SF book I read once had a lesson in this kind of politics. MC is up against this woman who is brilliant and ruthless (and sexy) and she keeps switching her schemes to take advantage of new offers where she gets even more. He eventually makes her an offer so rich her greed makes her stop to consider it even if she suspects it's fake, and he uses that hesitation to spring a trap. But afterwards he tells her,
"You should have stuck to your first plan. Or your second, or your third . . . you should have stuck to something. Your opportunism didn't make you strong, it made you a rag in the wind, for anyone to pick up who wanted to."
Some of the schemers around here have her problem.