each other? Their value proposition just got a lot harder to defend.

And again: scared people do political things. They start repositioning themselves as the ones who will "oversee" the AI outputs. They insert new approval steps. They find new reasons why things need to go through them.

You've probably seen this. Maybe you've done it — I think most of us have at some point, including me.

So what do you actually do with this?

I'm not going to tell you to "rise above it" or "focus on your work and the right people will notice." That's the kind of advice that sounds clean and accomplishes nothing.

Here's what I actually think helps:

Name the game without playing it. If you're in an environment where visibility is being rewarded over output, make your output visible — deliberately, not defensively. Document what you shipped. Share results before you're asked. You can play the visibility game on your own terms without becoming a political operator.

Find the people who care about the work. Every org, even the most political ones, has people who are genuinely trying to build something. They're usually slightly exhausted and slightly cynical and very easy to identify. Find them. Do good work together. They will be your people when things get hard.

Decide what the environment is actually costing you. This is the one most people skip. Because it requires honesty. If you've been in a political environment for more than a year and you're still mostly frustrated, that's data. Not necessarily data that you should leave — but data that you should stop ignoring.

The flattest orgs I've talked to on this podcast — the ones where people seem most energized and least paranoid — aren't political-free because they hired a bunch of saints. They're that way because their leadership made a structural decision: to give people real ownership, real context, and real accountability for outcomes.

When the game is clear and fair, most people play it straight.

When it's not, they play to win whatever game they can find.

The antidote to workplace politics isn't culture. It's clarity.

💡 Here’s a great book I’ve read that touches on this topic (highly recommend you check it out): The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (2002).