Bacharach, S. (2005). “Identify Allies and Resistors.” Get Them on Your Side. Adams Media, 38-47.
So there you are. You know that you have to initiate some action. But you know that your agenda will differ from the agendas of those around you. On a particular issue, you may have a Revolutionary agenda, your supervisor has a Traditionalist agenda, your colleague down the hall has a Developer agenda, and your assistant undoubtedly has an Adjuster agenda. You know that you cannot go at it alone. An issue arises and now you must map the political terrain. That is, you must understand the agendas of others as they relate to your agenda in regard to a particular issue.
If you’re politically competent you know you must complete this analysis of your organization’s political environment before you can begin to effectively build support for your initiative. This involves the following four steps:
Step 1: Determine your agenda as it relates to your initiative. Are you a Traditionalist, Adjuster, Developer, or Revolutionary?
Step 2: List all the key stakeholders, as they relate to your initiative. Include those who may have competing objectives, as well as those who are key decision makers, allies, and/or influencers.
Step 3: Identify the agenda of each stakeholder.
Step 4: Analyze that list, identifying those who are like you, those who are in opposite quadrants, and those who share either similar goals or similar implementation strategies.
Step 1
Keep in mind the matrix in the last chapter. You may intuitively know where you fall. If you struggle in identifying yourself, answer two sets of questions. First ask yourself about your goals. Are you after tinkering goals or overhauling goals? How would others describe you? For the particular issue you are pushing, would you be seen as a tinkerer or an overhauler? While you may think your idea is radical, others may consider it only a small step towards the organization’s goals. More commonly, particularly if you are a Revolutionary, you may consider your initiative to be a baby step, while others think it is a giant leap into the dark!
Next ask yourself about your management approach. Are you an Improviser or a Planner? Do you advocate developing a comprehensive, detailed plan before pursuing your initiative? Or are you more likely to deal with things as they come along and maintain that predicting accurately and acting incrementally is impossible?
Based on the answers to these two sets of questions, you should be able to place yourself in one of the four quadrants. Keep in mind, that while you may be a Revolutionary for your initiative, you may be a Traditionalist for most other decisions in your organization. Agendas about change, well, change. So, don’t assume. The CFO—who is normally a Revolutionary—might be an Adjuster when it comes to your specific initiative. Always calibrate your stakeholders carefully for each decision as it arises.
George Irwin was assistant administrator at the Broome County Sisterhood hospital in Upstate New York, when the chief administrator called him in to ask him if he had an idea for making the hospital more efficient, Administrator: “We’ve grown so much, we need not only become more efficient, but to think of the future—push the envelope, George.” George: “Let’s create satellite networks.”
Administrator: “What’s a satellite network?” George: “You know, little clinics spread through the region. We have some nurses there, we have some doctors there. We do preventive front-line medicine.” Administrator: “Preventive front-line medicine. I like the notion.” George is a Revolutionary with a great idea. He wants to develop small clinics, something that has been totally foreign to—and therefore an “overhauling” goal—for Broome County Sisterhood Hospital. His preferred approach—to move ahead quickly in a “sense and respond” way—is the modus operandi of the Improviser. Once George understands his agenda is a revolutionary one, he will be better prepared to compare his agenda with those of his colleagues.
Step 2
List all the stakeholders. Stakeholders fall into four categories of people in organizations:
(1) Decision makers
(2) Those who will be directly impacted by your initiative.
(3) Those at a similar level of influence in your organization, but who may not be directly impacted by your initiative (your colleagues).
(4) Other influential stakeholders
Decision makers are the top dogs and the ones who are ultimately responsible for the success of your initiative. The decision maker may be an individual, like your boss. More often, the decision makers are a group, like senior management or the finance committee. They are the people who need to be on board and who will want to be sure they are getting a full perspective on your initiative before moving it forward.
