Ch6 Game.docx

Chapter 6 – GAME The typical influencing dilemmas is how to leverage influence over others when they are mainly influenced by political or economic power. Preparation tools – Preparation for influencing takes time (is time well spent) and you do not save time by skipping it. Preparations alone does not eliminate your problems – you still need to execute your influencing strategy successfully – but preparation provides an agenda through which the initial complexity is simplified. Influencers who try to “wing it” fall flat on their faces. Walking into meetings with a view of “ hearing what they have to say” and reacting immediately to events as they unfold ensures lack of influence. Command of detail is an essential ingredient of effective influence. Influencing tools come from various sources. GAME- Generate objectives, Arrange access, Mobilize allies, Execute Strategy. Generate Objectives – Influencign requires focus and is undertaken for a purpose. It is more than building relationships. Influences has a purpose in mind. Objectives are best done in layers. They dictate policies. Events and new information changes policies. 021463000Arrange Access – Influencing is about people and first thing is to identify people who may be important to objectives. First statrt by you in the middle, The enter the names of all the key players that you know – if you don’t know the name enter their department. Lines not joint to you at present are strangers. Knowing the key players has advantages expect if they know you for wrong reasons. Influencing can only be done by physically going from place to palce and seeing the people you must deal with in person. Influencers gain access by GOYA (“Get Off Your Ass”). They don’t wait for things to happens – they make them happen. They find time. They go out and acess people and influence the people who create events. Influencers supplement GOYA with GOYA ( Get On The Telephone). They use the pone as if it is free. Efforts on influencing on an adhoc, occasional, intermittent basis seldom succeed. You have to invest in influence and the price of influence is not money but your commitment, time, energy, persistence, and above all what you have done to or for the person you are trying to influence. 1600200457200006858000Mobilize Allies – Force field diagram is a popular tool for this phase. It is a visualization of influencing forces that help or hinder the achievement of objectives. Forece Filed diagram originated in the Kurt Lewin ‘s Field theory in Social Science. This diagram rests on the simple idea that ay any one moment there are forces operating on a situation some of which drive for positive changes in the status quo and some of which restrain the driving forces to maintain status quo. To change a situation drivers must overcome restrainers. To change a situation strengthen forces for (drivers) and weaken forces against ( restrainers). Steps – influences identified forces that are present and divides them into forces for and against and the impact of each force. Some forces are more important than other because of their impact. For each force the influences has to develop strategies to weaken or strengthen the force. They can be marked as “high”, medium or low and easy, moderate and difficult. Influencing works through people. Those people who mobilise on our behalf are clearly our ‘allies’ and those who cannot are ‘potential allies’. The names of your key players are likely to reappear in your Force Field diagram. If some of them do not reappear, this indicates that at present you do not know where they stand and that you have more work to do to find out. Experience suggests that it is often easier to weaken an opponent’s pressure than it is to strengthen your own. This creates problems of maintaining your sense of balance if the objective you seek is bitterly contested. Execute Strategy – There are 2 parts to it. The first is to be clear on what it is you that want to happen (and why), and the second is to have clear ideas about who is to do what, by when and with whom. A review of the original objectives requires attention to detail. It may require revision of existing objectives, or the generation of new major initiatives, and as many or more minor initiatives, with some scheduled to happen in sequence while others occur in parallel. Influencers work to multiple agendas and must keep track of many moving targets. The execution of your influencing strategy depends on players, arguments and events. Over none of these forces do you have total control. You only have the opportunity to exert influence on them or to cope with their influence on you. How the players are disposed towards your objectives is expressed by the relative strengths of the arguments that they perceive have been made for or against your objectives. You need to become aware of the arguments against your case and not just with the merits of your own. If you are to influence the case against you it may take more than a rehearsal of the arguments that support your own case and probably more than a spirited attack on the people who oppose you. The Force Field, though simple in concept, has great scope for enrichment through the inclusion of detail. It provides an influencer at a glance with a manageable ‘picture’. The act of constructing a Force Field diagram itself gives the influencer a structure by which to sift through a mass of disparate detail. Prioritising the importance of the forces for and against and assessing the relative difficulties of strengthening or weakening them produces agendas of activity for the influencer to progress the game. Those agendas become the strategies of influence. Sequence of GAME - An influencing game is not necessarily played in a rigid linear GAME sequence from ‘G’ through to ‘E’. The sequence can be ordered in any direction. EPILOGUE Influencing games require