Levels of influence

26Jun09

In one of our big department gatherings at a former employer, a senior manager under whom our organization had recently been re-organized laid out these stages or levels of influence.  She drew it as a pyramid, and if you like to look at it that way, fine with me… I’m going to describe it in text, so you can plug it into any structure that works for you.  I don’t have a direct citation for these levels of influence – please note that I don’t claim any credit whatsoever! – if you recognize the source, please leave a comment and I’ll be happy to look it up and cite it here…  As it happens, this is the only thing I remember from her talk, possibly because at that point she had only a very high level understanding of what we did, and wasn’t able to speak to many of the specifics of our achievements and challenges.

Looking at any group within a larger organization from the perspective of these levels of influence is a worthwhile exercise; but tech pubs groups in particular tend to feel that they lack influence and control, so I think it’s particularly applicable to them.

Level 1:  Do the Work (and report out) – If you don’t do the work that’s required, you can’t hope to influence or control anything.  But some groups don’t report on their activities.  If you aren’t letting the organization know what you are doing, they’ll have every reason to ignore you.  So, identify your stakeholders, and periodically update them. Also, find those quarterly events and get on the agenda.
Level 2:  Credibility – Your credibility is based on doing the work and reporting it.  If you are doing that, your contribution should be clear and obvious.  You now have a forum for presenting not only your achievements based on your current charter, but also to present the challenges and opportunities, as well as the proposed solutions and innovations that you have identifies. This helps take you out of the position of having other groups define your problems and propose their solutions for you.
Level 3:  Reputation – Now that you are regularly reporting on not only the routine work and achievements that are your charter, but also have credibility as a group that understands how they fit into the needs of the organization and can add value, you begin to earn a reputation.  Now when problems and opportunities are identified in other parts of the organization, people consider whether your group can help in some way.  They have ideas that they need your help to implement.  If you don’t have the resources to say yes, you can leverage your reputation to get them to contribute resources or to help secure the budget for the project.
Level 4:  Influence – With your credibility established through successful dept. initiatives, and your reputation enhanced through productive partnerships, people now look to you for ideas and input to solve problems or capitalize on opportunities.  Contrast this situation with the earliest level, where some stakeholders didn’t really know what you were doing, or how well you were doing it, let alone thinking of ways that you could help them, or soliciting ideas from you for improving the business.
Level 5:  Control – At this level, people are well aware of the scope of your activities, and understand the value.  When they consider changes to their own processes, they will seek your input and approval to ensure that what they plan won’t have a negative impact on you.

Again, I want to emphasize that this is not original material, just my summary from notes I took that I think are useful for tech pubs groups to think about.  If you do this exercise, let me know where your group falls within these levels, and what factors you attribute your current position to.

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