Modernizing Influence

Influence skills are listed as a requirement in almost?any corporate job description you'll read.

And that makes sense.

Many organizations have matrixed structures.?More importantly, decisions may need input from several perspectives in your organization.?Somehow these perspectives need to converge.?Influence?skills have been prominent in JD's for almost 25 years (since the advent of cross functional teams, in case you're wondering).

And in those 25 years, business practitioners?and educators have pushed this concept aggressively.?You can't go through b-school without coursework on the science of influence, persuasion or organizational?psychology.?

Research?tells us that companies struggle?with decisions more now than anytime in the past.?

Did you know the average Fortune 500 company wastes $250mm per year on red tape and inefficiency in making decisions (according to research from McKinsey)?

Did you know the average Fortune 500 company wastes $250mm / year on red tape and inefficiency of decisions?

You may know these struggles to be true through your observation of day to?day work life.

So why do many decisions turn out to be slow and ineffective??

Why haven't influence skills helped companies move faster and better??Where does today's understanding of influence fall short???

We'll explore that in this issue.?

More importantly, we'll offer solutions and ways to re-think influence for a modern organization.?

In this issue, I explain where influence skills have gone wrong, and offer solutions to re-think it for a modern organization

First, a little bit of history.?Somewhere in the last 25-30 years, companies pivoted from siloed work performed in functions to cross functional efforts grouped around a common initiative.?In order to get different points of view (and information) on the table, companies expected people to be skilled at influence.?The hope had been for a good convergence of all the relevant perspectives.?When the?right information was factored in, we could avoid blindspots and get decisions right.??

Unfortunately, companies never provided people ways to go about this type of convergence.?

Instead they did two things.?First they grew the number of meetings.?Meetings became the dominant form of work.?Second, they asked everyone to acquire influence skills.??

Perhaps they provided a book on influence in your onboarding kit :)?But that's pretty much it.?And a whole cottage industry sprung up to teach us how to influence each other.?Many books were written and read.??

A whole cottage industry sprung up to teach us how to influence each other.?Many books were written and read.??

They introduced the science of social cohesion, consensus, reciprocity and authority.?And practices like using the word "we" or framing issues in particular ways or even body language.?

People spent their energy on ways to get each other to say "yes" and "aligned."

Often in companies these influence skills target raw personal motivations and incentives.?They channel fear, risk, desire to oblige, desire to be liked - to push for something.?Some people are gifted at pushing these buttons - tapping the reactionary mode of the brain - to get others to "yes."

It's a shame corporations have let this become so common.?

This kind of influence run amok, may not be a good thing for?the?organization.?It depends on the intentions or the quality of the underlying ideas pushed by those doing the influencing.??

And there's another problem with it.?Some amazing people in your organization are not good at pressing these buttons yet have tremendous intellectual capital that’s bottled up. We don't want to miss their ideas and inputs.

That's where things got way off course for companies that didn't guard against the?limits of so-called influence skills.?It's why today's influence skills need to be re-thought and re-invented.??

Influence done incorrectly can hold an organization back.?It can take it away from customer focus, customer centricity and the mission of the organization.?And that can be replaced by personal interests, motivations and outcomes.??

We need to stop rewarding the abuse of influence skills, and teach leaders new ways to think about it.

Influence is healthy in a company when the right perspectives on an issue are surfaced and factored into a decision.? When important perspectives are not surfaced, understood or factored, it's likely there's an influence imbalance.?We're missing out on contribution from some pocket of the organization or team, and overweighting others.?There's many reasons this can happen (mainly due to power dynamics and abuse of influence skills).?

In fact, influence is not about getting other people to "yes" it's about creating "common understanding."?

Influence is not about getting other people to "yes." It's about creating "common understanding."

For example, here are ways to better understanding:

• Improving or clarifying the problem statement
• Clarifying what is being solved for and why
• Cutting to the heart of a decision
• Gathering input from a few angles, their implications and sorting through them intelligently.

The Solution

To make influence flow in healthy ways, we need to invent the right workflows.?

Workflows help the organization optimize influence based on the quality of the input over the personalities in the mix.?

I'm sure many of you can identify with situations where outsized personality determines outcomes in meetings. To normalize this, we need to build workflows for influence, rather than leave them to each individual to bring to life.?

Good workflow for influence brings it out where it's missing and keeps it in check where it can go too far.?A good workflow brings out the input we need and gives each input the right consideration.?

Workflows and their design are the new influence skills. Instead of looking for people whose personalities exude influence, find those who can create workflows that bring out intellectual capital within the organization.?Look for people who can create methods that a) emphasize listening, b) source quality inputs, and c) synthesize these inputs into an overall picture.?

A person who steers projects, dialogue or decision making to bring out these (3) dynamics will have a bigger impact on your organization than someone who is trying to push physiological?buttons.?

It's an entirely different way of thinking about influence.?And it's far more powerful because it:

1. Creates real understanding behind issues?
2. Makes people feel included
3. Produces a collective answer over a siloed one

For clarity, I fully recognize that being articulate, succinct and great at communicating your ideas is a real leadership skill.? That skill can go a long way at influencing an organization in the right direction.?

People on my teams with such talent always helped us get things moving faster in the right direction.

These people are, however, rare.? It's more common to find leaders who've been trained on old paradigms of influence- which can devolve into an arm wrestling match over what path to take.

Change Starts at the Top

How do we change the profile of leaders around influence??

For starters, change job descriptions to talk about workflows (if you need ideas on what to include, let me know).?And go further by interviewing for the right mindset.?

Here are some questions you can ask in interviews to see if someone has the ingredients to go about influence in a modern way.

• How did your previous organization decide things?
• How did you make decisions in your previous leadership roles?
• How did you attempt to make sure decision making was high quality?
• How did you go about sourcing unknowns for issues you needed to decide?
• How good are you at sourcing these unknowns and what do you do with them once they're surfaced?

To make this new form of influence stick, your organization will have to build them into leadership profiles for roles in the organization.?Ensure that growth and promotion are based on these skills.?Invest in upskilling leaders on these methods.?

If your organization is truly in need of some of these methods, share this issue.

I'll try my best to answer any follow-up questions or comments.

Any other Business (AOB)

Congrats to the Milwaukee Bucks for winning the NBA title in 6 games, after starting down 0-2.

"Bucks in 6" came true!

It's great to see a homegrown team win in this era of super teams. Even though I'm from NYC, it was fun to root for Milwaukee and attend the Eastern Conference Finals against Brooklyn and the Finals against Phoenix.

The environment at Firserv arena was simply amazing. Highly recommend checking out a game next year.

Congrats to owner, Marc Lasry, who's been a very friendly dude since we met.

So happy for Giannis.