Even if you have significant positional authority in your new role, however, you should focus on building support for your early-win objectives. This means figuring out whom you must influence, pinpointing who is likely to support (and who is likely to resist) your key initiatives, and persuading swing voters. Plans for doing this should be an integral part of your overall 90-day plan.
Defining Your Influence Objectives
The first step is to be clear about why you need the support of others. Start by thinking about the alliances you need to build in order to secure your early wins. For which of these wins will you need to gain the support of others over whom you have no (or insufficient) authority? Armed with a clear understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish, you can drill down and figure out whose support is essential and how you will secure it. Consider creating an alliance-building plan of each of your early-win projects.
Alexia’s main goal was to negotiate a new deal (a “grand bargain”) between her new and old bosses and their respective organizations about the ways important marketing decisions would be made in EMEA. The status quo reflected a long-standing compromise between the two sides. It was an uneasy equilibrium, but more or less stable. And on the face of it, any changes were win-lose propositions. The corporate marketing organization naturally favored more centralization and standardization. The managing directors in the EMEA region wanted more local customization. The implication was that an agreement, if one could be found at all, would consist of a package of trades that both sides could support.
To secure such an agreement, Alexia needed to build supportive alliances within both sides. It was unlikely she’d be able to achieve complete unanimity, because some people would have too much invested in the status quo. So she should have focused instead on winning a critical mass of support for agreement in both the corporate and the regional organizations.
Had Alexia understood this from the start, she might have focused her initial efforts differently—not only on diagnosing problems and proposing rational solutions but also on understanding how her agenda fit into the broader political landscape on both sides of the Atlantic. She would not have assumed that the strength of her business case would carry the day, nor would she have felt compelled to win over every single stakeholder.
Instead, she should have identified the specific alliances she needed to build and then figured out how to exert the necessary influence in the organization. This process of mapping the influence landscape also might have helped her identify potential blockers: what or who might stand in the way of getting support for her direction? How could she get those in opposition to finally say yes?
Understanding the Influence Landscape
Armed with clarity on why you need to influence people, the next step is to identify who will be most important for your success. Who are the key decision makers? What do you need them to do, and when do you need them to do it? Table 8-1 provides a simple tool for capturing this information. Consider creating such a list for each early-win initiative you’re pursuing.
TABLE 8-1
Identifying influential players
Start to map your influence landscape by identifying influential players, what you need them to do, and when you need them to do it.
Win and Block Alliances
Next, for each of your early-win initiatives, ask yourself which decision makers are essential for things to move forward. Together, these people are your winning alliances—the set of people who collectively have the power to support your agenda.1 Alexia, for instance, needed to secure approval for her proposals from Marjorie on the corporate side, and from Harald on the EMEA side. Together, they were the winning alliance Alexia needed to build.
It also pays to think hard about potential blocking alliances—those who collectively have the power to say no. Who might band together to try to block your agenda, and why? How might they seek to impede the process? If you have a good sense of where opposition might come from, you can work to neutralize it.
Map Influence Networks
Senior decision makers usually are influenced to a significant degree by the opinions of others on whom they rely for advice and counsel. So the next step is to map influence networks—who influences whom on the issues of concern to you. Influence networks can play a huge role in determining whether or not change ultimately happens. Formal authority is by no means the only source of power in organizations; people tend to defer to others’ opinions when it comes to important issues and decisions. Marjorie, for example, may defer to David’s assessment of the impact of increased local customization on brand identity. Likewise, Harald may defer to Rolf because he commands the respect of and represents his peers.
Influence networks are channels for communication and persuasion that operate in parallel with the formal structure—a sort of shadow organization.2 Sometimes these informal channels support what the formal organization is trying to do; at other times, they act to subvert it. To achieve her objective, Alexia needed to map networks of influence within corporate marketing, as well as with her old colleagues in the EMEA regional organization.
How do you map influence networks? To a degree, they will become obvious as you get to know the organization—by, for example, working with your peers. But you can accelerate the process. One good way to start is by identifying the key points of contact between your organization and others. Customers and suppliers, within the business and outside, are natural focal points for alliance building.
Another strategy is to get your boss to connect you to key stakeholders. Request a list of the key people outside your group whom he thinks you should get to know. Then set up early meetings with them. (In the spirit of the golden rule of transitions, consider proactively doing the same thing when you have new direct reports coming on board: create priority relationship lists for them, and help them make contact.)
