Chapter 11
Influencing Organizational Groups, Departments, and Divisions
In many ways, influencing a whole group in your organization is parallel to influencing individuals:
- First, you must not demonize them; don't characterize them with negative stereotypes, tempting as it might be.
- Second, you need to understand their world: what they value, how they are rewarded, what pressures they face, and so forth.
- With that information, you now have a sense of what currencies you could trade for what you want from others.
- But, even more than when you are dealing interpersonally, it is important to pay attention to the nature of your relationship. Just as you may have stereotyped other people, they have probably done the same in return.
Any good diagnosis has many facets, but it is important to pay attention to some particular issues when dealing across groups, departments, and divisions. Are the dominant currencies of the group valued by all members? How much latitude will individuals have to trade for different currencies? Do you need everybody in the unit to comply with your request or just some people?
As organizations grow more complex, there is hardly any group that doesn't need cooperation from other units. Furthermore, often the other group does not have to follow your requests. If you work in a central staff function (purchasing, legal, information technology, quality control, finance, auditing, or human resources), even when you can set or shape policy, you might not so easily be able to enforce it. Or, you might be in a line operation and spot a terrific opportunity (e.g., a new product or service to develop, a new practice, or a new market), but another department must approve or implement it, and they see your hot new idea as just another demand on their time or something changing their processes or priorities.
A common characteristic of intergroup relations complicates matters: a group often gains its identity and increases cohesiveness through invidious comparisons with other groups. “We in marketing take the larger picture, not like those pedestrian thinkers in sales.” “Being in sales gives us a much better understanding of customer needs than those isolated eggheads in product development.” “Those bean counters in finance only play with numbers and don't care about people as we do in human resources.” You need to find ways past those feelings.
The group whose cooperation you want may resist for a variety of reasons. Discovering those reasons—the currencies they care about—is part of the challenge. The other part is figuring out how to address their concerns and still get what you need done, without sacrificing the aims of your request.
How to Go about Gaining Influence: Applying the Model
There are several ways to approach the groups you want to influence.
Step 1: Seeing the Other Group as a Potential Ally
A history of conflict and even interpersonal animosity may exist between some members of the two units, but that need not stop you. You are working for a potential alliance. You don't have to like or become close friends with members in the other group to work out what you need, but you must find a way to respect them and their work, accepting that their role differences makes them see things differently from you.
You may still compete with them for some things such as budget or priorities from others yet find a way to form a strategic alliance that gives both of you something desirable in a specified, limited area. This kind of “co-opetition” is increasingly common among individuals, groups, and companies, and managing the tension is an important part of organizational life.
Nevertheless, the better you know what another group values and why, the likelier you are to feel empathy and to form a good working relationship. That's why the next step is so important.
Step 2: Understanding Their World
Start with the nature of the work. What do people do all day? What skills are central? What special training do they need to do their jobs well? Do they direct others or react to requests or demands? Are they in a separate space or nearby? Does their work belong to a profession (e.g., accounting, law, engineering, science), which might make them identify more closely with their profession than the organization? The work people do powerfully shapes what they are likely to care about. It pulls people toward more or less precision, more or less interaction with other areas, faster or slower pace, greater or fewer challenges and novelty, more or less satisfaction and meaning, and so on. You may find their attitudes strange, but is that because you have work of a very different nature and, therefore, different views of how to behave and what to care about? If you could truly understand the nature of their work, would you find their actions more reasonable? (For more on how to use the organizational world to understand likely desires and goals, see Chapter 4.)
What sort of people are most likely to have those skills? What are their education, background, and work experience? What are their values? The educational backgrounds of most members of a department can make an enormous difference in their values and goals—their currencies. Engineers are drilled in precision and hard work. Scientists are steeped in the long, slow search for truth. Lawyers are trained to look for vulnerabilities and risks. Liberal arts graduates have often learned to value precision in language but think in broad, sweeping generalizations. Each educational background tends to shape its members, affecting their patterns of thinking, language, and, sometimes, values.
What is the group's language and jargon? Many organizational groups and departments develop their own vocabulary and language style. Knowing this serves two purposes: it often reveals what the group considers important, because the language will focus on the things they pay attention to, and it gives you clues about what language to use when talking with them.
