Leading With Influence: The Art Of Changing Your Organization
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Let's face it, changing an organization is hard. Whether you're trying to implement a new process, roll out a new product, or simply make a suggestion, it's a challenge to get people on board.
It is important to realize that you can only ever influence people to change. You cannot force them, no matter how much authority you may technically have over them. Changing an organization is much more about changing the mindsets and attitudes of the people in it than changing rules or procedures. You can change the rules or procedures, but that will not necessarily guarantee compliance. If you haven’t secured the buy-in and enthusiasm of those you hope to change, no amount of coercion will do.
So, how do you influence change in your organization?
To change mindsets and attitudes, you must talk to people directly, either one-on-one or in small groups. These conversations should be focused first on understanding their position and opinions, rather than immediately trying to convince them of yours.
This is because most people will only be willing to hear views that differ from their own after they themselves have felt adequately heard. And how much is adequate? Well, you’ll only know that based on how the conversation turns out. There is no way to predict exactly how many conversations you’ll need to have or how long they’ll need to be. Some people will require a series of conversations in order to gain alignment with them.
What you’re doing here is leveraging a kind of organizational currency. Some people refer to this as “political capital”, which is fine; but I like the organization framing better.
Think of it like money: it's earned by helping others achieve what they want, and it's spent asking others to help you achieve what you want.
If you want to ask people to support your change ideas, it will cost you some organizational currency. You’ll have to have already earned enough to spend before you can successfully ask them for anything. In other words, if you want to influence change, you need to build up your currency by helping others succeed first.
Law of Diffusion of Innovation
So, whom should you talk to?
Simon Sinek talks about the Law of Diffusion of Innovation. The model takes any target population organized as a normal distribution curve (distributed left to right, from most eager for change to least).
You’ve probably seen this type of curve if you’re familiar with Gordon Moore’s concept of early adopters from Crossing the Chasm. In any population, you’ll need to capture the 15% that represent the early adopters first. If you can then leverage them to help spread the word, they will help you drive change through the rest of the population.
So you need to think about who in your organization those early adopters are. Single them out as a high priority for getting on board with the new initiative.
Three Directions of Influence
You’ll need three different approaches for building influence with people in the organization, depending on where they sit relative to your own position:
(1) people you directly lead (or their reports),
(2) your peers, people at the same level of the organization as you (who either report to your boss or your one of your boss’ peers),
and (3) people above you in the organization (your boss, their peers, and all other senior leaders).
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Influencing Down
When working to build influence with people who report to you, one important distinction to understand is the difference between power and influence. Power is the ability to make things happen through your position or authority, while influence is the ability to persuade or inspire others to take action. As a leader, you may have power, but it's your ability to influence that will truly drive change in your organization.
So how do you lead with influence rather than power? One key strategy is to tap into intrinsic motivation. According to Daniel Pink's book Drive, intrinsic motivation comes from within and is driven by things like autonomy, mastery, and purpose. By promoting autonomy and helping your team members find meaning in their work, you can inspire them to take ownership of their projects and drive results.
Pulling in our approach above, consider how you can earn organizational currency with your reports? One of the key things that most people need from their manager is time and attention. Setting up time to speak to each of your reports on a regular basis is critical to making them feel cared for and heard.
And it’s not just being there. You’ll need to take their requests seriously and if you promise to deliver on something they’re asking for, you’d be better come through. You don’t get the organizational currency from promises. You get it from results.
Influencing Across
One important tool for building influence across with your peers is the empowerment triangle. When trying to help your colleagues, it is possible to get caught in the drama triangle of behavior rather than the empowerment triangle.
The drama triangle is a psychological model proposed by Stephen Karpman that describes the three roles that people often play in conflicts: the persecutor, the rescuer, and the victim. The persecutor is the person who causes harm, the rescuer is the person who tries to fix the problems caused by the persecutor, and the victim is the person who is harmed. These roles can shift between different people in a conflict, and individuals may take on multiple roles at different times.
The drama triangle can lead people into trouble and conflict because it can trap individuals in unproductive roles that perpetuate the problem rather than resolving it.