Take care, too, to observe carefully in meetings and other interactions to see who defers to whom on crucial issues. Notice whom people go to for advice and insight, and who shares what information and news. Who defers to whom when certain topics are being discussed? When an issue is raised, where do people’s eyes track?
As you learn more, try to identify the sources of power that give particular people influence in the organization. Here are examples:
Expertise
Control of information
Connections to others
Access to resources, such as budgets and rewards
Personal loyalty
Over time, the patterns of influence will become clearer, and you’ll be able to identify those vital individuals—the opinion leaders—who exert disproportionate influence because of their informal authority, expertise, or sheer force of personality. If you convince them, broader acceptance of your ideas is likely to follow.
You will also begin to recognize the power coalitions: groups of people who explicitly or implicitly cooperate over the long term to pursue certain goals or protect certain privileges. Figuring out their agendas, and linking yours to them, can be a powerful way to build support, as long as you don’t end up watering down what you’re trying to do or get enmeshed in political machinations that could undercut you.
Draw Influence Diagrams
It can be instructive to summarize what you learn about patterns of influence by drawing an influence diagram like the one for Alexia’s situation shown in figure 8-1.
At the center circle are the critical decision makers—Marjorie in corporate marketing and Harald in EMEA operations. Alexia needed both to agree with the proposed package of changes, so they jointly constituted a winning alliance. However, as the arrows in the diagram indicate, these two executives would be influenced by people within their own organizations. (Heavier arrows denote a greater degree of influence.) Marjorie would be strongly influenced by David, her vice president of global branding, and Tim Marshall, vice president in the corporate strategy group. Harald would be influenced by the collective opinions of the country
managers who report to him. But Rolf, the longtime managing director of the Nordic countries, would be highly influential both in shaping Harald’s views and in influencing the other managing directors. The diagram also shows that Alexia herself had significant influence on Harald and some on Marjorie.
FIGURE 8-1
Alexia’s influence diagram
This diagram illustrates the key influence relationships that will shape decision making on the issues Alexia Belenko is trying to address in her organization.
Identify Supporters, Opponents, and Persuadables
The work you’ve done to map influence networks in your organization can also help you pinpoint potential supporters, opponents, and persuadables. To identify your potential supporters, look for the following:
People who share your vision for the future. If you see a need for change, look for others who have pushed for similar changes in the past.
People who have been quietly working for change on a small scale, such as a plant engineer who has found an innovative way to significantly reduce waste.
People new to the company who have not yet become acculturated to its mode of operation.
Whatever supporters’ reasons for backing you, do not take their support for granted. It’s never enough merely to identify support; you must solidify and nurture it. So don’t forget to preach to the converted. Be sure, too, to ask supporters to be force multipliers by helping you influence others and by providing them with the most persuasive arguments for doing so.
As you look for support, be sure to identify people with whom you could build alliances of convenience. There will be individuals with whom you disagree in many areas, but with whom you align on the specific issue of concern. If this is the case, think hard about how to educate and enlist them.
Then there is the opposition. True adversaries will oppose you no matter what you do. They may believe you’re wrong in your assessments of the situation. Or they may have other reasons for resistance to your agenda:
Comfort with the status quo. They resist changes that might undermine their positions or alter established relationships.
Fear of looking incompetent. They fear seeming or feeling incompetent if they have trouble adapting to the changes you’re proposing and perform inadequately afterward.
Threats to core values. They believe you’re promoting a culture that spurns traditional definitions of value or rewards inappropriate behavior.
Threats to their power. They fear that the change you’re proposing (such as giving more decision rights to frontline managers) would deprive them of power.
Negative consequences for their allies. They fear that your agenda will have negative consequences for others they care about or feel responsible for.
But be careful not to assume that people are adversaries. When you meet resistance, probe for the reasons behind it before labeling people as implacably opposed. Understanding resisters’ motives many equip you to counter their arguments. For example, you may be able to address their fears of appearing incompetent in the new environment by helping them develop new skills.
Keep in mind, too, that success in winning over adversaries can have a powerful, symbolic impact. “The enemy who is converted to the ally” is a powerful story that will resonate with others in the organization. (Another example is the story of redemption—for example, helping a person who has been marginalized or labeled as ineffective prove himself.)
There also will be people with whom you have good relationships and agree on many issues but who are not aligned with your specific agenda. These are a special class of opposition, and the key here is to find ways to preserve these relationships while still moving things in needed directions. See if you can do this by explaining what you need to do and why, by engaging in constructive problem-solving, and perhaps by finding ways to make up for their losses by helping them with other issues or returning the favor later.
