Influencing Management

In response to my post entitled Check the Box where I suggest that you choose not to argue with your manager about doing a task whose primary purpose is the furtherance of a PR campaign with their manager, my colleague Bob Lee writes “How much Fantasy Experienced As Reality is building up above?”

It depends on your point of view, Bob. For Susan, who is told to do a knowledge transfer with her teammates, when she only has information to share, she sees lots of fantasy building up. For Jerry, Susan’s manager, he sees some holes in the story but puts a positive spin on the task. For Jerry’s manager, he doesn’t see any fantasy. In other words, the data he uses to measure reality says things are okay.

I’ve spent most of my career, like Susan, as a knowledge worker. My ability to be an effective change agent depends completely on my ability to influence my teammates and management. They aren’t going to do anything differently just because I say so.

I need creditability with people who are managers. And that creditability takes many forms—it could be about my knowledge and skills; it could be about who I am as a person; it could be about a shared interest. Whatever it is, that person will invest more time in communication with me than someone else.

Let’s say I have creditability with Noel who is a third-level manager. Now I have periodic opportunities to make proposals to Noel. If our interactions create a return for Noel, I’ll continue to have opportunities to speak with him. Otherwise, I’ll lose access.

One way I can lose access to Noel is to tell him that things are failing because he is ignorant to what’s really happening. That’s like yelling “Fire!” in a crowded building. I may face arrest and prosecution.

One way that does work is to add something to Noel’s repertoire that benefits both him and the organization. For instance, I might suggest to Noel that other companies have used meetings as a leverage point in change efforts. The rollout of the Excalibur product requires collaboration between geographically dispersed teammates at a much greater scale than ever before. Let’s increase the quality of our organization’s collaboration by recognizing a meeting leader each week whose participants provide feedback that says the meeting saved them time.

If Noel bites, there is feedback in the system about quality—data about return on time investment for the participants—that is more important than checking the task box as complete.