My organization, in particular my boss, sometimes flexes or breaks company policy. My boss always gets away with it. The reason is he gets away with is that he breaks company policy to make things better-- to cut through red tape, to hire better people or to get more work done.

Every now and then HR will reprimand him for his actions. Publicly our VP will do the same. But, then, behind close doors, he will be congratulated for getting the work done, for hiring better people.

He also has a 'chicken' philosophy to resources. You know chicken, the game where two people drive straight towards each other and the driver who doesn't swerve wins? Another way of saying it is "Try to use opportunities that others don't grab."

He knows that most teams won't fully consume their budget for new hires or computers or patents. So he always has a few extra requests in the queue. "Oh, I'd like to patent such-and-such, but I'm out of patent budget for the year. What's that? Another team hasn't used up their patent budget? If I had that budget we'd have another patent..."

Thanks to him, I personally have earned two patents and landed two new-hires.

Is it politics of I use these tactics to get more work done?