Keep them on your Side

Leading and Managing for Momentum

Samuel B Bacharach

• Publisher: Platinum Press
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781593377298
• eBook ISBN: 9781440517501
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

'Keep Them On Your Side' shows employees how to maintain organizational momentum for projects and agendas to ensure that goals will actually be achieved over the long haul.

Chapter 1

You’ve Got Them on Your Side—
But Will They Go the Distance?

In many ways, Ellison was the right person to take over. The company conducted an exhaustive internal and external search and Ellison was consistently on the top of the list. His vision of moving into China and his idea of making serious headway in the service sector by expanding the consulting activity was what so many on the board hoped to achieve. His self-confidence and sense of calling enabled Ellison to mobilize the majority of board members. He was a great campaigner who left them dazzled. Eight months after he took the helm, however, doubts began to surface. Ellison, somehow, hadn’t delivered. Maybe, just maybe, Ellison knew how to campaign, but didn’t know how to get results. There were meetings upon meetings, and two sets of consultants, yet, nothing had moved along.

If you can’t keep people on your side and the ball rolling, if you can’t manage the pitfalls of inertia, you’re no leader.

When you get rid of all the drama and all the rhetoric, when you distill all the hoopla down to nuts and bolts, what is leadership all about? It is about getting things done. If you can’t get something done, your leadership is, at best, questionable. You can stand on a mountaintop and preach. You can paint the most beautiful visions of the future. If nothing gets done, does it really matter? Leadership is not simply about vision; it’s about your capacity to be proactive and your ability to translate your vision into real results. Leadership is not simply about inspiration; it’s about your capacity to translate your vision into a concrete agenda. Leadership is not simply about charisma. Leadership is about getting people on your side, sustaining momentum, and keeping them on your side. Leadership is about your ability to be proactive. Putting it simply, a visionary who is incapable of being proactive is a dreamer, not a leader.

In recent years, there’s been an almost cultist obsession with the notion of vision, giving leadership a quasi-spiritual dimension, as though leadership were the capacity to see what has not yet been seen by others. As though there were one person per organization who could “see the future” and the organization was fortunate to have attracted this marvelous asset. Vision implies the use of inspiration and intuition, a sense of calling, a premonition of what needs to be done. Iconic leaders, like Clara Barton, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Earl Graves, were indeed visionaries. But unlike passive “visionaries,” they were not only people of vision, but also people of action. They were not just leaders; they were proactive leaders. Clara Barton recognized that in addition to needing medical attention, wounded Civil War soldiers were in dire need of medical supplies. She took action to solve this problem and eventually set up an organization (the American Red Cross) that continues to help people around the world obtain medical supplies under life-threatening conditions. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal also demonstrated how a vision could be translated, through action and implementation, into a series of initiatives that fundamentally changed the course of history. Earl Graves channeled his commitment to improving the economic well-being of the African-American community by establishing Earl G. Graves, Ltd. Acting to implement his vision, Graves founded Black Enterprise magazine in 1970 and continues to provide other products and services to improve the economic development of the African-American community. Today Graves is considered one of the country’s most influential businesspeople. These leaders translated their vision into viable organizations that delivered real products and services. They were able to secure the help of others and to garner the necessary resources; they had the perseverance, commitment, and support to implement their ideas into organizations that sustained momentum and moved their vision ahead.

Indeed, how many “visionary” leaders who did not show results can you name? Not many. And if you can name them, it is more likely due to your disappointment with what they weren’t able to accomplish, rather than for their vision. Although many aspire to be visionary and may even think of themselves as visionary, the reality is that truly successful visionaries are proactive, displaying both the political competence to mobilize people for action and the managerial competence necessary to sustain momentum and keep people on their side to achieve results. They take an inspiration and translate it into policies and organizations that can implement their ideas. Failed leaders are often those who come in with the grand ideas but who are incapable of translating those ideas into concrete results. Vision without accomplishment verges on hallucination.