attention to a myriad of detail, and influencers need some simple tools to keep track of changes in the detail. The tools must be simple because if they are complex they will take too much time to use and, inevitably, will be abandoned by busy managers. The mnemonic ‘GAME’ is a first cut at structuring the events that guide an influencing project and it is used to introduce two simple ‘doodles’, the Key Players and the Force Field diagrams. More work needs to be done on the game plan and practice is needed through applying it to other influencing cases. Mei had an objective from the moment she was assigned to the redevelopment project to undertake this through a single company, New Harbour Co, as this was the normal vehicle used by her agency in these projects. She did not have large funds at her disposal, which could give her authority, but she would have to make a business case for such funds to government and the private sector. Her early access to some of the key players revealed a possible obstacle to her plans in the purchase of abandoned land on onerous terms. This necessitated that she act quickly to prevent such a purchase going ahead. The urgency of her new objective ‘kill the deal’ risked damaging her relationships with the council’s key player almost before she had had time to establish a good working relationship with him. Influencing is aided by strict attention to detail, and simple tools such as the Key Players and the Force Field diagrams convey at a glance a lot of detail that is usually left jumbled together in the heads of influencers. These tools can be created quickly on a sheet of paper and their construction reveals the gaps in an influencer’s preparation. Not being able to enter the names of players reveals instantly that there is work to do in finding out who they are and where they are. Arrangements have to be made to meet with them or meet with people who can give an account of the attitudes and the best lines of approach to take with them. Ignoring gaps in a Key Players’ diagram is not advised, though whether they are approached immediately is a matter of judgement. Leaving gaps through ignorance, or lack of information, or from the fog of overwhelming detail, is risky. You can cut the risk by using a simple doodle. From the Key Players diagram it is a short step to developing a Force Field diagram that neatly captures the balance of forces for and against your proposals. These are so simple to construct that you can do one quickly showing the disposition of the Key Players for and against the current situation, and then construct two more diagrams that concentrate on the arguments for and against – and the arguments that are being used, fairly or otherwise – and the presence of threats or events that will affect the game. You can combine all three onto one Force Field diagram and identify what has to be done, bearing in mind that it is often easier to weaken the opposition against a change than it is to strengthen the forces for a change. The mnemonic GAME helps you to remember the phases of conducting an influencing campaign: ‘Generate objectives; Arrange access; Mobilise allies; Execute strategy’. These are toplevel phases, with much work to do within them, and they are to be thought of as flexible rather than strictly sequential. From deciding on your objectives, which may be modified, added to or reduced as people, arguments and events impact on your campaign, you go to active involvement with the players. Some players will be unambiguously on your side; others against. There will also be players who deserve to appear on both sides of the balance of forces – they are against you to some degree or in some respects, and for you in others. This is a not unusual phenomenon. Sometimes you are not sure where certain players stand. Nominally, because of their position, past associations or prejudices, they may be required to support their department’s (opposing) views, but in private conversation with you or third parties they may well aver that they support what you are attempting. On the Force Field diagram place their arrows for and against opposite each other. Players may start off in opposition and during the influencing campaign they may switch sides (as some might who begin on your side, of course). The diagram is so easy to construct you can redraw it in minutes to take account of swaying loyalties (and the intrusion of unforeseen events – such as a major ally becoming seriously ill, or being arrested on serious charges, or innocently resigning). There is much more to do in respect of marshalling allies and executing the influencing strategy, but with the two diagrams described in this module the foundation is laid to conduct an effective influencing campaign. Influence- Module 6 GAME 6.2; Preparation Tools Preparation for influencing takes time and you do not save time by skipping it. Lack of preparation shows, and influencers who try to “wing it” fall flat on their faces. If they risk ad hoc reactions to what the other players say and do, they are bound to be out of touch with the informal currents that drive the events. True, preparation alone does not eliminate your problems- you still have to execute your influencing strategy successfully- but preparation provides an agenda through which the initially overwhelmingly complexity is simplified. These influencing “tools” come from various sources in the literature. Their main claim for inclusion here is practicality- they work! They are not scientific instruments in the sense usually accorded to quantitative methods or formulae; they are more like back-of-an envelope: doodles” that help to organize your data. Adapt them to suit your needs and the degree of complexity of your influencing project. Game’ is defined in this context as a distinct self-contained sequence of influencing events. And I use GAME in capitals as a mnemonic for the phases of conducting an influencing game: ‘Generate objectives; Arrange access; Mobilize allies; Execute strategy. 