Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work

by Bill Burnett

NINA At the bottom left we have the non-influential non-authoritarian. These are people who have neither influence nor authority. These are not particularly powerful people and, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with NINAs. Every organization should have lots of them; they get a lot of stuff done. And if you got rid of all the NINAs in an organization, the population of workers would simply redistribute themselves on this chart. There are always people in all four quadrants of this chart; it’s just a description of the population of people in any situation.

NIA At the top left we have the non-influential authoritarians. NIAs are people who are relatively high up in the organization, but they’re not particularly influential. They’re not necessarily people in charge of terribly important stuff. Sometimes the facilities director who’s taking care of the office cubicles and the copiers is in an authoritative position, but they’re not really influential. They might have a big budget because the building rent is really high, but they are not involved with the strategic direction of the organization.

INA The right side of this chart is the power zone. This is where people have influence. INAs are the influential non-authoritarians. These are people in the organization who get listened to.

You see these kinds of people in every organization: It’s the really forward-thinking classroom teacher who has the ear of the principal when she’s considering changing something. It’s the waiter who’s always consulted about any and all menu or décor changes because the owner knows she’s really got her finger on the pulse of the customers. It’s the phone service agent at the IRS help desk group who the regional manager always turns to for advice when it comes to improving the website design. It’s Dave. They’re all INAs.

IA Last but not least, we have people who are both authoritative and influential. These are people who get listened to because they have important things to say, and they have positions of authority so they can make decisions. These are the real power players.

The Value Proposition Understanding the Influence and Authority chart is a good first step, but how do you use this model to increase your influence and have greater power? Basically, you do that by being strategically and culturally aligned with the business and other influencers, and by creating a history of contribution that is recognized by others in power.

Influence = Value + Recognition

So how do you become an influencer? It’s really simple. You add value to the organization, meaning you help it be more successful, by being useful and doing great work. It is important that the value you add is strategically aligned with the organization’s direction and is recognized by people who can do something about it, the ones with the authority to make decisions.

If you add value and nobody knows, that’s a noble contribution, but it won’t make you influential. If you try to get recognized by being noisy or popular but you don’t do anything valuable, it might work briefly, but that will wear off quickly.

There are generally two ways that bad politics can happen. The first is when someone in the organization pulls a power play. And the second is when there’s a values crisis in the company.

In a power struggle, everybody involved wants to do the right thing for the organization, but they just don’t agree on what the right thing is.

In a power play, somebody’s not trying to do the right thing for the company, they’re trying to do the right thing for themselves.

The second reason politics go bad is when there’s a values crisis in the company.

So when there is either a power play going on because somebody’s in it for themselves or there’s a values crisis and nobody knows how to make a good choice, the situation can result in bad politics that get out of control. Our advice: You want to be careful in those situations to make sure you don’t get caught up in the mess.