Power and Influence

by John P. Kotter

Good ideas are rarely lacking inside even poorly performing firms.

Having a good idea is one thing, implementing it is something else again.

Organizational excellence is impossible without individual excellence.

the cynic assumes evil forces are usually at work, the naïve assumes good forces are the norm.

Diversity, as I shall use the term, refers to differences among people with respect to goals, values, stakes, assumptions, and perceptions. Interdependence refers to a state in which two or more parties have power over each other because they are, to some degree, dependent on each other.

First of all, when a high degree of interdependence exists in the workplace, unilateral action is rarely possible.

In all these situations, and in hundreds of others that are fundamentally similar, social complexity, not character, is the key driving force. And when such situations are not handled with great skill—a leadership skill that was somewhat lacking in all three of those cases—destructive power struggles are almost inevitable. (This is summarized in Figure 2-1.)

The internationalization of business:

Growth through diversification:

The growth of government regulation, organized consumer groups, and the business press:

An increasingly heterogeneous work force:

Continuing technological advances:

An increasingly educated work force:

The slowdown in the world economy in the last decade:

The aging of the work force:

leadership jobs (positions that require a person to get others to help and cooperate but, unlike management jobs, do not give the job holder control over most of those key others).

With this great increase in social complexity has come a corresponding (and predictable) increase in conflict among people at work and in the effort spent trying to overcome this conflict.

Great diversity and interdependence does not inevitably lead to destructive situations. Quite the contrary, that kind of social milieu can produce excellent decisions, highly creative solutions, and very innovative products and services, if it is handled in an effective and responsible way.

even though they realize that this will make the process more difficult to manage, because it will generate a lot of conflict.

Most people in professional, managerial, and technical jobs must also be skilled at managing the complex set of interdependent relationships that come with their jobs. And they must see this activity as a central part of their jobs. Competent technical work from these people, in engineering, accounting, marketing,

Instead we need people who see their roles as those of actively leading subordinates, peers, bosses, and outsiders to achieve responsible results within their domains of activity.

The relevant skills are both cognitive and interpersonal in nature. They involve the capacity to assess correctly differences among people in goals, values, perceptions, and stakes; the ability to see the subtle interdependencies among those people; and the capacity to identify the implications of this diagnosis. These skills also involve an ability to implement these judgments by successfully influencing what is often a large and diverse group of people. These are the skills of leadership in an organizational society.

A credible track record and the reputation it earns can help one develop and maintain good working relationships with others in a fraction of the time that is required if those power sources are absent.

More specifically, with respect to lateral relationships—that is, those outside the chain of command—effective and responsible leadership demands, first of all, a constant sensitivity to where relevant relationships actually exist.

Developing and maintaining effective relationships with bosses involves four basic steps.

First, one needs to get as much detailed information as is practicable about each boss’s goals, strengths, weaknesses, and preferred working style—and about the pressures on him. Second, one also needs to make an honest self-appraisal—about one’s needs, objectives, strengths, weaknesses, and personal style. Third, armed with this information, one then needs to create a relationship that fits both parties’ key needs and styles, and that is characterized by mutual expectations. And finally, maintaining the relationship then demands that one keep the boss informed, behave dependably and honestly, and use that boss’s time and other resources selectively.

Strong leadership means creating an environment where built-in conflicts can potentially lead to creative decisions through effective teamwork, and where destructive power struggles, bureaucratic infighting, and parochial politics are absolutely minimized.

Because of all this, the key challenge during the early career years, for those aspiring to leadership jobs, involves establishing the power bases they will need to be able to perform effectively in such jobs. If they are successful, the key challenge will shift at mid-career to using the power they have acquired responsibly, without inadvertently misusing it. And later on, at the end of their careers, the challenge will be to let go of all that power—to turn over the reins of leadership to well-prepared successors. Part III of this book will describe these challenges in some detail. Here is a brief summary of that material:

In terms of the early stages of one’s career, the first challenge is to get into an industry, company or job context that fits one’s own needs, values, strengths, and weaknesses to some minimum degree.

At a personal level, making social complexity work for us means exchanging feelings of frustration, impotence, and alienation for a sense of efficacy and competence.

At an organizational level, this means exchanging bureaucratic infighting, destructive political activity, and meaningless power struggles for productive and creative action.

And at a societal level, in a world so dependent on complex organizations, it means nothing less than a better quality of life.

The real job in this and similar situations—the leadership job—demands attention elsewhere. It requires: 1. Identifying where all the relevant lateral relationships exist, including those that are subtle and almost invisible (in other words, figuring out who needs to be led) 2. Assessing who among these people may resist cooperation, why, and how strongly (figuring out where the leadership challenges will be) 3. Developing, wherever possible, a good relationship with these people to facilitate the communication, education, or negotiation process required to reduce or overcome most kinds of resistance (developing the tools needed to lead) 4. And when Step Three doesn’t work by itself, carefully selecting and implementing more subtle or more forceful methods to deal with the resistance (having the courage to lead) The rest of this chapter will be spent discussing these four steps.

Effective leadership in a job that includes a complicated set of lateral relationships requires, first, a keen sense of where those relationships are.

This means that every new assignment can bring with it a new set of lateral dependencies. Even within an assignment, every significant change of direction can bring with it new dependencies.

