Influencing Up

CHAPTER 10

Framing Your Change Strategy

Fitting Your Approach to the Players

This chapter covers the ways you can deal with more distant powerful people. Because these individuals are less obligated to you, and not entirely sure of what you can do for them, this can be more of a challenge than working with your own boss.

If your goal is to change your organization for the better, you’re going to need help making these changes—specifically, from people who matter. You need to determine which individuals can either help or hinder you, who to take on, and in what order. This chapter will explore what matters to these people, and how you can use this information to get them on board.

Let’s look at the problem facing Kelly Prescott, senior regional account manager at a large international pharmaceutical company. Kelly was trying to win approval for a deal with a very tough customer, but not getting far with her boss’s boss, the senior director of national accounts. She thought he was being a jerk.

Before I can develop a contract with customers, I need to get my manager Amy’s buy-in. We then participate in conference calls or meetings to gain final approval. I then go back and forth with my customers before we finally strike a deal.

Recently, I was going through a very tough business case with Amy’s boss, the senior director of national accounts, and he was not budging. He didn’t seem to want to finalize the contract proposal for my customer. I knew my customers were going to be really ...