The foundation of influence is your network of relationships in the organization. Effective influence  is best when your relationships are both focused and wide. Wide influence covers a larger group at a less personal level. While you have relationships and reputation in that group, you may not have a known track record or tight connections. [...]

Time Deficit Version: For influencing organizations, you can ask “Five Whos” to get to key decision makers. Many readers will be familiar with the 5 Whys approach to getting to root causes. Formalized by Toyota in the 1970s as part of the Toyota Production System and popularized by Six Sigma, 5 Whys looks for the [...]

Influence theory and models won’t help you reach your design goals if you can’t put them into practice. So I’ve boiled down the influence gameplan into a 1 page worksheet (pdf) to get a sense of how to tackle things in the real world. This sheet is about influencing outcomes inside an organization (not influencing consumers to [...]

Groups and individuals are the yin and yang of influence. To convince a group often means convincing individuals. And convincing individuals often means convincing a group. Knowing who to focus on, and in what setting is the key question we have to answer when we want to affect a decision. Getting a group to agree [...]

Last year, on the last evening of the 2008 IA Summit in Miami, I invited myself onto Samantha Bailey’s 2009 committee with the stated intention of creating a Business & Strategy track for 2009. Mags Hanley popped over, nominated herself co-chair, and added management to the roster. And with that, the Business Strategy & Management [...]