The IT workplace can often be stressful when untoward things happen. Maybe, it is business managers who demand new platforms, applications, and functionality to support bold new strategic objectives. The IT team, perhaps, begins to crack under pressure of an ever-increasing backlog of work to unrealistic deadlines while somehow holding together a creaking and patched-together IT architecture.

In such a febrile atmosphere, it only takes one or two managers to start ruling by fear or low cunning, and workplace politics can take hold. Cliques form, the gossip and subtle put downs begin, as people jostle for positons of relative power, striving to make their work and ideas seem the most valuable and relevant, and to direct blame for failure toward others. Information is withheld, mistrust spreads, and teams start spending more time watching their backs than their monitors.

Some people claim that it’s impossible to avoid workplace politics altogether and that you just need to learn how to ‘play the game’. At Simple-Talk, we believe it is a game, and a rather silly one at that. Therefore, we’ve decided to take the advice literally, and in the interests of harmony and peace in this season of goodwill, we have released the board game, Workplace Politics. Rather than fuel fires by indulging in real workplace politics, reach catharsis and purge that build-up of aggression in the office by playing the board game instead!

Feeling under pressure from the Business, with your IT project slipping its dates? Play the board game, and feel the stress just drop away. Is your business suffering from IT delivering too little functionality too late? Turn tensions within your organisation into seasonal cheer as you while away those long winter evenings.

Play it with your friends and enemies in the workplace. Take it home with you and play it with your family. Then, if office politics start to loom large again next year, you’ll just laugh and remember all those happy hours spent on your holiday having your offspring wipe you off the board to gales of childish laughter.

If you have any tried and tested tactics for defusing the tensions created by office politics, while sprinkling a little tolerance and understanding around the workplace, please share them. The best suggestion will win a special festive prize.

We hope that all our readers enjoy a prosperous and Happy New Year, with interesting and rewarding work, in harmonious surroundings.

The Simple-Talk Team