Finally, don’t forget about the persuadables—those people in the organization who are indifferent or undecided or uncommitted about your plans but who might be persuaded to throw their support your way if you can figure out how to influence them. Once you have identified them, figure out why they’re uncommitted. They may be:
Indifferent. There may be many ways to get them to support your agenda in return for your support of theirs.
Undecided. Find out why, and work to educate and persuade them.
Political operators waiting to see which way the wind will blow. You need to convince them that things are going your way so that they climb on the bandwagon.
Your assessment of support and opposition can be summarized in your influence map, as illustrated earlier in figure 8-1. The darker circles indicate people who are opposed, light gray means they are supportive, and medium gray designates the undecided. (You also can use green-yellow-red color coding). On the corporate side in Alexia’s situation, Tim was supportive, whereas David was undecided. On the EMEA side, Rolf was somewhat opposed to Alexia’s proposed changes. Note that, once again, she had to win a critical mass of support on both sides for a deal to be struck.
Understanding Pivotal People
Now that you’ve analyzed the influence networks in your organization, identified the players and alliances, and mapped out support and opposition, the next step is to focus on the pivotal people you need to influence. In Alexia’s case, these were David and Rolf.
Start by assessing their intrinsic motivators. People are motivated by various things, such as a need for recognition, for control, for power, for affiliation through relationships with colleagues, and for personal growth.3 The relative weightings of these motivators can vary greatly. So take the time to figure out what makes the pivotal people tick. If it is possible to engage them directly in dialogue, ask questions and engage in active listening. Seek especially to understand what potential opponents like Rolf are opposed to, and why. Given what motivates them, are there specific losses they’re trying to avoid? Is there something you can give them—a valuable trade—that might help compensate?
Understanding people’s motivations is only part of the story. You also need to assess situational pressures: the driving and restraining forces acting on them because of the situation they’re in. Driving forces push people in the direction you want them to go, and restraining forces are situational reasons they would say no. There is a lot of good social psychology research showing that we overestimate the impact of personality and underestimate the impact of situational pressures in reaching conclusions about the reasons people act the way they do.4 Rolf’s opposition could be rooted in intrinsic inflexibility and a need to preserve his power and status, or he could be responding to situational pressures such as his business goals and incentives or the opinions of his peers (or a combination). So take the time to think about the forces acting on the people you want to influence. Then find ways to increase the drive and remove some restraints.
Finally, think about how key people perceive their alternatives or choices. What are the options from which they believe they can choose? Critical here is to assess whether opponents like Rolf believe that resistance—overt or covert—can succeed in preserving the status quo. If so, then it could be important to convince them that the status quo is no longer a viable option. Once people perceive that change is going to happen, the game often shifts from outright opposition to a competition to influence what sort of change will occur. Could Alexia have convinced the key decision makers that the current situation was not acceptable, that change needed to take place?
Concerns about the implementation of agreements also fall into this category. People may believe that concessions offered by others will not really materialize and that they are better off fighting for the status quo than taking a chance. This seems to be one concern that Rolf was voicing when he expressed worries about whether corporate would honor agreements to give the managing directors more flexibility. If worries about insecure agreements turn out to be blocking progress, see whether the
re are ways you can increase the confidence level. For example, you might propose phasing in the changes, with each step linked to success in implementing the previous ones.
TABLE 8-2
Analyzing motivations, driving and restraining forces, and alternatives
Use this table to assess what motivates pivotal players, as well as the driving and restraining forces acting on them, and their perceptions of their alternatives (what choices they believe they have).
Table 8-2 provides a simple tool for capturing information about motivations, driving and restraining forces, and perceptions of alternatives for pivotal people.
Crafting Influence Strategies
Armed with deeper insight into the people you need to influence, you can think about how to apply classic influence techniques such as consultation, framing, choice-shaping, social influence, incrementalism, sequencing, and action-forcing events.
Consultation promotes buy-in, and good consultation means engaging in active listening. You pose questions and encourage people to voice their real concerns, and then you summarize and feed back what you’ve heard. This approach signals that you’re paying attention and taking the conversation seriously. The power of active listening as a persuasive technique is vastly underrated. It can not only promote acceptance of difficult decisions but also channel people’s thinking and frame choices. Because the questions leaders ask and the ways they summarize responses have a powerful effect on people’s perceptions, active listening and framing are a potent persuasive technique.
The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded_Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter Page 17
