How can you figure out who will be important for your success? To a degree, it will become obvious as you get to know the organization better. But you can accelerate that process. Start by identifying the key interfaces between your unit or group and others. Customers and suppliers, within the business and outside, are natural focal points for relationship building.
Another strategy is to get your boss to connect you. Request a list of ten key people outside your group whom he or she 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 when you have new direct reports coming on board: Create priority relationship lists for them and help them to make contact.
Another productive approach is to diagnose informal networks of influence, or what has been called “the shadow organization” and “the company behind the organization chart.” Every organization has such networks, and they usually matter both in making change happen and in blocking change. These networks exist because people tend to defer to others whose opinions they respect on a given set of issues.
As a first step in coalition building, analyze patterns of deference and the sources of power that underlie them. How? Watch carefully in meetings and other interactions to see who defers to whom on crucial issues. Try to trace alliances. Notice to whom people go for advice and insight, and who shares what information and news. Figure out who marshals resources, who is known for taking pains to help friends, and who owes favors to whom.
At the same time, try to identify the sources of power that give particular people influence in the organization. The usual sources of power in an organization are
- Expertise
- Access to information
- Status
- Control of resources, such as budgets and rewards
- Personal loyalty
You can use some of the techniques described in Accelerate Your Learning on accelerating learning to gain insight into these political dynamics. Talk to former employees and people who did business with the organization in the past. Seek out the natural historians.
Eventually you will be able to pick out the opinion leaders: people who exert disproportionate influence through formal authority, special expertise, or sheer force of personality. If you can convince these vital individuals that your A-item priorities and other goals have merit, broader acceptance of your ideas is likely to follow. By the same token, resistance from them could galvanize broader opposition.
You will also eventually recognize power coalitions: groups of people who explicitly or implicitly cooperate to pursue particular goals or protect particular privileges. If these power coalitions support your agenda, you will gain leverage. If they decide to oppose you, you may have no choice but to break them up and build new ones.