Problems like this are largely avoidable, but they require that one condition oneself to think routinely and regularly about questions like these: • What am I trying to achieve in my work? What is my vision of the future? • What are the key tasks I need to accomplish this year? This month? This week? Today? • For each of these tasks, whose cooperation will definitely be necessary? Whose cooperation may be necessary? • Whose compliance will definitely be necessary? That is, who can block or retard the accomplishment of these tasks? Whose compliance may be necessary?

Probably the single most common strategy effective managers, professionals, and technical experts use in this regard is relationship development. That is, they work to develop a personal relationship with the relevant other parties and then use that relationship to facilitate the communication, education, or negotiation process required to reduce or overcome most kinds of resistance to cooperation.

A typical product manager’s lateral relationships are further complicated by two other factors. First of all, the people with whom he deals make or sell or distribute many products, not just his own. As such, they do not always give a particular product the priority that he wants or needs. Furthermore, these other people are usually not located physically close to him. So he is not able to walk down the hall or up the stairs and have a quick talk with them about something.

To overcome this almost emotional resistance to his idea, the product manager devised and implemented the following plan. First, he got someone that the manufacturing manager respected highly to send that manager two market research studies that were very favorable to the new product, along with a note saying (something along the lines of) “Have you seen this? I found them rather surprising. I am not sure if I believe them, but still …” Then the product manager got a representative of one of the company’s biggest customers to mention casually to the plant manager in a phone conversation that he had heard a rumor about the new product idea and was “glad to see you guys on your toes as usual.” Next, he arranged for two industrial engineers to stand near the manufacturing manager prior to a meeting and talk about the favorable test results on the product. Then the product manager set up a meeting to talk about the product, and invited only people he was sure the plant manager liked (or respected) and who also felt favorably about the new product. A day after that meeting, he asked the manufacturing manager to sign off. And he did!

Coercive strategies are clearly risky because they invite retaliation. But as the McGraw-Hill case suggests, they are sometimes necessary as a last resort. Great leaders throughout history have almost always been willing to put up a good fight, if fighting is the only way to achieve an important objective. And sometimes, although not very often, coercion is the only alternative.

Table 5-1 The Myth The Reality Basic Conception of the Job A supervisory job is a position of authority A supervisory job is a position of dependence Relevant Focus of Attention The people reporting directly to the supervisor (i.e., a small number of people and relationships) All subordinates working on important tasks, regardless of level or rank and all important relationships among subordinates or between subordinates and others (i.e., a large number of people and relationships) Key Assets Required to Do the Job Knowledge about planning, organizing, staffing, directing, evaluating Sufficient power to make up for the power gap inherent in the job Key Behavior Required to Lead Subordinates The basic management processes: planning, organizing, staffing, directing, etc. A wide range of soft and hard, direct and indirect, substantive and symbolic, participatory and authoritarian approaches applied with great care to fit the needs of the situation. Other Important Behaviors None necessary One must also competently manage all lateral and boss relationships V

As this last example suggests, using a clear understanding of both parties to create a good work relationship with a boss means developing an approach, goals, and expectations that fit both of these parties.

Do I really know what my boss expects of me, both in general and in terms of specific activities in the next week? In the next month? Am I satisfied that these expectations are sensible and fair? • Does my boss really know what I expect in return? Does he or she know what resources, information, support, and help I need? In the longer run does my boss know my career expectations? Does he or she accept them and thus work on my behalf? • How well do we get along on a daily basis? Are there many unpleasant conflicts or problems? If there are, what exactly creates these problems? What can I realistically do to help the situation? • What demands have I made of my boss in the past month or two? How important were the issues involved to the organization, to my boss, and to me? Were any of these instances a waste of time for the boss? • Of the various dimensions of trust in a relationship, which ones are particularly important to my boss? Have I been particularly trustworthy on these dimensions recently? • How well does my boss know what I’ve been doing for the past few months? If he or she is uninformed about certain activities, could this create a problem? If so, what can I do to correct the situation?

There are many things that organizations can do to help young people develop adequate power bases. As Yale sociologist Rosabeth Kanter notes in her book The Change Masters, firms can: • Make nonconfidential information about the business and the organization more widely available to people. • Encourage and provide settings for relationship development. • Provide vehicles for reputation building. • Explicitly encourage mentoring processes.

Because of a variety of potential problems, it is absolutely necessary for people to pay explicit attention to the mentor issue, especially during their twenties and early thirties. Periodically reflecting on the following questions can help in this regard: • With whom do I currently have a mentor-like relationship? What role does each of these people play in my development? How well do they play their roles? • If I don’t have many mentors, or the right mix of people, or powerful enough people, why is this? Does the nature of my job simply not make me very visible to potential mentors? Is my track record or reputation not strong enough to attract mentors? Do I have a tendency not to seek out mentors, or to ignore their offers of help? Or am I simply in an environment in which few potential mentors exist?

For example, a typical middle-aged executive in a general management job will have the following responsibilities:1 1. Long run—setting some or all of the basic goals, directions, and priorities for an organization, including deciding what business or businesses to be in, and how to secure key resources. 2. Medium run—allocating resources effectively to that business or those businesses so as to achieve long-run goals. 3. Short run—the efficient use of the human, financial, and material resources employed in that business or those businesses, including some profit responsibility.