When organizations seek leaders, they are immediately predisposed to look for inspirational leaders who have new ideas. How often have you heard of organizations recruiting a new leader and trusting that this one person will have a new idea that will redirect the organization onto a path of growth and prosperity? Frequently, visionary leaders are recruited with the expectation that they will see new ways to get things done, get people to think differently, and bring perspectives that others didn’t see before. But new ideas aren’t enough—and it is this notion that separates the true visionary leaders from the dreamers. It is, indeed, easier to enhance an organization’s capacity to come up with good ideas than it is to enhance an organization’s capacity to put those ideas in place.

It is easy to underestimate the difficulties that stand in the way of putting ideas in place. The tendency is to think that a good idea will carry the day; but it simply won’t. On many occasions, individuals in organizations don’t change their ways unless some crisis forces them to do so. Because interests are often entrenched, risk is often large, and routine well established, hesitation and resistance may be a stronger force than a good idea. Inertia is the name of the game. You may know where you want to go, but you may not know how to get others to join you in getting there. Vision may be seductive and charisma may be appealing, but these traits by themselves are not enough to create and sustain action in organizations.

Once you have the vision and direction, you must take action. You must take charge and actively execute.¹ You must become proactive. If the difference between visionaries and proactive leaders is the capacity to get things done—what turns a visionary into a proactive leader? What are the components of proactive leadership? First, proactive leaders have to have the political competence to mobilize people around their idea and get them on their side. Second, they have to have the managerial competence to sustain momentum, keep people on their side, and implement.

Political Competence: Get Them on Your Side

Political competence is the ability to understand what you can and cannot control, know when to take action, anticipate who is going to resist your agenda, and determine whom you need on your side to push your agenda forward. Political competence is about knowing how to map the political terrain, get others on your side, and lead coalitions.² More often than not, political competence is not understood as a critical core competence needed by all leaders at all levels of an organization. All too often, it is the unstated competence. In organizations, we talk about everything but rarely do we admit that in order to get things moving, we have to be politically competent. If you get a successful leader to talk about how things get done in organizations, you may hear something like this:

Look, I knew if I didn’t have Martha on my side early, I’d never get this idea rolling. She doesn’t control a lot, but what she does control is critical. If I didn’t get her onboard early, she and her staff would be in rebellion. The trick was to get Martha to buy-in early. After Martha was onboard, I could turn my attention to Hank in IT. Hank and his staff tend to be insular, and they are concerned with the nuts and bolts of security. But with Martha onboard, Hank would know that I could get the resources necessary to get this thing off the ground. I had a few casual meetings with Hank and then I met with him and most of his people. Next week, I figure I’ll get Martha’s people and Hank’s people together, but tomorrow I have to make sure they are both on my side. The last thing I want to do is go into a meeting without their full public backing. This is a new idea, and if I don’t launch it right without a full coalition behind it, it ain’t going anyplace.

That’s the voice of a proactive leader who is politically competent.

Politically competent leaders develop a compelling agenda. Few people are going to rally around your ideas just because they like you or because they feel they have to support you. The roots of long-term leadership are in having an idea or agenda that serves a real need in the organization, makes sense, and generates excitement among a solid base of constituents or stakeholders. The strongest agendas both raise awareness of key challenges or opportunities and lay out an approach to achieving desired results.

Once you have an agenda, you can go about the next important foundational stage: assessing your allies and resistors. In short, this is a process of political analysis. You are identifying the key stakeholders—internal and external to your organization— who have a stake in the outcome of your agenda and who probably have a position or strong opinion about your approach.³ It is during this stage of the process that you will identify those who are clear allies, those who are likely to be strong resistors, and those who may swing either way. This may seem like a process of simply developing a list and checking it off, but it may involve a series of discussions with key stakeholders in order for you to really understand where they stand in relation to your agenda. You will find, coming out of this process, that there are those who may disagree with what you are trying to accomplish and/or those who disagree with how you propose to achieve those objectives.

With your political homework in hand, you then go through a process of gaining initial support for your agenda. This certainly includes securing key allies. But it may also involve doing things that keep your strong resistors at bay or that move potential allies a little closer to your camp. At this stage, you are looking for enough critical mass to take some initial action in pursuit of your agenda. That critical mass may be as few as two people or as many as a division. Critical mass is however many people are needed to get your agenda “off the dime.”

