The best power mappers we know are master observers of their social environment. Instead of mentally checking out during the long meetings we all must sometimes endure, they gain invaluable insights by carefully noting other attendees’ behavior, verbal and nonverbal, and analyzing their interactions: who defers to whom; what alliances seem to emerge; which conflicts lurk beneath the surface; who is gaining influence and who’s losing it. Remember Lyndon Johnson’s watchful eye? You can also enlist help. When an executive we know began presiding over meetings where she was expected to do much of the talking, she recruited one of her employees, who was an excellent observer, as her power mapper. While the executive was in action, her observer was taking notes on people’s body language and behavior—who was listening while his boss spoke and who was passing notes, for instance.
Another key question to answer through these observations is: What does the organization reward? Know what gets someone a raise, a promotion, or a plum assignment, and you’ll know what the organization values (whether they admit it or not). In the quest for answers, never assume you know what someone else is thinking: Ning’s experience at the call center makes it clear that people’s needs and wants are rarely transparent. And your own position in the network will determine how good your vantage point is: If you are well connected, your power map is likely more accurate because you get information from many sources—who are often well connected themselves—bringing you closer to a widely shared view of who has power and why in your context. Conversely, if you’re at the periphery of the network, your view of it is likely idiosyncratic and therefore potentially misleading.
How do you know if you’re prominent in the network? In our research, we found that you can answer this question with surprising accuracy by asking yourself another question: Do people come to me for advice? If they do, you are likely in a position to both influence them and learn from them. If it’s not you, then who is influential? Whom do people go to for advice? Observation, as described above, will help you make that assessment. Start with people you’re closer to and ask questions like: “Who do people listen to around here?” “Who has been successful? Who has struggled? Why?” “How has this place changed since you’ve joined?” And then ask them: “Who else is a good person to learn from?” This snowball technique broadens your sources of insight and your power map. Then you can deepen it, by mapping not just who is powerful, but also who is likely to be your ally, your opponent, or someone you can sway.
MAPPING ENDORSERS, RESISTERS, AND FENCE-SITTERS
When you have a change initiative to advance, identifying the powerful people in your environment isn’t enough. Your power map also has to track how those people feel about what you want to accomplish. That’s why Manuel had to know not only that Nancy was the person most people sought for advice, but also what she thought about his changes. Influential people like Nancy—who can persuade others to embrace a change and are crucial to its success—typically come in three varieties: endorsers, who are positive; resisters, who are negative; and fence-sitters, who see both benefits and drawbacks to the change and are therefore ambivalent about it. Which of these people should you cultivate to help you reach your goals? With whom should you strive to establish a close relationship of mutual trust and liking?
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Michael Corleone advises in The Godfather II.21 Is he correct? We were determined to find out, because the time and energy required to build a coalition of support for an initiative is limited, and people need to allocate it carefully. So, we looked at the change agents in our NHS study and linked their eventual success and failure to the kinds of influential people they were close to, or became close to, as they attempted to implement their initiative.22
Here’s what we found: Keeping endorsers close is not a priority. Don’t get us wrong, you must identify your champions and keep them strongly engaged—for example, by letting them co-own the change. But how close you are with them doesn’t affect how much they embrace your goals. Like you, they want the change to be adopted.
In contrast, keeping resisters close is treacherous. You must talk to them to understand why they resist—they may have a good point that will send you back to the drawing board—but be careful about the effect they can have on you. Spend a lot of time with them in hopes of converting them, and they may end up influencing you. When a change is relatively modest, like Manuel’s, a resister might reluctantly support it because you’re a friend and they want to help you do something you believe in or reciprocate your past kindness to them. But warm feelings are insufficient when you push for more radical changes that will disrupt the resister’s access to valued resources. In that case, their opposition will be stronger than their affection; and seeing the people you’re closest to push back on your idea can deflate your own enthusiasm for it and, with that, its chance of success. This is the mistake we see change-makers make most often: They focus on the influential resisters they are close to, convinced that they can convert them, and that they, in turn, will convince everyone else to get on board. But close relationships are two-way streets, and this is not how it works: The resisters convince the change-makers to give up on their project instead!
The only people you want to keep close, no matter what, are the fence-sitters—whom Michael Corleone didn’t even mention. Closeness makes all the difference here, because we rarely want to disappoint people we like. In other words, we feel a sense of social obligation,23 which is likely to sway us if we are teetering and all we need is a little push. This is why the fence-sitters always warrant a change agent’s focused attention and consideration. The takeaway is not to manipulate people’s affection for you. Remember that closeness is built on liking and mutual trust, and trust is as precious as it is fragile. The takeaway is to invest the time and energy to explain to people who are ambivalent about your project, but personally close to you, why you genuinely believe that change is needed.
