Scroll to top
Smarter change

Political Acumen in Business

Political acumen in business is what separates the competent operator from the outstanding. It’s what stops you – and your team – from career limiting moves. It’s the unspoken skill that separates the manager from the organisational leader.

Political acumen is different

It isn’t about being nasty, or playing nasty politics. In fact, political acumen allows you and your team to protect yourselves from all that stuff, and do it in an ethical way. Few people can truly advise and help develop a team’s political acumen. It is a mix of people management, organisational nous, communications, initiative-taking and self-awareness. Driving that, and doing it in a way that builds organisational effectiveness and productivity requires a unique mix.

Can you say this of your advisor?

Can you say this of your advisor?

  • Can they talk restructure and productivity improvement as well as communications and personal influence?
  • Are they expert in the field?
  • Have they seen how organisational politics is played from the inside?
  • Have they advised at the highest levels for 20+ years?
  • Do they have international qualifications in training, influence and behaviour change?
  • Are they bestselling authors who’ve published real books?

Check out Cindy Tonkin, the brains behind Smarter Data People

The program is much more than training

Political acumen in business isn’t another cookie-cutter soft skills program. There are too many of those, all supposedly customised, and not one of them talks honestly about the politics, processes and personalities that get in the way of getting things done, and getting ahead. For leaders and for teams.

Political acumen in business separates the competent operator
Interventions, not courses

We offer a collection of interventions designed to meet the specific political needs of you and your team. It’s not training, and it doesn’t deliver training outcomes. It delivers real organisational and personal effectiveness that works in your specific institutional and organisational environment. There may be training. There may be coaching. There may be restructuring, changed KPIs and supervisory structures. New meeting and reporting processes. In-house work assignments. Whatever is needed to support you and your team to be politically astute and effective in your organisation.

Saying ‘No More’

Political acumen in business is about saying ‘No more’. No more surprises when everyone knows what is going on except you. No more embarrassing meetings, or unhappy internal clients. No more inappropriate communications. No more struggling to make your team see  what you think is, well, obvious.

Talk to Cindy about making your data science consulting team work smarter, faster and nicer now.

Related posts