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CHAPTER 8

Create Alliances

Four months into her new job at MedDev, Alexia Belenko already was deeply frustrated by the bureaucratic maneuvering going on at corporate headquarters. “Where’s the support for needed change?” she wondered.

An accomplished sales and marketing professional, Alexia had risen through the country-management ranks of MedDev, a global medical devices company, to become the firm’s managing director (also informally known as “country manager”) in her native Russia.

Senior leaders recognized Alexia’s potential and decided she needed broader regional experience. So they appointed her regional vice president of marketing for EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa). In this new role, Alexia was responsible for marketing strategy for MedDev’s country operations in the region. Alexia reported directly to Marjorie Aaron, the senior vice president of corporate marketing, who was based at the company’s U.S. headquarters, and Alexia had a dotted-line reporting relationship with her former boss, Harald Jaeger, the international vice president for EMEA operations, to whom all the managing directors in the region reported.

Alexia dove in with her usual enthusiasm. She conducted a thorough review of current affairs, including one-on-one conversations with managing directors across the EMEA region and with her former boss. She also traveled to the United States expressly to meet with Marjorie and a couple of Marjorie’s direct reports.

Drawing on those discussions, as well as her own experiences in the field, Alexia concluded that the most pressing problems—and opportunities—lay in better managing the tension between centralizing and decentralizing marketing decisions for new-product launches. Alexia put together a business case, outlining her assessment and recommendations for increasing standardization in some areas (for example, decisions concerning overall brand identity and positioning) and giving the managing directors more flexibility in others (such as making important adjustments to advertising promotion plans).

Marjorie and Harald saw merits in Alexia’s approach, but neither was prepared to commit. Both directed her to brief the key stakeholders: MedDev’s corporate marketing executives in the United States, and the EMEA country managers.

Six weeks and many confounding meetings later, Alexia felt as if she was caught in quicksand. She had scheduled a meeting with important members of the corporate marketing team, including David Wallace, the executive reporting to Marjorie Aaron in charge of global branding. She then flew to the United States to present to a group of more than thirty people. Virtually every one of them had suggestions, all of which would result in more central control, not less.

She was surprised, too, when a conference call with the EMEA country managers—her old colleagues who reported to Harald Jaeger—didn’t go much better. They were more than happy to accept any ideas Alexia had that would give them additional flexibility. But when there was any mention of more limits to their autonomy, members of the group rapidly closed ranks. One respected managing director, Rolf Eiklid, expressed concern that the flexibility they were being offered wouldn’t be enough to compensate for what they would be giving up and that corporate wouldn’t really honor agreements. “We’ve been promised more flexibility in the past, and it hasn’t materialized,” he said.

The usually sure-footed Alexia was thrown off her stride by this turn of events. She was left wondering whether she had the patience and finesse to navigate the politics of her new regional role.

To succeed in your new role, you will need the support of people over whom you have no direct authority. You may have little or no relationship capital at the outset, especially if you’re onboarding into a new organization. So you will need to invest energy in building new networks. Start early. Discipline yourself to invest in building up “relationship bank accounts” with people you anticipate needing to work with later. Think hard about whether there are people you haven’t met who are likely to be critical to your success.

Recognize, too, when a new role presents you with very different influence challenges from those you’ve experienced in the past. Alexia was used to operating with a lot of positional authority and a team that reported directly to her. She didn’t recognize early enough that she needed to influence in very different ways—through persuasion and alliance building—than she had in the past.

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.

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.

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 there 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.

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.

Framing means carefully crafting your persuasive arguments on a person-by-person basis. It’s well worth the time to get your framing right. Indeed, if Alexia can’t develop and communicate a compelling case in support of her proposed changes, nothing else she does will have much impact. Your messages should take an appropriate tone, resonate with the motivations of influential players and the forces acting on them, and, critically, shape how the key players perceive their alternatives.

Alexia, for example, should have explored what it would take to move Rolf from being opposed to at least being neutral and, ideally, supportive. Did he have specific concerns that she could have addressed? Was there a set of trades that he would have found attractive if implementation could have been guaranteed? Were there ways of helping him advance other agendas he cared about in exchange for his support of Alexia’s approach?

As you frame your arguments, keep in mind Aristotle’s rhetorical categories of logos, ethos, and pathos.5 Logos is about making logical arguments—using data, facts, and reasoned rationales to build your case for change. Ethos is about elevating the principles that should be applied (such as fairness) and the values that must be upheld (such as a culture of teamwork) in making decisions. Pathos is about making powerful emotional connections with your audience—for example, putting forth an inspiring vision of what cooperation could accomplish.

Effective framing focuses on a few core themes, which are repeated until they sink in. It is a sure sign of success when people begin to echo your themes without knowing they’re doing so. Focus and repetition are effective because we learn through repetition. By the third or fourth time we hear a song, we can’t get it out of our minds. It is possible, though, to hear a song so much that we get sick of it. Similarly, using precisely the same words over and over makes it apparent that you’re trying to persuade, and that can provoke a backlash. The art of effective communication is to repeat and elaborate core themes without sounding like a parrot.

As you frame your arguments, think about how you can inoculate people against counterarguments you expect opponents to make. Presenting and decisively refuting weak forms of expected counterarguments immunizes audiences against the same arguments when they’re advanced in more potent forms.

Table 8-3 provides a simple checklist for framing the types of arguments you need to make.

Framing arguments

Use the following categories and questions to identify the types of arguments you need to make to convince people.