POWER MAPPING BEYOND ORGANIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES
If your ambition extends to influencing larger, more diverse groups outside your department or organization, you can expect to encounter greater, even fierce resistance.24 In this situation, being well connected within your team, like Nancy was, isn’t enough. You also need to become a bridge across multiple groups and gain what network scholars call “betweenness.”25
TWO WAYS TO HAVE POWER THROUGH YOUR NETWORKS
As the name suggests, betweenness has to do with being the “in-between,” the bridge between two people or two groups who are not directly connected. Betweenness is thus a source of power, because those two people or groups must go through you to exchange information. As the bridge, they depend on you, because you control their access to a valued resource, the information flow between them. Betweenness also gives you access to bits of information that no one in those disconnected groups is likely to be aware of. Since you can control when and how to share this information, you will be in a better position than most to draw a more accurate power map, build valuable relationships, and forge alliances. To illustrate, let’s look at how Carol Browner used betweenness when she was the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Two years into Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades. To say they were elated is an understatement. Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, a rallying cry for most of the new Republican representatives, called for less government intervention and sweeping reforms to cut regulations and slice agency budgets.
At the EPA, Carol Browner oversaw seventeen thousand employees and managed a budget of $7 billion.26 The agency’s backbone was regulation and enforcement, so Republican attacks were hitting the EPA hard. Warned by colleagues in the West Wing that she would have to compromise, Carol retorted: “You know what, that’s bullshit. People may have voted for Newt Gingrich, but they did not vote for dirty air and dirty water.”27 Instead of retreating, as some might
have expected of a young woman new to the role of EPA administrator, she counterattacked.
Trying to win by forging close relationships with resisters, in this case prominent Republicans, was out of the question. “There were no enemies we could keep close… These people hated me because I stood up to them,” she told us. “Once one of them literally threw the Constitution at me; he took it out of his pocket and threw it at me.” Carol still did what every change-maker should do: She listened to the resisters to understand their views.
But she also understood that to galvanize support for the agency, she had to reach beyond the confines of Washington, DC, and take control of the narrative. She and her team scheduled meetings with every newspaper editorial board that would talk to them: “Here’s what we did on air pollution in your community. Here’s what we did on toxic waste. Here’s what we did to help your kids’ asthma and keep the water coming out of your tap clean. This is why you want an environmental cop on the beat.” In no time, she had the editorial page editor of the New York Times on speed dial. But, as she admitted to us, she was also terrified. She was taking on one of the most influential Republicans in the House, leading up to a presidential re-election, and doing so in the eye of the storm. The media, of course, loved it.
Carol then sought alliances with leaders and organizations with different sources of power and access to influential people across domains, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, and public health and classic environmental organizations. They, in turn, started publishing opinion pieces in local newspapers, which complemented Carol’s relationships with the national press, putting pressure on members of Congress who represented those districts’ local needs. She also cultivated connections with broadcast media, giving her another channel to shape public opinion. In short, Carol built a diverse network across sectors and became the connector between organizations that would normally have had no way to coordinate action. One partnership, interview, and opinion piece at a time, the EPA became stronger and more able to fend off regulatory rollbacks.
Carol Browner couldn’t have achieved this success had she focused solely on building lots of connections within the EPA network. That was not the only place where the resources she needed resided. To access those, she had to map a much broader network and be the bridge at the center of a diverse set of relationships, each contributing unique resources to her effort.
WITHOUT A POWER MAP, THE TERRAIN IS TREACHEROUS
A power map allows you to identify what is valued in your environment and who controls access to the resources that are most desired and rewarded there. As with any trek in a challenging environment, an accurate map will help you reach your destination safe and sound. Without it, the terrain quickly becomes treacherous. In this respect, the troubled path of Aakash28 in the world of investment banking provides a cautionary tale.
A native of India, Aakash began his career in the Asian offices of a leading American investment bank, then moved to Canada to earn an MBA. Upon graduation, he landed a coveted position in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) group of a top Toronto bank. Despite his impressive track record, Aakash’s experience in his new job was brutal. M&A is a tough environment: The work is hard, the hours long, and the pressure high. New hires are utterly powerless before these demands, and jocular camaraderie is an important coping mechanism. But that support wasn’t forthcoming for Aakash. As “the only first-generation immigrant with brown skin” in his group, overtures from the others weren’t offered, nor were his efforts to reach out particularly well received. Not belonging was new to Aakash, who had enjoyed his share of privilege as a well-off Indian man working in South East Asia, but he was undaunted. “I figured that the only way someone like me can get a bit of power in this context is to work your ass off and perform at a level that is so outstanding someone senior grows to love you.”
