Developing and Exercising Strategic Influence

In this series of articles on Strategic Leadership, I have discussed strategic leadership in general and have also explored the nature of strategic thinking. I then moved on to a consideration of strategic acting – or execution. The aspect of Strategic Leadership that I am currently exploring is that of Strategic Influencing – the formation and nurturing of strategic relationships over the long term. In this article, I will focus on how strategic leaders connect with others in order to influence.

Before we can hope to influence the thoughts, actions and opinions of others, we need to connect with them in some way – in short, we need to touch their hearts. Strategic leaders understand this and, in a completely authentic and uncontrived way are able to do this through various means:

1. They take the time to learn what is important to other people. The ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes and see things from their perspective requires that one has knowledge of that other person. On the other hand, the inability to put oneself in other people’s shoes suggests that we might not know our stakeholders well enough. Strategic leaders spend time learning about the needs, perspectives and desires for the organization of key stakeholders. They are then in a better position to influence because they can accommodate these needs, hopes and aspirations in their thinking and communicate in a way that shows this.

They are able to use language in a powerful way, communicating via stories, metaphors and images to create a compelling message. If we learn to share our plans and strategies using vivid images and stories we are able to create a culture that really touches people both inside and outside the organization. Just think of how the Disney organization has achieved this. Robert McKee, a screenwriting coach, suggests that executives should learn to tell compelling stories that tell of the struggle of a hero against one or more antagonists. We trust stories of struggle because life is a struggle. In crafting such a story, we should consider:

• Who is the hero? Is it a customer? Is it one or more of our employees/a supplier/a strategic partner?  
• What is our hero pursuing?                   
• What is keeping our hero from achieving his/her quest? Is it forces from within? Is it fear? Is it tough competition? Could it be organizational culture or social and personal conflicts? Is it a lack of time?
  
• What does our hero go through in dealing with these antagonistic forces? What does our hero need to do in order to vanquish his/her antagonists?
  
• Is our story believable, neither exaggerating nor soft-soaping the struggle?
  

Having won the hearts and minds of our stakeholders, we can pursue our strategic changes, provided we:

1. Set appropriate expectations – we need to be realistic about the results that can be expected in the short term. There are two main reasons why success may not be instant in strategic change. Firstly, we are speaking of long-term initiatives. Changing culture and effecting radical change can take anything from 3 to 5 years. Secondly, it is very common during times of strategic change for organizations to experience an initial drop in performance– since we are all learning new ways of doing things. In fact, a drop in performance may well indicate that the change is exactly on track! We need to be careful not to interpret an apparent lack of immediate success as failure – and set our expectations at a realistic level.
2. Search for and celebrate successes. When people do not see instant success, they may well begin to doubt the direction. Therefore it is vital that we hunt down and show tangible evidence that we are on the right path. We must not make the mistake of considering these small successes as the minimum expectation – what we are paid to do. Remember that while we might be fully committed, there may still be many people sitting on the fence – and they need to see tangible evidence that the effort is bearing fruit.
3. Send consistent messages – we need to ensure that the right messages are communicated consistently, and prevent the communication of potentially distracting messages. We need to make sure that we talk the change we seek, and that we measurethe change that we seek. We also need to make sure that our measurements are not of things that impede change – in fact we need to hunt such measurements down and root them out!
   

Just as strategic leaders are influential, so too are they open to influence from others. Strategic leadership is not about having the last word. It is about ongoing, collaborative learning – and this requires that we create an environment in which our stakeholders have the opportunity to influence us. We need to communicate our openness to influence and follow this up with responses that are trustworthy and authentic. In this way, we are able to continually improve the strategy by incorporating the thinking of our key stakeholders.

In the next article, I will move on to discussing the creation of strategic leadership teams – effective teams whose work has strategic impact on the organization. Until then, why don’t you see how you can engage people from all over the organization in order to constantly shape and improve your strategic thinking.