The Art of Organizational Manipulation

Several years ago, I found myself consulting in a behemoth-sized organization full of big egos, turf-wars, contempt, and sabotage mixed with a handful of teams that were fighting to make things better. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Once my consulting team got involved with automating away the development pain, we had massive political barriers in our way.

It took us 2 months to build an MVP solution, and 2 years of politics to get it deployed. This talk is about the mistakes I made, and the strategies I learned, in achieving mass-scale influence by struggling through the organizational politics in one of the most challenging environments imaginable.

This talk is about the key lessons I learned for how to navigate organizational change. Call it politics. Call it social engineering. Call it manipulation. At the end of the day, we have to find a way to get the organization to move.

If you need to build consensus around an organizational change, you won't want to miss this talk.

About Arty Starr

Arty Starr is a recognized Flow Experience expert, researcher, speaker and thought leader, and author of Idea Flow, how to measure the friction in software development. Arty's PhD research is developing a theory of momentum in software development, and she is creator of the FLOWS platform designed to help developers thrive and find joy through more time in the flow state. The company she founded, FlowInsight, is on a mission to bring back joy to our everyday work.

Arty is also a 2D/3D animator and artist, and has spent the last couple years building 3D apps in AR. She loves to share about her experiences with these technologies.

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