For example, people in finance often have well-developed language for talking about costs, returns, and ratios because that is how they measure the world, translating all organizational activity into numbers. If you are in management development, for example, instead of seeing their language as too mechanical and impersonal, can you explain your proposal in terms of cost benefits? If you want an example of a training manager who hired a former CFO to teach him how to make hard-nosed proposals to the finance department controlling his budget, see the case of William “Will” Wood on our website (http://www.influencewithoutauthority.com). (For a slightly tongue-in-cheek guide to talking across language borders, see Table 11.1.)
Table 11.1 Mini-Translation Guide
| Management Development Says | Finance Says |
| Developing coaching skills Building trust Team building Increasing management skills |
Enhancing return on investment Reducing trading friction Maximizing collective returns Raising economic rents |
Beware of stereotypes. Before we say more about this way of thinking, we must warn you to check out any of your conclusions on any of the people you are dealing with from the other group. The analysis we are suggesting can reveal only general tendencies, and you should always try to find the exceptions to the general experiences. These generate hypotheses that should be tested with those specific individuals or groups.
Not all financial people think in economic and numbers terms, for example. Recently, we were working with a task force focused on how to keep everyone healthy (not just the currently insured) when a senior underwriting officer of Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield, a cost-conscious health care insurer, proclaimed: “Finance is trivial and incidental! We can make the numbers work.”1 Similarly, not all lawyers are deal killers, not all human resources people are sentimental and afraid of delivering tough news to underperformers, and so on. So, use your diagnosis to guide what to look for before you have too much contact but verify it in each individual case.
Often, the nature of the work and the people who do it may reveal some common currencies, so you can form a working idea and test it. You are looking for what the group you want to influence values, what they care about. We call these currencies because they are things that can be traded. Although there is always danger of overgeneralizing, we have listed common situations and resulting currencies of selected organizational groups (Table 11.2).
Table 11.2 Sample Common Situations and Currencies of Different Groups (As Seen by Colleagues in Their Organizations)
| Sales Representatives |
Since a high proportion of sales attempts lead to rejection, they:
Want acknowledgement of contributions Competitive Money oriented Status important to them |
| Manufacturing |
| Have to meet numbers—hourly, daily, weekly For them, the buck stops there Get-it-done attitude, very down-to-earth Come from mixed backgrounds: some up through ranks, some college hires Predominantly male, therefore often “macho talk” Speak very directly and bluntly, expect the same |
| Engineers |
| Work is detailed Have to fix things, build for manufacture Mostly men Hard-working (from education in challenging engineering programs) Taught to avoid risk, often rule-bound Tend to see the world in black-and-white terms, which may lead to a narrower perspective Drawn to “things” (less concerned with and often naive about people) Like tinkering, endless revisions, so deadlines necessary Technically competent but overcontrolling Impatient with anyone not understanding their area Possibly less interested in customers Determined, driving Love challenge |
| Finance |
Concerned with:
Place value on control, audit readiness, and predictability Workload is usually in predictable cycles High needs for inclusion in management team |
| Human Resources |
| Want to be known as “caretakers of people” Value soft skills Can sometimes be bureaucratic, valuing rules and regulations Called in to clean up messes (and may resent this) Often don't fully understand or highly value the economic side of the business Don't fully understand the pressures managers are under, how tough their jobs are Because they are often seen as organizationally impotent, concerned about being included in management decisions |
The list comes from people like you, people trying to discover what groups in their own organization considered important. Take this list with a grain of salt, but use it to start understanding the group you are interested in.
The list in Table 11.2 is partial; consider it, at best, only the beginning of a careful diagnosis. We urge a direct approach. Getting the facts from the involved players has two payoffs:
- It can be more accurate than your own speculation.
- It is a way to build the relationship.
In terms of relationship building, could you go to the head of another department and say something like:
Our areas are highly interdependent. We could both be more successful if we helped each other more. I need some things from you, and I think that I could do some useful things for you. To do that, I need to know what you need from me. I have a rough idea, but it would help me if we could talk about it. How could I be more helpful?
This offer, by itself, isn't enough. But it provides the beginning of a conversation. You are reaching out to the other group (paying them in the currencies of respect, interest, and willingness to help—important ones in the organizational world). As the conversation develops, it lets you test some of your assumptions about the other group.
This tactic works only if you are really interested in the other area and truly want a better relationship. As a “technique,” it would be quite transparent and could backfire.
