Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success

As a leadership coach, I have successfully used this book with clients at all levels of an organization. This book has been extremely helpful with clients who saw politics as "slimy" to help them look at political savvy as something that can be exercised with integrity. This book does three things: 1) Reframes politics as ethical influence. Politics change from being a dirty word to a necessary leadership skill for effectively impacting the organization. 2) Offers a self-awareness tool to help people identify their strengths and weaknesses. 3) Offers practical ready-to-implement strategies for becoming more impactful.

I have historically been a person who has shunned the idea of political savvy. In the first place, being "political" meant being shady or underhanded. Add "savvy" to the equation, and you have a loud underhanded jerk in an Armani suit. You can imagine my surprise when I used the Style Strength Finder in Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman's Survival of the Savvy and discovered that I was, in fact, quite high on the political continuum. I also saw that, truth be told, I had several unacknowledged weak spots which I knew had limited my possibilities. Who did I think was sailing my ship? I had been leaving myself vulnerable to certain conditions in the name of some moralistic misinterpretation of political savvy. This book is chocked full of ideas and considerations. If you are not facing a specific political situation, I would recommend reading the first six chapters and then letting your fingers be your guide. Open the book to any page and read a few paragraphs or pages. It will change the way you look at what is right in front of you, and it will give you concrete ideas for increasing your ability to be your best and be seen for you best regardless of the political climate. I learned that every environment is political. It is political to be non-political. Remember in high-school when you got your teacher assignments, and you immediately sought out someone older to find out how this teacher graded? That was political and smart. And guess what. Nothing has changed; the classroom has just gotten more complex, and you'd be wise to get some tips for success. I was recently coaching a group of young people in Presentation Skills. They knew that their job was to bring fresh new ideas into the organization. From their conversations, I could tell that they were being rejected and scoffed at because they didn't "understand how things work around here." Management wanted new ideas but not at the price of their reputations. I was afraid these young folks would never get a chance to add anything to the organization; they would either surrender to tradition and start fitting in, or they would leave with a bad taste in their mouths. They had no idea how to navigate the political landscape. Then I heard that they would be taking the course "Survival of the Savvy," which connects to this book, and I had hope for them and for their organization. Everyone would win if these young people could find their way around the system and position themselves to add value while not rocking the boat. Plus the skills they would use to solve this immediate challenge would end up being life-skills. I was envious that I had not had their advantage earlier in my career. You might have seen the movie "Ray." It is very clear that this man would not be known to us had he not had a tremendous amount of political savvy. He didn't let anyone pull the wool over his eyes - a real trick for a blind man.

What Brandon and Seldman have accomplished here is no small matter, they have developed a clear map to navigate one the hardest aspects of organizational success: its political intricacies and the, at times, arbitrary nature of who and what gets rewarded, and what goes unnoticed. In a direct and pragmatic manner, Survival of the Savvy manages to identify the core issues of organizational politics, helps individual recognize their political blind spots, and offers concrete and actionable strategies to increase one's influence, while maintaining one's identity and integrity. What is contained and effectively presented here, constitutes one of the most important conversations people need to have about the workplace but they rarely ever get the benefit of having. This is critical information for people who have been in large organizations for years -and have struggled with the unwritten rules of corporate- as well as for those just beginning their careers.

I highly recommend this book! I wish it had come out earlier in my career. I would have been surprised less, understood more, and been a better leader for having read and applied what's in this book. Brandon and Seldman essentially pull back the curtain on organizational politics. Their message about politics is simple: it exists in every organization and we need to deal with it. Our individual and company success depends on it. Here's the point. When's the last time we looked at a manual to help us understand how to get things done in our organizations? Most of the time we're working with unwritten rules. We look to our managers, we watch our executives, we see what gets rewarded and funded, and we find out how and who makes the decisions. Given this reality, Brandon and Seldman give us a road-tested approach to succeeding inside an organization with integrity. When we better represent our ideas, when we better communicate with others, when we know what's the best way of getting something done well, we and our companies benefit. Brandon and Seldman help us determine our current place in the political spectrum, understand our skills in the arena, learn to detect other people's political orientation, and then guide us through practical approaches to building our own high-integrity organizational savvy skill set. Brandon and Seldman have turned a taboo subject into one that will benefit us all by applying the principles laid out in the book.

I'm not the type to buy and read business self-improvement books, let alone write a review. I was given Survival of the Savvy as a gift and figured I'd take a quick skim and throw it on the heap of other unread books I have. But I got drawn in by some of the lists (like the "Style Strength Finder" and the "Reprogrammed Self-Talk") and I'm glad I did. In short, this book has quickly helped me at work, and I'm recommending it whole-heartedly to my friends and co-workers. The book brought to the surface many concepts and work styles that I intuitively understood but did not consciously observe and practice in my day to day. For example, I've known about the unwritten rules in my office, but I generally didn't "read the system" and use them to my advantage. Now I am. I used to shun self-promotion as too ego-based, but now recognize its value when done with integrity and just got an assignment I wanted as a result. There's lots more examples but you get the gist - office politics is no longer a dirty word in my vocabulary, but rather an important tool to get my job done well in a way that is aligned with my personal values Also, the book is very approachable and easy to read for the average person. If it wasn't it would have lost me early on. It appears based on well thought-out science, but its neither overly technical nor dense. There were a few parts that didn't work for me, but the vast majority did. It is one of the few business books I have ever read in entirety - on target and straightforward.