Politics and influence
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7 min read
Key findings
A consent holder can stop a proposal without opposing it, by asking for more work just before the budget closes.
Most positions form before the decision meeting, in a conversation with someone the person trusts.
A power and interest grid has no date and no approval route, so it cannot plan the conversations before a decision.
A director who first sees a proposal in front of peers usually finds an objection to it.
A consent holder does not need to argue against a proposal to stop it.
Power mapping is a way of showing who can make, block or shape a decision, and what each of them stands to gain or lose.
At work, a useful power map is tied to one named decision and its date.
It separates formal authority from the people the decision holder listens to, and it records each stance from what the person has said or done.
Most advisers draw their first power map after a proposal has failed.
The recommendation was sound, the analysis held, and the proposal died in a meeting the HR adviser did not attend.
Afterwards the explanation offered is politics, which gives the adviser nothing to act on next time.
A power map drawn a fortnight earlier would have shown who could stop the proposal and what each of them was protecting.
What Power Mapping Means
Community organisers use power mapping to plan campaigns, placing officials and institutions by their power over an issue and their support for it.
Inside an organisation the same idea applies to a single decision.
The map answers four questions about that decision.
Who signs it off, and by what date
Who can stop it or delay it without signing anything
Whose view the people in the first two groups trust
What each of them stands to lose if it goes ahead
An organisation chart answers only the first question, which is why mapping the chart and calling it politics fails.
Power Maps And Stakeholder Maps
A stakeholder map lists everyone with an interest in a project and plots them on a grid.
The most common grid is the power and interest matrix credited to Aubrey Mendelow.
It places each stakeholder by how much power they hold and how much interest they take, and it suggests a treatment for each quadrant.
High power, high interest. Manage closely
High power, low interest. Keep satisfied
Low power, high interest. Keep informed
Low power, low interest. Monitor
The grid is useful for a project that runs for months with many groups affected.
It is less useful for a decision, because it has no date, no route to approval and no record of who listens to whom.
A power map is narrower, and it is built for one decision at a time.
Four Positions On A Decision
Every person near a decision holds one of four positions.
The decision holder. The person who signs it off
Consent holders. People who can veto or delay it, often through a budget or a process they control
Influencers. People whose view the decision holder and consent holders trust
The affected. People who will implement the decision or absorb its cost
Most advisers spend their effort on the decision holder and are defeated by a consent holder.
A consent holder does not need to argue against a proposal to stop it.
A finance director can ask for a fuller cost model two weeks before the budget closes, and the proposal misses the cycle.
What Each Person Stands To Lose
People near a decision are usually protecting something specific, and they rarely say what it is.
Five interests account for most of it.
Budget, or the headcount attached to it
Control over how their own area runs
A position they took in public earlier
A person they have backed or promoted
Management time, and the cost of another change
The third is the most common and the least discussed.
A director who argued for the current arrangement two years ago will resist a proposal that implies the argument was wrong.
An adviser who designs a route for that director to change position without a public reversal gets a different answer.
Drawing A Power Map
A power map fits on one page, with one row per person and six columns.
Name and position on the decision
What they stand to lose or gain
Current stance, from opposed to advocating
The evidence for that stance
The people they listen to on this subject
The next conversation, with a date
The fifth column matters most.
Most positions form before the meeting, in a conversation with someone the person trusts.
A map with that column complete tells the adviser whom to talk to first, and it is rarely the decision holder.
To find informal influence, look at who the decision holder copies into emails, who presents at their team meetings, and whose numbers they quote.
A Worked Power Map
An HR director wants to merge three regional sales academies into one national programme.
The executive committee decides on 14 March, and the chief commercial officer signs the decision.
The map for that decision has six rows.
Chief commercial officer. Decision holder, stance unknown, listens to the head of sales operations on anything involving cost
Finance director. Consent holder through the budget round, neutral, has asked twice about the academies' cost per head
North regional director. Consent holder through headcount, opposed, set up the northern academy four years ago
South regional director. Affected, supportive, loses two trainers but gains a shared curriculum
Head of sales operations. Influencer, stance unknown, owns the productivity data the chief commercial officer quotes
Regional trainers. Affected, likely opposed, their roles change
Two stances are unknown, and one of them belongs to the person the decision holder trusts on cost.
That makes the head of sales operations the first conversation, a month before the committee.
The north regional director is the second, with a design that keeps the northern academy's name and its lead trainer.
An unknown stance on a consent holder is the first item to resolve.
