By shielding decision-makers/customers and engineers.
To give an example of when I had to burn political capital:
I had to "skip rank" a few times and go directly to CEOs. They are appreciative when you provide concrete facts, such as "I worked for two weeks on the redesign of this page that zero people use and I'm frankly tired of this bullshit".
CEO's and VP's and customers appreciate this type of work, but YMMV. Speaking from experience, you'll be surrounded by more enemies in your day-to-day when the side effect of your customer obsession negatively impacts the KPI's that are used to stack rank your direct management chain against other teams and managers. it is quite kafkaesque to be treated as the black sheep after you save $10m a year for the org, then get a pay decrease + meets expectations 8 months later.
Your reply sounds too ironic and too real at the same time. :D
But you're 100% right. You have to know when to use the nuclear button. And sometimes you can't press it, which means you take a backseat and watch the company burn money for no reason. This is the point where I start agreeing with _fat_santa's post [1].
To give an example of when I had to burn political capital:
I had to "skip rank" a few times and go directly to CEOs. They are appreciative when you provide concrete facts, such as "I worked for two weeks on the redesign of this page that zero people use and I'm frankly tired of this bullshit".