Cognitive Readiness is one of the hottest topics uncovered by the Trends in Executive Development Report (2016)[1]. Why? Probably because they also found that the persistent development priority is the “ability to create a vision and engage people around it.” In the survey, 31.5% believed this to be the competency most lacking in next generation leaders.
The term Cognitive Readiness is usually defined as the mental preparation an individual needs in order to establish and sustain competent performance in a complex and unpredictable environment. While originating in the military, its applicability to the modern C-Suite is obvious. In essence, this is all about developing a keen awareness of the territory you have to create a vision for.
Allied to this is Strategic Agility – the ability to continually adapt and adjust the strategic direction of an organisation in order to meet its strategic objectives. Therefore, once you understand the territory, you then need to make decisions about what you are going to deliver. Although execution is implied, it should not be taken for granted, as considerable courage and determination is necessary to realise strategic decisions.
And that’s what it’s all about – making things happen, performing.
But, to get there, executives need to:
- Be intimately aware of their environment and most of what is happening there.
- Be able to make sense of the trends and patterns.
- Notice how other influences (and influencers) are shaping the present and future in their domain.
- Recognise the ambitions and strategies of other players in the field.
- Understand how all the moving agendas harmonize and conflict.
- Predict the future to the extent that that is possible.
- Create a credible vision of what needs to happen.
- Mobilize the support and resources necessary to execute fast.
Another recent survey from Deloitte[2] sheds some light on how practicing executives are thinking about the skills they need to gain. It considers the ideal characteristics for CIOs, and the gaps in their current ability. The top five ideal characteristics identified in this research were:
| Characteristic | Recognized as Ideal | Current Strength |
| Influencing Internal Stakeholders | 79% | 55% |
| Communication and Interpersonal Skills | 70% | 67% |
| Understanding the organization’s strategic priorities | 62% | 58% |
| Attracting, retaining and motivating talent | 52% | 42% |
| Technology vision and leadership | 51% | 44% |
It is in the first one, influencing, (with 45% admitting it is not a strength) that makes the link between Cognitive Readiness and Strategic Agility, and begins to transform into actual performance. To maximise your influence, you have to be credible. That means you need to be able to demonstrate excellence in your grasp of what is happening, and what should be done. However, that is not enough, because you have to be able to engage people in your vision of the future, get them excited, and mobilise them to take action. And that takes Political Capital.
In a simplistic way, Political Capital is the theoretical value of goodwill that you have within your network of relationships. It is based on Social Capital (the quality and quantity of your relationship) and goes beyond the balance of favours you are due. It includes your reputation, people’s positive experience of working with you, the amount of time and attention they will award you, and ultimately, the degree to which they are prepared to be influenced by you.
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If you have sufficient Political Capital, you can begin to influence the multitude of other agendas raging around your organisation so that they begin to align with your vision of the future. This is where Cognitive Readiness and Strategic Agility begin to yield tangible benefits to the organisation.
Focusing attention on developing your Political Capital should be a priority. Not only is it necessary in order to perform well, it also helps to increase readiness and agility. Curiously, it also dramatically reduces the amount of courage you need to pursue your vision.
Five Ways to Develop Political Capital
Learn the shape, structure and dynamics at play in each arena connected to your purpose.
To begin, you need to map out all of the arenas or groups that could play a role in realising your purpose. This is not as straightforward as it may appear, because you also need to include the informal structures. Once you have done this you can then prioritise your analysis.
In my recent book, Influential Leadership[3], I outlined the most important aspects that you need to develop keen insight into, for each arena:
- What is working? What is not working?
- What significant problems or challenges is the arena facing?
- How are the key players reacting to the above?
- How are the politics within the group affecting things?
- What trends and changes are evident?
- How is the arena organized and how do decisions get made (formally and informally)?
- What strategies are being adopted to meet the challenges?
This takes time, because you cannot answer these questions without getting out there, building high-trust relationships, and learning from the people in the midst of each arena. It is also important not to rely on your assumptions. In your executive office it would be easy to state what you think about the arena. However, what is more important, is what the people within the arena think, at least at this stage.
The acquisition of these insights will equip you with the intelligence necessary to enhance your Cognitive Readiness (you will know what is really going on). You will also learn much more about what your vision needs to be, and what challenges it will face (Strategic Agility) . Finally, it will help you to learn exactly who you should be building Political Capital with. You can’t do this with everyone, so prioritising your attention is essential.
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Acquire the appropriate power and invest it wisely.
Since power is the capacity to influence, having more of it is certainly a worthy pursuit if you want to make great things happen. However, you have to do this deliberately, and carefully because:
- Business ethics is another hot topic in executive education today (ranked top at 21.5% in the trends report) because it is a hot topic in the public domain and with legislators too. So, once you have power you need to be careful how you apply it. Remember, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Power comes in many forms and it is vital that you know what will work in the arenas you need to influence. Since you are likely to be actively influencing many different arenas, you need to build the awareness and versatility to adapt your use of power in each group for maximum effect.
- Naturally you will use your power to advance your own cause however, if you want to build Political Capital, you also need to invest it in those whose goodwill you want to earn. This means you have to use your power to help your friends in the pursuit of their goals.