Sequencing The Conversations
Three rules for the order of conversations hold in most organisations.
Talk to the person who can stop the decision before the person who can approve it
Talk to the influencer before the decision holder, so the decision holder hears the case twice
Never let a consent holder see the proposal for the first time in a meeting with an audience
The third rule is the one most often broken, and it costs the most.
A director surprised in front of peers usually finds an objection, because agreeing in that setting looks like being managed.
The meetings before the decision meeting are where the influence work happens, and influencing without authority sets out how to run them.
Resistance On The Map
Peter Block treats resistance as information about a client's concerns, and he lists forms that an adviser can learn to recognise.
Requests for more detail than the decision needs
Questions about method instead of the finding
Silence, followed by a change of subject
Compliance with no reservations and little energy
Block calls compliance the hardest form to see, because the adviser is getting exactly what was asked for.
Every manager has some reservation about a course of action, and a reservation that is not voiced to the adviser comes out somewhere else.
His advice is to name the behaviour in neutral language and then stop talking.
"You have asked for three further cuts of the data, and I want to check whether the analysis is the real question."
On the map, any of these forms moves a person's stance to unknown until the concern is on the table.
The Adviser's Own Line Of Authority
Block points out that an internal consultant always has at least a triangular contract, with the client, the consultant and the consultant's own boss.
Sometimes it is a rectangle, when the consultant's boss and the client's boss agreed the work before either the consultant or the client chose it.
He adds that many apparent problems between internal consultants and their clients turn out to be problems between the consultants and their own bosses.
A power map that leaves out the adviser's own director is incomplete.
The HR director who has promised the chief executive a result by March is a consent holder on the adviser's recommendation, whether or not the map shows it.
The contracting side of this is covered in contracting an internal consulting engagement.
An Evidence Standard For Stance
Notes about personality do not tell an adviser what to do next, so the map records stance instead.
Record each stance from something observable, such as what the person said, in which meeting, and in front of whom.
Where the stance is not known, write unknown instead of inferring it from the person's general disposition.
An unknown stance on a consent holder is the first item to resolve.
Responses To An Opponent
Three responses are available, and each suits a different situation.
Convert. Where the objection is factual and the person has no public position to defend
Contain. Narrow the first phase so the opponent's area is unaffected, which buys evidence
Concede. Accept the objection, change the proposal and record what changed and why
Going around an opponent to the decision holder works once, and the opponent remembers it at the next decision.
When the opponent is the decision holder, the adviser's task changes to challenging a leader you advise.
Keeping A Power Map Safe
A written power map would embarrass its author if it circulated, so three rules apply.
Describe positions and interests, never character
Write nothing you would not say to the person directly
Delete the map once the decision is taken and reviewed
Reviewing The Map After The Decision
After the decision, compare what happened with what the map predicted.
Note which stances were wrong, which influencer mattered more than expected, and which interest nobody saw.
Three reviews of this kind give an adviser a working model of how that organisation actually decides, which makes the next map faster to draw.
Where The Tools Sit
Trusted Talent Advisor covers power maps in its component on stakeholder conversations, including the sequence of meetings before a decision.
Its template pack includes a stakeholder map and an influence plan that follow the columns above.
Related reading: managing conflict in meetings, managing up.
Sources
1. Block, P. Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used. Pfeiffer.
2. Burtonshaw-Gunn, S. The Essential Management Toolbox: Tools, Models and Notes for Managers and Consultants. Wiley.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
What is power mapping?
Power mapping shows who can make, block or shape a decision and what each person stands to gain or lose. At work it is tied to one named decision and its date, and it records who each person listens to.
How do you create a power map?
Name the decision and its date. List the decision holder, the people who can veto or delay it, the people they trust and those affected. For each, record what they stand to lose, their stance with evidence, who they listen to and the next conversation.
What is the difference between a power map and a stakeholder map?
A stakeholder map plots everyone with an interest in a project, often on a power and interest grid. A power map is built for one decision, with a date, an approval route and a record of whose view each person trusts.
How do you identify the real decision makers in an organisation?
Follow the approval route for the specific decision, then ask who can delay it through a budget or process they control. Informal influence shows in whose numbers a leader quotes and who they copy into emails.
What is a power interest grid?
A two-by-two matrix, credited to Aubrey Mendelow, that places stakeholders by power and interest. High power and high interest are managed closely, high power and low interest kept satisfied, low power and high interest kept informed, and the rest monitored.
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