The Recipe for Influence

One of the great skills for the Records and Information Management (RIM) professional to build is influence. For the sake of this article, I am talking about inflluencing your boss or organization to take the leap for your next great idea or to recognize the importance of managing our information assets. Inflluence has value beyond the executive team. Because ours is often a quiet, overlooked discipline, everyone from the new hire in the file room to the Senior Records Officer has a role to play in promoting and inflluencing excellent RIM behavior.



There are so many ways to try and influence people, but with very different results. Nagging and whining, for instance, is learned from childhood, is well understood, and garners a predictable result. But if you want to be heard, it is time to learn new techniques. A format I have grown fond of is a recipe style, or pattern, that names the technique, places it in context, describes the problem, forces that could make or break the technique, solution, rationale, and resulting context (that is, postitive and negative consequences for applying the technique). You have the opportunity then to flip through the patterns and pick the best style to match your situation. I acquired a whole book of forty-eight patterns, Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas and if you want to learn more, I encourage you to check it out.

Before you blurt out your next great idea, analyse the situation considering these factors.

1. Know your audience. Who will you be presenting your idea to? What matters to them? Do they have a stated vision and mission that you can help them achieve? If so, show how your idea will help them meet their needs and goals. Also, pay attention to their listening style. Does your audience the reflective type that needs to see it in writing to take your idea seriously? Then put it in writing. If your idea is for the executive floor, also provide an executive summary. Respect their time. Or alternatively is yours a person of action, impatient with power point? If so, condense your message to a sound byte (an "elevator pitch").

2. Consider timing.  This could be as simple as approaching your supervisor when they are at their peak energy. If your boss needs two cups of coffee to be civil, don't pitch first thing in the morning. For an organization-wide idea, know the rhythms and cycles of your company. When does their planning cycle start, when your boss will be looking for new ideas? When is fiscal year-end approaching? Often year-end funds become available for a short window of time. Be ready with an idea if an opportunity comes up. Slow cycles might be the best time to implement some new ideas, to minimize disruption.

3. Seeing is believing. You may have a complete visualization on how your idea will help the organization. The barrier often is communicating the idea effectively so that others can see what you do. If your idea is a new tool, bring one in to the office to generate interest. I once asked a vendor for a sample shredding bin to sit in my office for a few weeks. The office had never seen such a thing, so a lot of interest was generated by walk-by traffic. Curiosity led to questions led to new interest in an improved way of disposing of shredding. Try before-and-after pictures, diagrams, napkin conversations (ref. Paul Lauterbur, inventor of MRI), several different visualizations to help your audience to see what you see.

4. Moving past resistance. In every organization you have a spectrum of interest from your early adopters to active resisters (laggards). A great idea, adopted by the innovators in your office, may still not be adopted by the mainstream. A book that addresses this is Crossing the Chasm by Goeffrey A. Moore. As difficult as active resisters can be, they provide the voice to the majority of people who worry that change will bring new problems. Use them as a voice to the potential problems and address them. Make sure participants and their issues are heard (Covey's fifth habit, Seek to Understand). Present your ideas informally and at brown bag functions to curry out your innovators and resisters. Ask your innovators to pilot your idea, and then to promote to the majority of the organization. If your boss is the resister, make sure all concerns are heard and addressed.

In conclusion, you can improve on your influence by listening, being prepared, developing your idea in to various formats including written, sound byte, and visualizations, addressing concerns and tying your ideas to the vision of the organization. There are then dozens of recipes, or patterns to influence change that you can apply to success.