In order to do this, you need to understand power intimately, including the principles that make it work. Again, drawing from Influential Leadership, the five key principles are:
- Consequences: Power creates waves and needs to be handled with care.
- Calculations: Power is all about individuals making personal decisions in order to satisfy their needs and wants.
- Supply and Demand: You will be powerful if people want what you have, and especially powerful if they can’t get it elsewhere.
- Perception and Reality: It is not so much about what power you have, but what power people think you have.
- Utilisation: Your power and influence will grow if you use your power.
Mastering these principles will help you to see what you need to do to help important people (above, below and to the side) and thus create goodwill towards you and your purpose.
Create strategic alliances with powerful people who can connect with your purpose.
As your insights into the arenas, their dynamics, and strategies grow, you will get an increasing degree of certainty about what needs to happen (your vision) and the challenges it will face as you attempt to implement it. Thus, you need to make sure your Political Capital is invested in the right places, and that the goodwill will be a no-brainer – because it plays to their agenda too.
In effect, this means that you need to map out the power structures around your chosen goal, notice who can help or hinder you, and then start building unbreakable alliances that can support your purpose. This is the realm of working out how agendas conflict and they can be made to harmonise.
Part of the reason why Cognitive Readiness and Strategic Agility are so hard to realise is that in complex environments, nothing is static. Change would be easy if yours was the only change. However, change is being pushed forward in every part of every organisation so there are bound to be winners and losers. This is why it is so vitally important that as you are building your Political Capital, you develop a keen sense of what other powerful people are aiming to achieve. Then you can craft a negotiation, alliance, or frankly, utterly demolish their chances of interfering with your strategy. And yes, this can all be done ethically, with integrity and compassion.
Build and protect your reputation religiously.
Putting conscious effort into building your reputation will be time well spent. Apart from solidifying what you stand for and your unique credentials within the organisational network, it also leverages greater goodwill when you get this right – your reputation will precede you. Therefore, you can magnify your influence. To do this well, you need to consider:
- Culture: What type of reputation will sit well within the culture of the arena where you are playing? Any attempt to build a reputation that is contrary to the deeply held values will be a recipe for an early exit.
- Distinction: For a reputation to build capital, it needs to be really distinctive, and valued by the powerful people within the arena. Finding ways to distinguish yourself should lead to (your) competitive advantage.
- Substance: Increasingly it is necessary to be able to deliver to your reputation. The days of self-aggrandisement are fading, thankfully. Now you need to be able to deliver to expectations, otherwise your reputation and power will quickly fade.
- Visibility: Once decided upon, you need to find a way to publicise it (within your sense of integrity) so that it comes to the attention of the population as a whole. A PR strategy would be ideal.
- Connections: Reputations needs sponsorship and advocacy in exactly the same way that political campaigns do. These are the people who rate you and what you do, and have the power to promote you within the upper echelons of the arena. Make sure you connect well with them.
- Tenacity: Without a doubt, staying power and consistency are vital in order to build a robust reputation and in gaining increasing benefits from it.
While reputations can and do build quite naturally, putting conscious effort into the process will speed things up and dramatically increase the goodwill available to you ready for when you need to access it.
Mobilise your team to build your political capital.
As the trends report rightly noted, all of this can take a huge amount of time and energy. Even though much of what I’ve suggested above can be applied while performing your role, it still takes extra time. One important way to increase the time available is to share the burden with your team so that you can work together to increase your capacity to act and deliver.
In particular:
- Share what’s on your mind, what you are hoping to achieve, and engage them in the creation process.
- Create a shared strategy for developing deeper insight into the arenas, groups and dynamics affecting your purpose.
- Get them bought-in to the benefits that they can all gain when you are able to rely upon greater Political Capital.
- Gain their commitment to this shared purpose and get them out there building the relationships you all need in order to thrive.
What is interesting about this particular topic is that if you have carefully selected the right people to be in your team, they are likely to be extremely well connected in their own right. In many ways, this is already part of their job. What I am suggesting here is merely to formalise it a little and get them sharing more with you, and with each other.
Of course, you need to add into the mix that you have to be fantastic at building and maintaining strong relationships, be a great mentor and coach and naturally, create a clear strategy to realise your vision. It could be argued that in reality, you need to be good at all of these things before you put too much effort into building Political Capital.
However, when you are ready, developing your Political Capital is the smart thing to do. The acquisition process will give you the insights you need, and the relationships too. In combination, these will help you to figure out what your vision should be, and will also equip you with the intelligence necessary to get people engaged with it. Which, if you subscribe to the views of the overwhelming majority of executive education leaders in the trends survey, will put you in pole position for a successful executive career.
Footnotes:
[1] Trends in Executive Development 2016 Report, Executive Development Associates Inc. Findings from interviews with executive development leaders in 466 corporations.
[2] The Deloitte CIO Survey 2015. Findings from interviews with 1271 practicing CIOs.
[3] Influential Leadership: A Leader’s Guide to Getting Things Done, Colin Gautrey, Kogan Page, London, 2014.
Colin Gautrey
Provocative Coach/Mentor | Specialism: Impact and Influence
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