Office politics: Difference between revisions

Generally, in a bank, those who bring in business — [[sales]] — and those who extract revenue from it — [[trading]] — will be the least political. Here there is least scope for dark arts: you eat what you kill, all can be measured in in a [[Profit and loss|P&L]] statement, bullshit artists are quickly found out: there is little to be gained from passive-aggressive internal jiggery-pokery. What manoeuvring there is will be swift and brutal. Expect to find victims of a front office putsch dumped in cupboards, bent double with a double-tap to the base of the skull, or wearing concrete sneakers and swimming with the fishes. Expect, one day, ''not'' to find them, that is to say. No words will be spoken. No lamentations sung.  

Next least political will be key middle office and risk functions like [[operations]], [[credit risk]] and [[compliance]]. Here there ''is'' scope for ineffectual grandstanding, especially if you tread the line between attracting enough attention for rapid promotion, while at the same time avoiding detailed scrutiny while you rise. There are tendentious [[Thought leader|thought-leader]]<nowiki/>s in [[operations]] and [[Credit officer|credit]], but they tend to be dim rather than malicious, and they are largely the exception. In the main, fundamental weaknesses will be quickly found, and rooted, out.

There is sure to be a solid heft of perfidious manoeuvring among the softer, less effable back-office functions like [[marketing]], [[legal]] and [[financial reporting]] — functions you can’t really not have, in this day and age, but whose positive impact on the organisation is hard to gauge or even detect directly. They are not part of front-line generation, or retention, of revenue. (Sorry, [[legal eagle]]s, but it is true: the [[roll of honour]] refers.)   

Here, earnest [[subject matter expert]]s will inevitably suffer at the hands of those with a taste for the game. The “lions led by donkeys” effect is somewhere between prevalent and inevitable.  

The skillsets required between the two modes are quite different for the most part contradictory. If you want a job as a transaction lawyer, supporting a desk, punching through [[equity derivative]] confirms, expect to have to prove you have at least 5 years action with a crack [[Freshfields]] special ops unit embedded behind enemy lines. But if you want to be [[GC]], to get that seven million buck sign-on bonus just make sure your [[Diversity and inclusion|D&I]] fit is immaculate; financial services experience of any kind is preferred but not essential.