These are the people you will need to convince directly and who will heed the opinions of the other stakeholders in the organization. Those who are directly impacted by your initiative will be, perhaps, your most challenging constituency. Within this group, you will find your most vocal detractors, including the detractors that you didn’t even know about! This group will also have potential supporters. Do a careful job when developing a complete list of this group. It is often those who’ve been left out of the support-building process, who become your harshest critics.
There is a cadre of your colleagues who share a similar level of influence in the organization. In most cases, several of them may not be significantly impacted by the change you are looking to effect. Nevertheless, each one will undoubtedly have an opinion about what you are proposing and will have a measure of influence on the people who are making the ultimate decisions (or on those who will be directly impacted by your effort). So, you’ll need to list these people and, as best you can, determine where they fall in the matrix.
Other stakeholders may include outside consultants, boards of directors, and people in the organization who might not fit in any of the above three categories, but nevertheless have the attention of the decision makers. Outside consultants inevitably become sounding boards for initiatives. And they are often very influential in swaying the opinion of senior people. Often, there are a handful of people who always seem to be at the periphery of the organization—such as a chief of staff for a senior person. For whatever reason, these people have the ability to weigh in with decision makers on virtually any issue. Though this group may be difficult to identify and even more difficult to map accurately, just making yourself aware of their influence is an important step towards managing their influence.
The challenge is not simply to identify the high-profile stakeholders who will be immediately impacted, but also to identify the invisible stakeholders who will impacted. Political competence requires you to keep in mind is that invisible stakeholders are not inactive stakeholders. The invisible stakeholders can be clients or vendors. They can be the marketing people who support the sales force. They can be in IT, training, or travel. Your invisible stakeholders can be at every level of the organization. You need to pay special attention to invisible stakeholders because they may become extremely active in resisting your idea. If the stakes are high enough, they will come out of the closet and become active resistors—or active supporters.
George Irwin sat down at his desk and went through the organization. He thought to himself, “Hmmm. My boss, Harold Roth loves the idea, but I think he’s more of a Developer. And Jane Cook, head of facilities management is going to be key in getting this idea off the ground. Kelly Fitzpatrick, VP of Marketing, will also be instrumental in this. Of course, our CEO, Jesse Babcock will need to play a prominent role. So will Dr. Warren Shaw, the head of physicians at the hospital. And speaking of staff, I’ll need to talk with Thomas Johansen, head of all hospital attendants, and Erica Long, head nurse. We’ll also need the union rep, Frieda Ruiz, on board. And Larry DeCicco, head of sanitation. Let’s see…who else? Oh, yeah, Jeff Weaver, our CFO. And I may want to talk with Monroe Moore, the strategy consultant that’s been advising Babcock for the past few months. Then, there’s Judy Turner, our community relations chief. She’ll absolutely need to play a role in this. And I guess I’ll need to reach out to Broome County’s supervisor, Bryan North…”
George was well on his way to creating his list of stakeholders.
Step 3
With list in hand, now it’s time to map the agendas of the stakeholders. You need to go down the list and identify each stakeholder agenda: Traditionalist, Adjuster, Developer, or Revolutionary.
The best way to identify the agenda of the stakeholder is to remember previous initiatives and recall how they acted at that time. Roleplay—get yourself into the shoes of the other person. Try to anticipate the behavior of the other. Ask yourself how this particular individual in this particular division will react to this particular idea. How will this reaction trigger a reaction in others in the organization? Recall a person’s specific attitude and behavior from the past and try to extrapolate into the future. These historical scenarios will allow you to anticipate a particular agenda and probable action in the future. If you tell your spouse that you want to invite two or three colleagues to dinner, you say to yourself, “I know how she is going to react.” Just as you may know what your wife may think about having coworkers over to dinner, you can also anticipate the reaction of your colleagues as you suggest to them that you should centralize all the clerical operation under one director.