6.3: GAME 1- Generate Objectives The more complex your strategy, the more likely it will abort as the wayward actions of independent players and the abrupt intrusions of events influence the outcome unpredictably. Objectives are best dealt with in layers, beginning with, say, ‘to be appointed head of the department’, and then cascading, for example, to ‘expand departmental functions horizontally and vertically’; ‘increase departmental presence on two key investment committees’; ‘consolidate departmental alliances with “smaller fry” for quid pro quo support’, and such like. Objectives dictate policies. Events and new information change policies. Flexibility in initiating policy changes is required because, while your objectives may endure, the means to achieve them, the obstacles in their way and the sheer inconvenience of unexpected events dictate the necessity for tactical changes. Influencing for these stakes is different in scale from influencing for smaller stakes but not different in the methods used. The ‘tools’ are the same or similar; only the ends are different. 6.4: GAME 2- Arrange Access Influencing is about people Influencers think of these people as ‘players’. Some influencing authors call them ‘actors’. I prefer to call them players because I think ‘players’ fits better with Shakespeare’s distinction between ‘acting’ and ‘playing’ in As You Like It: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, … Players are real people who in their lifetimes never cease to play their parts for real. They cry real tears, feel real pain, shed real blood, laugh real laughs, and suffer and enjoy real emotions. Players are real; actors merely act. You may draw as many or as few boxes as you require, starting with the key player in the game you are about to play – and in some games there may be only two boxes: yours and the key player’s). In general, for each influencing game and for each phase of a game there are different key players. At a glance, the Key Players diagram shows your current access to key players and those others whom you have yet to access. As you make access to the players – and you must access all of them – you should draw in straight lines connecting every named player to you. (Figure 6.1: Key players in a “game”) As you identify each key player, enter their names into a box. Where you do not (yet) know their names, enter their department or organisation. Your first cut, remember, is to get an overview of those whom you know and those whom you have not yet contacted. Most boxes in Figure 6.1 are not joined by a straight line to you in the centre box, signifying that at present they are ‘strangers’ to you. Two boxes that do not have lines connected to you have a dotted line connecting them, and this shows that these players, independently of you, have connections with each other. This is also a worthwhile reminder that players to whom you direct individual messages, but who have independent contact, might compare notes and that influencers with ‘forked tongues’ are easily spotted (and as swiftly resented). In some influencing games, you already have access to the key players because they are colleagues with whom you have dealt, perhaps over many years. In these cases, the diagram is easier to complete. Knowing the key players has its advantages, except when they know you for the wrong reasons! However, you still have to contact them, either directly or through a third party. Normally, influencing cannot be conducted from an armchair or a bar stool (though there is no bar on successful influencing from a mobile wheelchair!). Influencing normally can only be done by physically going from place to place and seeing the people you must deal with in person. There are rare exceptions but changes of technology (e.g., digital conferencing) may modify this assessment in due course. Influencers expend energy while they pursue their goals. They don’t just talk about what they might do, or what they could have done, or what might have been. Putting it bluntly, sometimes foghorn messages from the street speak volumes and, with absolutely no offence intended, influencers gain access by applying the GOYA admonition, not in appreciation of Goya’s art (though that is not entirely precluded), but as in the injunction: ‘Get Off Your Ass!’ Influencers supplement (though do not safely substitute) GOYA with GOTT: ‘Get On The Telephone’. Influencers use the telephone as if it was free (that it isn’t free is one of the costs of influence). f this accurately reflects your normal response, it is a serious neglect of your interests and is the cause of that feeling of fatalism (in extreme cases, paranoia) that ‘the world is against me’. So an influencing strategy is not best cobbled together on a fire-fighting basis. You have to invest in influence and the price of your investment is not your money. The price is your commitment, your time, your energy, your persistence and, above all, what you have done to and for Fred. New Harbor Co (II) Figure 6.2 shows the situation at the start of Mei’s game. What is clear is the absence of direct connections between Mei and other players she has yet to meet, though these players have direct and independent connections with each other (dashed lines). Mei has to complete Phase 1 (Generate Objectives) and move to Phase 2 (Arrange Access). Diagrammatically, she must move from the situation in Figure 6.2 to that of Figure 6.3. According to the connecting lines in Figure 6.3, she has established contact with all of the key players. The extent and depth of the contact with those players are significant. She needs to analyze the information she has obtained. She must spend time to get this phase right, for out of her analysis she will make judgments about