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Friends in High Places

The ability to make a difference in business sometimes comes down to who you know, rather than what you know. If you want to increase your influence in your organisation, it really helps to have friends in high places. You may be lucky enough to have a great boss with a lot of influence, who is happy to champion the insight cause and open doors for you. But what if you don’t?

Gaining support
You need a way of identifying and developing supporters who can help you and your team to have the impact and influence you both need and deserve. But how can you go about this?
 
Firstly, you need to identify those people who would be most helpful to your cause, and then estimate their relative value by assessing them against the following three criteria: 
  • How senior are they?
  • How much respect and influence do they have across the organisation?
  • How much do they understand and appreciate the value of insight?
Building relationships
Once you have found some individuals who are worthy of your time and attention, you then need a strategy that will enable you to build, develop or nurture your relationship with them.
 
You need to consider how you could best demonstrate your contribution or value to them at a business level. Look at issues such as: 
  • What are their Key Performance Indicators?
  • What issues are challenging them?
  • How can you help them to achieve their business goals?
On a more personal level, you could explore their preferences – in their ways of working and ways of communicating. For instance, do they want frequent or infrequent communications? Do they prefer emails, phone calls or face-to-face updates? How much detail do they want?
 
Once you can help them and impress them, you will be well on the way to developing a potentially powerful advocate for your team and for the insight cause.
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