For example, the "persecutor" role can lead to aggressive or controlling behavior, which can harm or alienate others. The "rescuer" role can lead to enabling or codependency, which can prolong or worsen the problem. And the "victim" role can lead to passivity or helplessness, which can prevent individuals from taking action to address the problem.
Furthermore, each role tends to invoke a specific kind of response from other people, who will identify with one of the other positions. For example, a persecutor will typically evoke a rescuer or a victim, who will in turn evoke a rescuer or a persecutor. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle of drama which can be hard to break out of.
The drama triangle tends to be enacted by participants with a relatively equal amount of official power. It’s based on mind games where participants are jockeying for position with one another. So it’s really more common with your peers than with your boss or reports.
The empowerment triangle, developed by David Emerald Womeldorff, is the inverse of the drama triangle. The three roles are changed to the Creator, the Coach, and the Challenger, and the interaction patterns between them become supportive and encouraging rather than negative and filled with conflict.
By shifting out of the unproductive roles of the drama triangle and into these empowering roles, individuals can break out of the cycle of drama and work together to resolve problems in a constructive way. The Empowerment triangle also implies active listening, clear communication, assertiveness and mutual respect.
Since earning organizational currency can only be done by helping others, it can be easy to fall into the trap of playing the rescuer role of the drama triangle. Instead, playing the role of coach or challenger allows you to help colleagues in a way that is constructive and powerful. So watch out for that.
Influencing Up
Effective communication is crucial for any organization, but it's not always easy to achieve. One major factor that can hinder communication is the hierarchical structure of the organization itself. As Conway's Law states, "organizations which design systems... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." In other words, the way an organization communicates is often reflected in the systems and products it creates.
This can be a problem if communication doesn't flow smoothly along the hierarchical org chart. As the book Team Topologies explains, communication tends to flow more naturally between people who are on the same level or in close proximity to one another. As a result, it can be more difficult for ideas and information to flow between different levels of the hierarchy, leading to misunderstandings and missed opportunities.
To overcome this challenge, it's important for leaders to actively foster a culture of open communication and collaboration that breaks down silos and encourages information sharing across the organization. By doing so, they can ensure that all team members have the information they need to do their best work and drive results.
But even if your leadership has not fully embraced this challenge, you can still build relationships and earn organizational currency upwards in your organization.
One important concept to understand here is Nemawashi, a Japanese term that refers to the process of informal consultation and consensus building. Nemawashi involves quietly and discreetly building support for your ideas before presenting them formally. By engaging in Nemawashi, you can build relationships and establish your credibility as a leader within your organization.
Again, you must approach others from the position of helping them achieve their goals first, or you will earn much organizational currency. Set up time to meet with senior leaders and making yourself available to them as an ally.
But Nemawashi isn't the only tool in your toolkit for influencing up in the organization. Storytelling is also a powerful way to build consensus and influence change.
By sharing compelling stories about the benefits of your ideas, you can help your senior leaders and other stakeholders see the value in what you're proposing and get them on board. And you can leverage Joseph Campbell’s well-known Hero’s Journey model for storytelling.
Campbell’s work compellingly illustrates that all stories have a similar structure.
A hero leaves the normal world, crossing a threshold into the unknown.
The hero faces trials which ultimately lead to a new power or reward.
The hero makes their way back to the ordinary world as person who has been changed forever.
Using that model, simply organize your vision for changes in the organization into the structure of a story, where the person you’re talking to is the main character.
Reflect back to them the success they want to achieve (the power or reward), identify the trials and dangers along the path (the monsters of the unknown), and provide them with a guide or a process that will help them navigate the uncharted waters and make it safely back to the known world. You can do this with just about any subject, even technical ones, if you give just it enough thought.
A Journey, Not A Destination
Throughout all of these examples, keep in mind that organization change never ends. There will always be a new challenge, idea, model, or initiative that you’ll want to push for. Building the skill to earn organizational currency will serve you in any organizational context for the rest of your career. So use your current position to start practicing and see it work for yourself!
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