whom she can work with as allies and with whom she has more work to do. (Figure 6.3: Mei’s “game” (phase 2): Arrange Access) 6.5: GAME 3- Mobilize Allies The Force Field diagram originated in Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory in Social Science (1951), and it has gone through many developments and adaptations as it has been disseminated by management educators and practitioners. Originally it was an organisational change model but it is now extensively used in problem solving and in influencing. The Force Field diagram rests on the simple idea that at any one moment there are ‘forces’ operating on a situation, some of which ‘drive’ for positive changes in the status quo and some of which ‘restrain’ the driving forces to maintain the status quo. To the extent that these forces cancel each other, the status quo prevails. To change a situation, drivers must overcome restrainers. Those who wish to change a situation will work to strengthen the forces for (drivers) and weaken the forces against (restrainers); those who do not wish to change the situation will work to achieve the reverse (weaken the forces for and strengthen the forces against). The influencer identifies the forces that are present in the situation and divides them into forces for and forces against and assesses the impact that each force has on the situation. Some forces are more important than others because of their impact for or against change. These degrees of importance can be noted on the diagram by brackets alongside an entry, such as ‘(H)’ for high importance; ‘(M)’ for medium importance and ‘(L)’ for low importance (NB: always keep it simple). (Figure 6.4: A Force Field) Those forces that are highly important will attract the most attention (assuming they can be strengthened or weakened), although a typical error in influencing games is to attend mainly to those forces than can be easily influenced, irrespective of the significance of their impacts. For each force in a field, the influencer develops specific strategies to weaken or strengthen the important forces, the presence or absence of which are consistent with the achievement of the influencing objective. This calls for judgment by the influencer, who must not only discriminate by the degree of importance of the force as a determinant of the outcome but also by the susceptibility of a force to influence. Influencing works through people. Those people who mobilize on our behalf are clearly our ‘allies’ and those who cannot are ‘potential allies’ (for you should be loath to write anybody off, even if they appear for the present to be the most rabid of your opponents). The Force Field diagram is helpful in this respect: in a specific version, we would label the forces with the names of people we know to be (or who are likely to be) favorable or unfavorable. The names of your key players are likely to reappear in your Force Field diagram. If some of them do not reappear, this indicates that at present you do not know where they stand and that you have more work to do to find out. In Figure 6.5(a) and (b), partial force fields are shown for two major issues in Mei’s influencing game, namely the formation of a New Harbor Co and the immediate issue of the terms for the purchase of the tank farm. There is a great deal more to be done besides identifying the key players for and against an influencer’s objectives. The Force Field diagram can be adapted to take account of ‘arguments’ for and against the issues and relevant ‘events’ that have a bearing for and against the outcomes that Mei seeks. The Force Field diagram enhances the quality of the information available in the Key Players diagram because it focuses on what might be done to secure a desired outcome. Use it to identify allies and potential allies and to suggest lines of approach to weaken opposition and to strengthen your support. (Figure 6.5: Force fields: (a) form New Harbor Co (b) Council to buy POL site) Experience suggests that it is often easier to weaken an opponent’s pressure than it is to strengthen your own. This creates problems of maintaining your sense of balance if the objective you seek is bitterly contested. You do not want to appear overly negative when attempting to weaken an opponent’s pressure and you must curb your frustration when tempted to personalize the disputed issues. 6.4: GAME 4- Execute Strategy There are two parts to the execution of an influencing strategy. The first is to be clear on what it is you that want to happen (and why), and the second is to have clear ideas about who is to do what, by when and with whom. A review of the original objectives requires attention to detail. It may require revision of existing objectives, or the generation of new major initiatives, and as many or more minor initiatives, with some scheduled to happen in sequence while others occur in parallel. Influencers work to multiple agendas and must keep track of many moving targets. Strategies of strengthening the forces for and weakening the forces against aim to achieve her objectives. For this to be credible she must select realistic objectives – the influencer seldom gets his or her own way totally and trying to achieve fantasy ‘wish lists’ mostly ensures that players suffer disappointment. One test of the realism of your influencing objectives is found when you detail individual tasks, responsibilities and behaviours for your allies to accomplish within agreed time frames. Unrealistic objectives soon reveal themselves when partial outcomes from contacts with the players fall far short of your objectives. If you have not moved forward with your allies among the key players, you are not going to execute your influence programme; and if your timetable drifts, so will the objectives. On the other hand, realistic objectives sustain their own momentum. The execution of your influencing strategy depends