Step 3: Understanding What You Need from the Other Group
It helps to be clear about your goals. There are numerous questions to help sort out what you really want.
Are you trying to gain agreement/cooperation/implementation on a specific project? Or is your primary goal an improved working relationship between the two units? Probably a specific task led you to think about how to deal with the other group, but wouldn't it be wise to improve the relationship so agreement could be easier for your next request? Sometimes you can simultaneously complete the task and improve the relationship, but if only one is possible, what is more important to you now?
What actual behavior do you most care about? Giving you information? Trying a new method? Lending resources? Performing some task? Speeding up their responses? All of the above? Which requests are most crucial, and what is the minimum you will settle for? Will you be satisfied with half a loaf, or is it all or nothing?
If you want a change in attitude (for example, a new respect for what your area does), is that more or less important than getting cooperation on a specific task, which could begin forming new attitudes? Or is the attitude change such a critical part of overcoming pervasive problems that specific cooperation won't help?
For example, assume you are in a central procurement office and see excellent opportunities to save money by consolidating office supply orders from previously autonomous divisions. Is it more important to have others fill out forms about their needs ahead of time, or should they now see central procurement as a valuable resource to the company? How will you respond to their inevitable complaints that central purchasing takes too long and that buying locally is often cheaper? Would you get ahead faster by picking one commonly used product, such as copier/printer paper, and buying that product centrally as a demonstration, or do you need control of all office products to make a dent?
How many members of the group, team, or department must buy in for you to accomplish your intent? Do you need everyone or just some opinion leaders or pioneers who will try what you want? Would a cooperating subgroup work well as a start? Would a pilot help work out kinks and facilitate wider buy in, or allow costly delay?
It is helpful to think through such priority questions in advance. You will have to make your own judgments about each influence situation, but Table 11.3 offers general guidelines.
Table 11.3 Guidelines for Setting Your Own Goals and Priorities
| The narrower your request, the greater the likelihood of success. Pilot projects are more likely to gain cooperation than wholesale changes. Decide importance of meeting task goals versus improving the working relationship. It's easier to change behavior than attitude or values; attitudes often change after new (successful) behavior. Try not to mix your desire for respect or status with specific practices you want to change. |
Step 4: Dealing with the Relationship
Certain kinds of relationship issues arise among organizational groups with differing views and may need special attention. We refer to relationship in three senses: (1) What is the attitude of each group toward the other one? (2) To what extent do you have a personal relationship marked by trust with a significant member of the other group? (3) How does each group want to be related to?
We assume that, in most cases, you want a positive relationship and are playing for the long haul, but the relationship is presently strained. Because you have likely stereotyped the other group, they have returned the compliment. Do you have a sense of how they see you, especially the negative views they hold?
One issue is whether you attempt to talk about the relationship directly or work on the task as a way to improve the relationship. Talking about it directly works well when:
- The relationships are clearly getting in the way of successful work.
- There is a desire to resolve the relationship difficulties.
- There is enough trust to begin the dialogue without intense recrimination.
- Both sides have conflict resolution skills (or a consultant is engaged to help).
- Sufficient time to work the issues through has been set aside.
- It fits the [unit, organization, national] cultural norms.
When these conditions do not exist, finding small tasks to do together is more useful, thus slowly building credibility of intentions and trust that your group wants to be a good partner. This takes much longer but can build the potential for having a more direct discussion later. It is also possible to visit the other site, find opportunities to socialize (though these can be awkward when there is bad history), or choose another task to work on together.
If you do talk about it, you can set a positive tone if you acknowledge what you and you area have done in the past that might have caused problems. Humorously talking about how they likely see you can also decrease defensiveness. In discussing the present negative exchanges going on, make sure you use objective language without blaming the other party (because it is likely that both of you have done things to produce this negative exchange). It is also useful to discuss the costs of the present dysfunctional interaction while holding out a picture of the potential benefits if the working relationship improved. You want to have some vision to work toward and to offer a reason to go through the pain of direct discussion.
Another choice is whether to work on the relationship one to one or to bring the groups together in a session, usually offsite, where many people can interact. Sometimes, two peacemakers must make a connection before their own groups are willing to engage with the other.