Aakash earned that respect, but it exacted a higher toll than he ever imagined. His first review—by a manager who, it was clear to Aakash, “didn’t like people like me”—was searing. Aakash responded by doubling down, seeking work with the most demanding boss he could find, an executive so fearsome and exacting that even Aakash’s most talented and ambitious colleagues steered clear of him. In one respect, Aakash’s strategy paid off. He survived a grueling eight-month assignment, delivered outstanding work, kept a job designed to weed out most new hires within a year, and earned respect and mentorship from the harshest judge of talent in his group. “I had delivered what the bank valued most: outstanding M&A products. And I gained something valuable in return: keeping my job. But I had lost what I valued most: my life with my wife, my friends, the books I love to read, all the simple pleasures that make life worth living. That’s why I decided to leave and join a different bank.”
The move was riskier than Aakash realized. Italians say that “Chi lascia la via vecchia per la nuova, sa quel che lascia, ma non quel che trova,” or, “Those leaving one path for another know only what they leave behind, not what they will find.” Before you move to a new work environment, it’s vital to do some reconnaissance to ensure you’re moving into favorable territory, where you will have control over what’s valued there. In his rush to leave an unhealthy workplace, Aakash didn’t realize he’d find himself with even less control over his fate.
In his previous position, Aakash’s job was to develop products without needing to interact much with the client. In his new position, what was valued was acquiring new clients, which rests on building relationships and getting powerful people to entrust you with profitable business. Looking like the client, speaking their language, and being connected to the “right” people is what matters in such a job, not working longer hours for the toughest boss. Any outsider would struggle building a network in the cliquey world of finance. But it wasn’t until he started on the new job, Aakash told us, that he fully appreciated how exceptionally hard it would be for an Indian guy who “looks differently, talks differently, and thinks differently” to get clients in Toronto’s mostly White world of investment banking. His strength—developing the best financial models and products—was no longer the most valued resource. Aware of this dynamic, one of Aakash’s few brown colleagues quit, noting: “They will never trust us. And that’s a problem if you want to grow in this business.”
Aakash was stumped. He could admit defeat and conclude that someone without access to Canada’s elite business circles and powerful networks—in other words, someone like him—should get out of that type of business environment and find one where he could succeed. But what if you refuse to give up on a job, a profession, or an endeavor only because you don’t “fit” the dominant profile in that context? And what if you want to change the rules of the game that prevent someone like Aakash from succeeding, despite his talent and work ethic? Giving up is as humiliating as it is enraging to many of us. What are the alternatives, then? Remarkably, part of the answer to Aakash’s quandary is related to Donatella Versace’s.
DIFFERENT NETWORKS FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE
Our power-mapping journey so far reveals key factors that determine who controls access to valued resources in any situation. First, formal authority is no guarantee of power, as Donatella Versace can tell you from experience. Second, regardless of rank, your formal role can give you power if it gives you control over resources essential to the success of the organization, as the tobacco plant maintenance workers demonstrated. Third, if you have neither high rank nor a formal role critical to the organization’s success—say, you’re an administrative assistant like Nancy—you can become influential if you are a hub in the informal network, the person everybody flocks to for advice. Fourth, having many connections is not the only way a network gives you power: You can also control access to valued resources by being the in-between, the information broker between networks. Fifth, regardless of your position in the formal chart or the informal network, you can gain power just by knowing who values what, and who controls access to those valued resour
ces; building such a power map is critical and eminently feasible for anyone who pays attention and asks good questions. Sixth, you must map not only who has influence, but also who among those influential people is more likely to endorse you, resist you, or sit on the fence waiting for you to win them over. Seventh, the search for allies can take you far beyond the confines of your group or organization, as Carol Browner brilliantly demonstrated. And finally, danger lurks for those who venture into a terrain they haven’t carefully power mapped, as Aakash will attest.
With a better understanding of how to ascertain who has power in any environment, and how networks can be bases of power, we’re ready to return to Donatella Versace’s predicament in the aftermath of her brother Gianni’s untimely death. As you might have guessed, we’re about to show you that Donatella’s network was essential to her eventual success. But ask yourself, what kind of relationships would you have advised her to seek out? The challenge she faced was that people in her company and the industry saw her as lacking control over the resource that was most critical to the company’s survival and success: the extraordinary creative talent on which Gianni had built Versace. She had to change this perception, not only in the eyes of the company employees and industry executives, but also in her own mind. But who could champion and help her? Whom should she have leaned on? Other women in the company and beyond? Or the men who wielded—and still wield29—the greatest power in the fashion industry?
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