on players, arguments and events. Over none of these forces do you have total control. You only have the opportunity to exert influence on them or to cope with their influence on you. How the players are disposed towards your objectives is expressed by the relative strengths of the arguments that they perceive have been made for or against your objectives. You need to become aware of the arguments against your case and not just with the merits of your own. If you are to influence the case against you it may take more than a rehearsal of the arguments that support your own case and probably more than a spirited attack on the people who oppose you. (Figure 6.6: Extended generic Force field) To ignore the influence of events in an influencing game would be a serious folly, and the more so when those events are surprising intrusions on your ‘best laid schemes’. The Force Field, though simple in concept, has great scope for enrichment through the inclusion of detail. It provides an influencer at a glance with a manageable ‘picture’. The act of constructing a Force Field diagram itself gives the influencer a structure by which to sift through a mass of disparate detail. Prioritizing the importance of the forces for and against and assessing the relative difficulties of strengthening or weakening them produces agendas of activity for the influencer to progress the game. Those agendas become the strategies of influence. 6.7: Sequences of a Game An influencing game is not necessarily played in a rigid linear GAME sequence from ‘G’ through to ‘E’. The sequence can be ordered in any direction (Figure 6.7). (Figure 6.7 GAME sequences) Tidiness suggests you move linearly from Generating objectives, to Arranging access, to Managing your allies and then to Executing your influence. But real life is not tidy; sometimes it sequences in a tidy manner, but more often it does not. Epilogue Influencing games require attention to a myriad of detail, and influencers need some simple tools to keep track of changes in the detail. The tools must be simple because if they are complex they will take too much time to use and, inevitably, will be abandoned by busy managers. The mnemonic ‘GAME’ is a first cut at structuring the events that guide an influencing project and it is used to introduce two simple ‘doodles’, the Key Players and the Force Field diagrams. More work needs to be done on the game plan and practice is needed through applying it to other influencing cases. Influencing is aided by strict attention to detail, and simple tools such as the Key Players and the Force Field diagrams convey at a glance a lot of detail that is usually left jumbled together in the heads of influencers. These tools can be created quickly on a sheet of paper and their construction reveals the gaps in an influencer’s preparation. Not being able to enter the names of players reveals instantly that there is work to do in finding out who they are and where they are. Arrangements have to be made to meet with them or meet with people who can give an account of the attitudes and the best lines of approach to take with them. Ignoring gaps in a Key Players’ diagram is not advised, though whether they are approached immediately is a matter of judgement. Leaving gaps through ignorance, or lack of information, or from the fog of overwhelming detail, is risky. You can cut the risk by using a simple doodle. From the Key Players diagram it is a short step to developing a Force Field diagram that neatly captures the balance of forces for and against your proposals. These are so simple to construct that you can do one quickly showing the disposition of the Key Players for and against the current situation, and then construct two more diagrams that concentrate on the arguments for and against – and the arguments that are being used, fairly or otherwise – and the presence of threats or events that will affect the game. You can combine all three onto one Force Field diagram and identify what has to be done, bearing in mind that it is often easier to weaken the opposition against a change than it is to strengthen the forces for a change. The mnemonic GAME helps you to remember the phases of conducting an influencing campaign: ‘Generate objectives; Arrange access; Mobilise allies; Execute strategy’. These are top-level phases, with much work to do within them, and they are to be thought of as flexible rather than strictly sequential. From deciding on your objectives, which may be modified, added to or reduced as people, arguments and events impact on your campaign, you go to active involvement with the players. Some players will be unambiguously on your side; others against. There will also be players who deserve to appear on both sides of the balance of forces – they are against you to some degree or in some respects, and for you in others. This is a not unusual phenomenon. Sometimes you are not sure where certain players stand. Nominally, because of their position, past associations or prejudices, they may be required to support their department’s (opposing) views, but in private conversation with you or third parties they may well aver that they support what you are attempting. On the Force Field diagram place their arrows for and against opposite each other. Players may start off in opposition and during the influencing campaign they may switch sides (as some might who begin on your side, of course). The diagram is so easy to construct you can redraw it in minutes to take account of swaying loyalties (and the intrusion of unforeseen events – such as a major ally becoming seriously ill, or being arrested on serious charges, or innocently resigning). There is much more to do in respect of marshalling allies and executing the influencing strategy, but with the two diagrams described in this module the foundation is laid to conduct an effective influencing campaign.