First, I understand what you are saying and understand the constraints keeping you at a job you have issues with. I've certainly seen organizations go too far on consensus even when each person individually (especially the ones at the top) would like more decisiveness. This is a hard and draining place. And all moves out require even more energy that you may not have and should not (in a just world) have to expend.
Someone recommended "Moral Mazes" and I heartily second it. Though mostly because it was so profoundly cynical that it pushed me to defend the systems I was so annoyed by.
If you want to learn the language of design by committee, "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg is the book that the rest of the committee is playing from. It has genuinely useful pieces. But I also find it fundamentally dishonest in that it frames all other forms of communication as "violent" in a rank misuse of the word. Additionally, the techniques it recommends require that you put in all the effort of framing a situation as no-blame or shared-blame when it very much is not. You do not need to agree with your opponents' tactics manual to find value in its study.
"Radical Candor" by Kim Scott is an attempt to bring directness in to otherwise passive aggressive situations. It's a valiant attempt but it's unclear to me how viable its recommendations are.
However it's not clear to me that any amount of high or low level reading is going to help with your feelings of dissatisfaction here. It sounds like you're looking for a "win" instead of an "out". And despite the deeply cynical feelings it can generate, you cannot succeed at office politics through cynicism. Or irony. Or cynical, ironic, distance. The successful are either completely earnest, or sociopathic enough to fake complete earnestness. And from the outside those are indistinguishable.
Someone recommended "Moral Mazes" and I heartily second it. Though mostly because it was so profoundly cynical that it pushed me to defend the systems I was so annoyed by.
If you want to learn the language of design by committee, "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg is the book that the rest of the committee is playing from. It has genuinely useful pieces. But I also find it fundamentally dishonest in that it frames all other forms of communication as "violent" in a rank misuse of the word. Additionally, the techniques it recommends require that you put in all the effort of framing a situation as no-blame or shared-blame when it very much is not. You do not need to agree with your opponents' tactics manual to find value in its study.
"Radical Candor" by Kim Scott is an attempt to bring directness in to otherwise passive aggressive situations. It's a valiant attempt but it's unclear to me how viable its recommendations are.
However it's not clear to me that any amount of high or low level reading is going to help with your feelings of dissatisfaction here. It sounds like you're looking for a "win" instead of an "out". And despite the deeply cynical feelings it can generate, you cannot succeed at office politics through cynicism. Or irony. Or cynical, ironic, distance. The successful are either completely earnest, or sociopathic enough to fake complete earnestness. And from the outside those are indistinguishable.