One would hope that you’ve had more experience in anticipating your spouse than your work colleagues, but in truth, it may be easier to anticipate the agendas of workplace colleagues than to anticipate the agenda of a spouse. In the workplace, issues are limited. The depth of knowledge and the detail of historical experiences are fairly limited. Also, in the workplace, you can try to map through discovery, if not gossip. Ask others their views on how a particular person will react to an idea or has generally reacted in the past. The trick here, of course, is to do this in a manner that doesn’t telegraph your intentions. Subtlety is vital. You need not be scientific about mapping the agendas of others. Your list will always be subject to inaccuracies. But if you’re 80% correct, you’ll be well armed for your battles, for your conversations, and for your other support-building activities.
Now that George Irwin had developed his list of stakeholders, he thought about each of them. Jane Cook, the head of facilities management at the hospital, thought the idea had merit, but didn’t think the organization should move too quickly on George’s idea. Jane was concerned that the organization didn’t have the capacity to expand the number of facilities they managed. Deep down inside, Jane was perfectly comfortable with her span of control and had finally stabilized the operations in her organization. A large-scale facilities expansion might be good for her, but she was also concerned that she might be “layered” by the initiative and end up reporting to a new head of facilities management. Jane has a mindset closest to a Developer. She seems inclined to support George, but there are issues that keep her from being an outright ally.
Thomas Johansen had other ideas. Thomas is a managing director, responsible for all hospital attendants. When George shared with Thomas his vision of the satellites, Thomas dismissed the idea as “pedestrian” –something that would bring down the reputation of the hospital. Though George didn’t dig much further, Johansen’s real concern was that the need for hospital attendants would be minimal in satellites, thereby diluting his relative power in the organization. Johansen also had some suspicions that one of his direct reports—an ambitious, young MBA—was trying to carve out his own position in the organization and Thomas felt threatened. As a result, Thomas didn’t see the need for change and would do what he could to stop such efforts. Thomas is clearly a Traditionalist.
Broome County Sisterhood also had Adjusters. Kelly Fitzpatrick, VP of marketing, was a fairly prominent one. George recalled her reaction at a recent meeting when he innocently suggested an idea he had for an internet marketing initiative. She lambasted him for moving in on her turf without consulting her. George visualized this meeting with Kelly and decided it was better to get her input on the idea rather than to try to sell her on it. Kelly heard of George’s idea, sat back in her chair, stared out the window, then turned to George and said: “George, I hear what you’re saying and I agree, we could be doing a much better job of getting closer to our customers. I’ve been lobbying hard for a new Customer Relationship Management system for my organization and I think that by adopting that, we may be much better positioned to identify and serve our hard-to-reach customers without making major investments in real estate, parking lots, and buildings. While I appreciate your idea, we’re just not anywhere near ready to undertake something of that magnitude. And we haven’t proven it would even work!” George left the meeting slightly deflated. That’s often what happens when Revolutionary meets Adjuster.
George continued working on his list.
As George developed his list, his exuberance was tempered. He noted that there was only one other Revolutionary among stakeholders—and that guy was a consultant! He has what he thinks is a great idea. But now he recognizes that there are several key people in the organization who may be less than enthusiastic about his idea.
George thought “How can I move the mindsets of my resistors—like Jane Cook, Thomas Johansen, and Kelly Fitzpatrick –in such a way that they can become more “Revolutionary” and supportive of my initiative than they are today?
Step 4
The following matrix will help you determine where the likely sources of resistance will surface (e.g. does it have to do with particular issues or is it more pervasive?). In this matrix your change agenda goes down the first column and your stakeholders’ change agenda goes along the top row. So, find your agenda and go across until you find their agenda. You’ll see a box that identifies how well aligned your approaches to change are.
There are four potential responses. First, is the Ally response. This is the situation where you and your stakeholder generally share the same idea about how change should happen. The second response is that of Potential Ally. In this situation, you may agree on the change goal, but you disagree on the approach by which change should be implemented. The third response is Potential Resistor. You and the stakeholder don’t share goals for change, but you have a common change approach. The fourth response will be Resistor. Resistors are at the opposite end of the change spectrum from you—both in terms of goals and change approach.
