According to my philosophy of influence, you will move rapidly towards your goal if you have clarity about what you want to achieve. Simple yes? Well, no.
In theory, developing a goal to focus the Stakeholder Influence Process on is easy enough. Just pick a top priority from your annual objectives, and there you go. It’s when you start to work on it that things become a little more interesting. In most cases, the goal has to evolve through experimentation and further analysis.
Let’s pick an example to work with to demonstrate what fun you might be heading towards. Imagine your top priority goal is to:
Gain Marketing Committee sign-off for an advertising budget of £275k for Product X at the October meeting.
This is a great looking goal because it is so specific. It is easy to judge success — you either got the budget or you didn’t. In my book, this is a hard and tangible goal to focus on.
However, this may be the wrong goal to focus on. For instance, what influence do you need to achieve, and with whom, in order to get the sign-off? This represents the actual work of influencing which leads towards the goal.
It would be reasonable to assume that one of the key stakeholders you need to get on board would be the Marketing Director. Therefore, a sub-goal could be:
The Marketing Director becomes an enthusiastic advocate of Product X before the October meeting.
This works as a sub-goal because it will lead towards the sign-off of the budget. It may be too simple to use as the focus for the full process unless it is difficult for you to gain access to the director. The main problem with this goal is how will you know you’ve succeeded? This is a soft goal which needs to have some evidence added to it in order to gain the clarity needed.
For example, for this goal, you might add evidence criteria like:
- Tom (Marketing Director) highlights the importance of Product X at the forthcoming Quarterly Conference.
- Tom gets involved in developing the advertising plan for Product X.
- The success of Product X is set as a top priority in Tom’s objectives.
- Several of Tom’s team mention how important this product is to him.
- Tom suggests allocating a much larger budget.
- Tom deprioritises other products in favour of X.
Use your imagination. If Tom was really enthusiastic about Product X, what would you see him doing, hear him saying? And, what would the ripple effects be? The whole point of adding evidence criteria is that it will help you to identify more easily what you need to do to get him there. The more evidence you specify, the more tangible you are making it.
Another reason why it might be important to think about this as an influence goal is that it is possible that you could get your budget sign-off without Tom being enthusiastic about your product. Is that what you want? A reluctant key stakeholder might cause you difficulties later on.
And then again, why stop at Tom? Surely it would be in your interests to have the whole organisation enthusiastic about your product? That way, any resistance or opposition would become much less likely. This goal could look like:
The Senior Management team believe that X is the most exciting product for the immediate future of our company. As evidenced by:
Like the last goal, this is still soft, and you will need to add some evidence. Focusing on this bigger goal will be more challenging for you, yet at the same time, far more exciting and interesting. How do you like the idea of being responsible for the most important product of the company? Yes, you will face much stronger opposition from your peers, but the rewards could be much higher.
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This goal also stretches beyond the original budget goal in both scale and time. It will mean you will need to develop a clear strategy (stakeholder map and plan) to influence this throughout the senior management team. As you start to succeed, problems and frustrations will start to evaporate, and you’ll be on a roll. Asking for a budget of £250k might be unnecessary. Instead, they may suggest a much bigger allocation, or even ask you how much you could productively use!
These are the type of goals that will stretch your influence and dramatically improve your prospects; however, I have another challenge.
Is this really what you want to happen? With the first goal, the purpose of securing a budget was presumably to be able to increase product sales or market share? And behind this is probably an overall objective to make a certain profit? An alternative way you could evolve this goal is towards the harder/bigger numbers:
Product X delivers £1.3m profit next year.
This is another hard goal which links directly to the overall purpose of the company. It elevates the original goal to a more strategic level. It signals that your focus is commercially orientated. It will also perhaps lead to a great deal more options when figuring out how to achieve this, such as cutting costs. With your goal focused like this, it will be necessary to develop many sub-goals and strategies. This goal will keep your mind coming back to the real aim of your work.
It does raise the potential that it is not your responsibility. If you started out with a goal of getting an advertising budget, it is likely that responsibility for this new goal might be shared by others. That doesn’t need to stop you putting it down as what you are aiming for. Perhaps you have a role here to focus the wider team and drive towards the ultimate goal of the business?
This is just one example of how goals can evolve when you begin working with them. Here are some others which may be more, or less, appropriate to your situation:
- Contracting Goals. The above example expands. Sometimes it is necessary to make your goal smaller and sooner. The whole point of an influencing goal or focus is to get you moving in the right direction at an appropriate pace. Big goals are sometimes too far away to be practical. Start where you are and grow as you make progress.
- Redirecting Goals. Often when considering your goal, you will realise that you are shooting for the wrong thing. I recall one client wanted to influence a supplier to deliver on a given project. As we talked it through, she realised that the problem actually lay with her senior management not doing what was needed by the supplier. Her influence changed direction completely.
- Sharing Goals. The example goal in this article grew beyond current responsibility. So what? Go for it, get others involved and demonstrate leadership. Getting a group of colleagues around a table with a stakeholder map has multiple benefits.
- Abandoning Goals. This is a tough one, but sometimes when you are working through your stakeholder map for your chosen goal, it becomes apparent that it is not going to happen. This is not about being pessimistic; you can’t necessarily win all of the battles, and some are not worth fighting. This was best summarised by one coaching client who stated that this was the third year in a row that his company had tried to complete the project, and now it was his turn! Push back, be brave and be careful.
There is a lot more I could say about the subject of an influencing goal; however, the most important thing right now is to work on your own focus and goals. As you work with them, notice how they evolve and remember that as your goal changes, so too do your stakeholders, the challenges and also, the potential benefits you will gain from using the Stakeholder Influence Process.
Colin Gautrey
Provocative Coach/Mentor | Specialism: Impact and Influence
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