The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

10.4. Influencing Others

People in product development often lament and even react bitterly to how political their companies are, yet take little action to be successful political operators. Projects receive attention and resources based on their proponents political abilities. Learning to influence others is a critical product development skill if you want your project to receive fair treatment.

Before trying to gain influence, however, one must assess of the sources of political activity as well as have an accurate understanding of one's own sources of political activity. The section on "Level of Political Activity" (see Figure 10.1) provides guidance for assessing the source of political behavior and how pervasive it will likely be. The content of your influence attempt must be properly directed. For example, there can be a big difference between having different goals and being interdependent. Both conditions give rise to political behavior that may be indistinguishable. Nevertheless, the solution for agreeing on what course to take (goal) and who is going to do what part (interdependence) are different. Not having a clear understanding of the source of the problem is a common reason for increasing conflict.

Knowing the source and degree of political activity is only part of the equation. One must also understand how much political power one has and how to get more (Salancik and Pfeiffer, 1977) Finding agreement on goal differences could lead to different approaches, depending ...