Preferences in How to Be Approached
Just like individuals, teams develop their own ideas of “proper” ways to interact. One big determinant, seldom explicit but a strong underlying belief, is that the higher status group, as determined by the industry, company strategy, and history, should be deferred to, the ones who take initiative and call the shots. If their status isn't being recognized, or market changes are shifting importance as has been happening, for example, with the rise of AI in retail and medicine, the involved groups can feel out of sorts with one another. Or perhaps it is about style. Even in 2017, east coast finance executives still dress far more formally than their west coast counterparts. It would be hard to imagine their response to the head of a flourishing Bay area startup who said he almost didn't participate in a panel opening the NASDAQ building in San Francisco because he had to wear long pants and shoes instead of shorts and flip-flops. Sometimes preferences are visible and sometimes just “understood” by one group but not the other.
Ways People Self-Limit Their Influence
Forget That Rome Wasn't Built in a Day
Individuals have long memories, but groups have longer ones! Even a successful exchange won't remove years of encrusted distrust and animosity. It takes many positive interactions to erase the past, and even one slip-up can undo several successful interactions. So look for some small early wins and build on those.
Don't Jump to Blame
When it is difficult to get what you want from another unit, the natural tendency is to blame them. Sometimes they deserve the blame, but the “blame game” rarely helps to build the relationship you want. While we need to learn from the past, your focus should be the future: “What can we do so that we don't get into this situation again?”
Self-Imposed Barriers
There are two significant ways in which people inflict self-imposed barriers that limit their influence.
I'll be Damned If I'll Give You What You Want
Even with an understanding of what the other group values, the frustrated group refuses to pay them in a reasonable currency. For example, a technical research group had ongoing difficulty with a federal agency overseeing their work. After a careful diagnosis, they sheepishly recognized how their group withheld the exact information that government examiners needed to do their jobs, but they got stuck trying to decide if they were willing to do what was necessary for a better relationship. In their own eyes, it would “demean” them by focusing on “trivial bookkeeping.” Furthermore, the past relationship had so irritated them that they resisted “giving the feds anything that would help them.”
You Aren't Worth the Extra Effort
Other people don't do what they know they should because they believe that the other group is not worthy of their efforts. For example, John Sloan, a Canadian country manager, was criticized for resisting all influence from HQ staff but was reluctant to drop in on headquarters groups to build relationships; he saw informal interaction with them as slimy and playing politics.
I'd Rather Be Right Than Effective
Some people get too much pleasure from feeling superior to the other group. Or they want to prove a minor point, and that becomes more important than a successful exchange. Finally, they want to “win” personally and feel they “lose” by giving the other group what it wants.
I Don't Value What You Value
They fail to accept the right of the other group to value differing currencies, especially when your group does not approve of this currency and is thus reluctant to use it.
Like the previous barrier, this one is caused by parochial snobbishness about the other group. “Okay, maybe they have to care about short-term goals, but we are protecting the business's long-term future and can't let them have petty wins.” Conversely, “All they do is talk about some distant future, as if we don't have to meet payroll. We're not supporting their research fantasy land.”
These self-limiting traps aren't inevitable, and though it can be challenging, it isn't impossible to overcome strong feelings between your group and another one. For an excellent example of an individual who used the influence concepts to make a difference, see the story of Mike Garcia, a member of a headquarters software marketing team dealing with country managers in Latin America (available on our website as “Finding and Paying in Valued Currencies; Overcoming Skepticism in Country Offices about Headquarters and Marketing,” www.influencewithoutauthority.com). This is a classic organizational problem: like John Sloan, people in distant regions don't want to listen to headquarters “experts.” A more mutually influential relationship is necessary.
Mike Garcia instinctively found that if he brings something valuable to the regional managers—advocating for their needs at headquarters, providing them with tested helpful ideas, and respecting their expertise—they will allow him to have influence over their marketing practices. None of this is easy; he has to fend off his headquarters colleagues who want to maintain a sense of superiority. But he is helped by being a Latin American himself and by having genuine respect for what they know in the various countries. He also realizes that one visit can't turn around this situation; it's a continuous process with each interaction slightly improving the relationship. He has patience and persistence. No doubt, he would love being powerful enough to order them to follow the central marketing department's advice, but he realizes that isn't possible. He has found a way to be highly effective.
For more on influence at a distance, see Chapter 12.