Can you give an example of unavoidable political problem that people manager unavoidably has to handle?
- Two of your reports want to work on the same project, perhaps because it will look good. There's only enough work for one of them
- The team fails to meet an objective. This needs to be addressed, somehow
> Political problems in that case would be implicitly handled by company culture
Someone(s) still need to make the decisions that align with the culture. Those people are making political decisions, they just have values that help guide the decisions.
I agree, this is a political problem. But it doesn't seem to be unavoidable. Perhaps, increase rewards for long-term gains for the company and remove rewards for short-term personal gains? It just wouldn't happen then?
Team failing to meet the objective. I don't see how this is a political problem.
You've just described a way of dealing with the issue when it arises: paying the person working on the less sexy project more. This may sometimes be a tool the manager can use, but it isn't always an option. So presume you don't have this tool, or the value of the project is larger than the value of the compensation you can provide.
> It just wouldn't happen then?
You're presuming that the company can perfectly reward people for work, and that every employee believes that they'll be rewarded optimally for work in the company's best interest. I've yet to encounter a company that can accurately reward employees for their performance, and because of that, I've yet to find a company where the employees believe that their performance will be perfectly fairly rated. If you can fix this problem, I'll buy your product.
No, I asked for an example of a management role that was apolitical. There are certainly responsibilities that managers have that aren't political, but someone claimed that people, political, and technical management were different. So I'm intrigued by the idea of a people manager who doesn't handle any political problems. My point is that by virtue of being in charge of people, political arguments become unavoidable.
As for your Boeing example, I fail to see what this has to do with managers having to address political issues in the company. It seems like you're having a conversation about how managers should have been ICs at one point which while an interesting discussion, is completely unrelated to anything I've said.