With your constituency mapped out, it’s time to look for patterns, groupings, and overall assessments.
First, highlight all the people who share your agenda. If you consider yourself a Developer, highlight all the Developers. These are likely to be your closest allies. They are, fundamentally, in harmony with your perspective on the extent of change needed and how change should be implemented. It will take more than just knowing they may be in your camp, you are going to need to cultivate your relationship with them and keep them strongly supportive of your initiative.
Second, highlight those whose agenda is your exact opposite. On the matrix, that is the agenda diagonally opposite yours. This is the group whom you may never be able to change or influence directly. They will likely be some of your strongest resistors, so you’ll need to develop strategies to keep them from derailing your efforts.
Third, highlight those who share your goals. This group will likely support where you are going, but they may disagree with your means for getting there. While they may be potential allies, they are equally likely to be strong adversaries.
Fourth, highlight those who share similar approaches to achieving goals, but may not share your defined goals. This group could be supportive of your efforts, but due to your competing goals, it is more likely that they will be resistors.
George went back to his list. “Okay, I got Monroe Moore as my only other Revolutionary. So, I’m gonna need to set up a meeting with him and get him on board. If I can do that, that’d go a long way with Babcock. He’s one of the group of Developers—along with Jane, Bryan, Weaver, and Harold. They seem to like my idea but think my approach is too risky. So, I’m going to need to understand how they’d propose we move ahead. The good news is they like my idea. And I can be flexible in how we get there…as long as it’s quick!”
“Johansen, Ruiz, and Larry DeCicco are going to be trouble,” George thought. “Moving them will be like trying to pick up the entire hospital and move it down the street. I gotta figure out how to keep them from undermining me. They really are key to the success of this thing and have a lot of influence with Babcock…and even with Harold.”
“Then there the others: Kelly, Dr. Shaw, and Erica. They’re going to be tough nuts. They don’t seem to want to change much. When they do choose to change they really take action and push things ahead—my kind of approach. But they seem only to see the downside to my idea. Hmm.”
You have a new idea, and you have four possible responses. The Allies, the people who think, “This is it!” when they hear your idea. They are sold from the beginning. You have a common agenda, they share your goal and the approach by which you want to implement the change. With Allies, you’ve got three challenges. You want to solidify them, coalesce them, and get them behind you in a solid and consolidated way. Then you have the Potential Allies, those who are sitting on your side of the fence. You share similar goals, but your change approach is different. You want them jump off the fence into your yard. Potential Resistors are also on the fence, but with their legs dangling on the other side. They are likely to share your change approach, but disagree with you on goals. You want to either neutralize their influence or you want them to move closer to your side of the fence. Resistors are just that. They disagree with you on goals and their change approach is the opposite of yours. Like the Potential Resistors, you do what you can to neutralize them but you wouldn’t mind if they spent more time closer to your fence.
How do you distribute your effort in getting support from the four camps of allies and resistors? If you see that your allies are willing to support you, but not behind you 100%, the first thing you need to do is coalesce your base. You have to make sure that your allies are with you solidly. Get them to coalesce around your idea. Your next step is to move your potential allies along to get them on your side of the fence. You want to begin to persuade them, to argue why they should join your effort. Third, you’ll then be able to approach your potential resistors and resistors and say, “Look! We already have strong support from others in the organization. Won’t you consider coming along?” You have to deal with all three of these on one front. Don’t wait to deal with potential resistors and resistors. If you wait too long, what will happen is that potential resistors will become bona fide resistors and resistors will slip away beyond your grasp. They’ll resist even more strongly. They’ll be entrenched in their position. They’ll have a sense, perhaps with reason, that they are only an afterthought. If you deal with the resistors too early, you’ll come to them from a weak position. The trick is to deal with the resistors when they know that you already have a groundswell of support, but that the game isn’t over and that there is still room for negotiation.
©BLG