Choice-shaping is about influencing how people perceive their alternatives. Think hard about how to make it hard to say no. Sometimes choices are best posed broadly, at other times more narrowly. If you’re asking someone to support something that could be seen as setting an undesirable precedent, it might best be framed as a highly circumscribed, isolated situation independent of other decisions. Other choices might be better situated within the context of a higher-level set of issues.

Selling choices perceived as win-lose propositions is particularly difficult. Broadening the range of issues or options under consideration can facilitate mutually beneficial trades that enlarge the pie. Progress likewise can be stalled by the presence of toxic issues. These sometimes can be neutralized by explicitly setting them aside for future consideration or by making up-front commitments that allay anxieties.

Social influence is the impact of the opinions of others and the rules of the societies in which they live. The knowledge that a highly respected person already supports an initiative alters others’ assessments of its attractiveness. So convincing opinion leaders to make commitments of support and to mobilize their own networks can have a powerful leveraging effect. Likewise, research suggests that people prefer to operate in these ways: Remain consistent with strongly held values and beliefs. These values tend to be shared with important reference groups. People asked to engage in behavior inconsistent with their values or beliefs experience internal psychological dissonance.

Remain consistent with their prior commitments and decisions. Failure to honor commitments tends to incur social sanctions, and inconsistency is a signal of unreliability. People prefer not to make choices that require them to reverse themselves or that overtly constrain their future choices by setting undesirable precedents.

Repay obligations. Reciprocity is a strong social norm, and people are vulnerable to appeals for support that invoke past favors they’ve received.

Preserve their reputations. Choices that preserve or enhance one’s reputation are viewed favorably, whereas those that could jeopardize one’s reputation are viewed negatively.

The implication is that you need to avoid, to the extent possible, asking others to make choices that are inconsistent with their values and prior commitments, decrease their status, threaten their reputations, or risk evoking the disapproval of respected others. If someone you need to influence has a competing prior commitment, you should look for ways to help them gracefully escape from it.

Incrementalism refers to the notion that people can move in desired directions step-by-step when they wouldn’t go in a single leap. Mapping out a pathway from A to B is highly effective, because each small step taken creates a new psychological reference point for people in deciding whether to take the next one. For instance, Alexia could have started by meeting with people just to explore the centralization-versus-flexibility problem. Over time, however, the group could have analyzed each of the issues involved. And finally, after they had deliberately walked through all major concerns, the participants could have discussed basic principles for what a good solution might look like.

Getting people involved in shared diagnosis of organizational problems is a form of incrementalism: involvement in the diagnosis makes it difficult for people to deny the need for tough decisions. Once there is agreement on the problem, you can shift to defining the options and then the criteria that will be used to evaluate them. By the end of such a process, people are often willing to accept outcomes they would never have accepted at the outset.

Because incrementalism can have a powerful impact, it’s essential to influence decision making before momentum builds in the wrong direction. Decision-making processes are like rivers: big decisions draw on preliminary tributary processes that define the problem, identify alternatives, and establish criteria for evaluating costs and benefits. By the time the problem and the options have been defined, the actual choice may be a foregone conclusion. So remember that early success in shaping the process can have a big impact on the eventual outcome.

Sequencing means being strategic about the order in which you seek to influence people to build momentum in desired directions.6 If you approach the right people first, you can set in motion a virtuous cycle of alliance building. Success in gaining one respected ally makes it easier to recruit others—and your resource base increases. With broader support, the likelihood increases that your agenda will succeed, making it easier still to recruit more supporters. Based on her assessment of patterns of influence at MedDev, for example, Alexia definitely should have met first with corporate strategy VP Tim Marshall to solidify his support and arm him with additional information for persuading Marjorie.

More generally, Alexia’s sequencing plan would consist of a well-thought-through series of one-on-one and group meetings to create the momentum for change. The critical point here is getting the mix right. One-on-one meetings are effective for getting the lay of the land—for instance, hearing people’s positions, shaping their views by providing new or extra information, or potentially negotiating side deals. But the participants in a serious negotiation often aren’t willing to make their final concessions and commitments unless they’re sitting face-to-face with others, and that is when group meetings are particularly effective.

Action-forcing events get people to stop deferring decisions, delaying, and avoiding commitment of scarce resources. When your success requires the coordinated action of many people, delay by a single individual can have a cascade effect, giving others an excuse not to proceed. You must therefore eliminate inaction as an option.

You do this by setting up action-forcing events—events that induce people to make commitments or take actions. Meetings, review sessions, teleconferences, and deadlines can all help create and sustain momentum: regular meetings to review progress, and tough questioning of those who fail to reach agreed-to goals, increase the psychological pressure to follow through.

Putting It All Together

Alliance building entails figuring out whose support you need, mapping the patterns of influence, and identifying potential support and opposition. Success in these actions helps you identify pivotal people, understand their motivations, situational pressures, and perceptions of the alternatives, and craft the right strategies to build your winning alliances.

CREATE ALLIANCES—CHECKLIST

What are the critical alliances you need to build—both within your organization and externally—to advance your agenda?

What agendas are other key players pursuing? Where might they align with yours, and where might they come into conflict?

Are there opportunities to build long-term, broad-based alliances with others? Where might you be able to leverage shorter-term agreements to pursue specific objectives?

How does influence work in the organization? Who defers to whom on key issues of concern?

Who is likely to support your agenda? Who is likely to oppose you? Who is persuadable?

What are the motivations of pivotal people, the situational pressures acting on them, and their perceptions of their choices?

What are the elements of an effective influence strategy? How should you frame your arguments? Might influence tools such as incrementalism, sequencing, and action-forcing events help?