With some support for your agenda, the next critical stage is getting real buy-in. This is the process of converting verbal support or conceptual support into real action. It is the not so subtle process of shifting some of the weight of your agenda from your shoulders and onto the shoulders of others. Getting buy-in is a process of negotiation, of demonstrating your credibility as a leader, and of convincing others that your agenda will result in real benefits to those who are active supporters.

Politically competent leaders are campaigners. They are great during the primaries; they build their base in Iowa, take it to New Hampshire, and close the deal in the South before they even get to the convention. They know how to draw in supporters and get support from constituents. They are great at getting things on the road. They can make you feel that success is right around the corner. All you need to do is join their coalition. At minimum, they will make you believe that you have much to gain by joining them and much to lose by ignoring them. To succeed in an organization, this is a skill that proactive leaders must have.

Once you proceed through this political process, you will have people on your side. You’ve built a foundation for your vision and agenda. You’ve established your beachhead, but that’s all it is—just a beachhead, only a start. Now you have to implement your idea, sustain momentum, and keep them on your side.

Managerial Competence: Keep Them on Your Side

A lot of energy is spent on getting people behind an idea. Unfortunately, this is only one part of the story. Remember that candidate with the great ideas? How often have you realized that once in office, the candidate was incapable of making things happen? He didn’t have what it takes to keep others on his side. In office, he floundered. The message was well articulated, but poorly executed. Sure, he had people on his side, but he couldn’t keep them moving. He had everybody convinced to go along for the ride, but he just couldn’t drive the bus. The key to managerial competence is your capacity to sustain momentum. Without it, your supporters will abandon you and you’ll have fewer people on your side. Managerially competent leaders understand that by keeping the momentum going, they’ll keep people on their side, and by keeping people on their side, they’ll keep the momentum going.

The key to keeping them on your side is to give them the sense that things are moving along in a positive way, so they don’t burn out, become disenchanted or alienated, and turn against your project. To do this you must make sure that the group doesn’t stall, but has the capacity to move the project ahead. You want to make sure that they aren’t caught in unnecessary bureaucratic bottlenecks. You want to make sure they don’t choke with the anxiety of indecision. You want them to have the confidence and support they need to keep going. You want to make sure they don’t get sidetracked by other agendas or pulled off target by competing goals. You want to make sure procrastination is minimized and inertia is overcome.

Long-term success is about keeping them on your side and going the distance. You have them in your corner; the challenge is how to sustain momentum. How do you keep things moving? How do you prevent people from getting stalled? How do you avoid getting pulled off target? How do you dodge the bottleneck? How do you guard against inertia? How do you keep away from the choke? How do you steer clear of procrastination? How do you conserve their energy to go the distance? These are the challenges of sustaining momentum. These are the challenges of managerial competence. Managerial competence is your ability to sustain momentum and make sure that your agenda is put in place while keeping people on your side.

While political competence is about your capacity to mobilize, energize, and coalesce people around your idea, managerial competence is about your ability to sustain the initiative, move toward a goal, and define who is going to do what, who is going to be accountable to whom, how people are going to be evaluated, how you’re going to keep the group together until the mission is accomplished, and how you’re going to deal with obstacles and challenges. Managerial competence is about your ability to sustain momentum and implement.

A proactive leader is managerially competent—consistently aware of the changing environment and aware that any organization is not unlike a raft moving down the river. At one point you may decide who will be on what oar, and who is responsible for what, but around the bend, a torrent of whitewater may mean that you have to change how you’re going to get things done. Managerial competence implies your capacity to stay focused on the goal while adjusting resources and activities to deal with constantly emerging contingencies. If you’re managerially competent, you have both close and distant vision—you have to be able to deal with minutia while looking ahead and being aware of what adjustments need to be made. While political competence is your ability to deal with strategy, managerial competence is your capacity to deal with daily logistics and tactics. Successful proactive leaders combine political and managerial competence.

If you are politically competent and not managerially competent, the results can be all over the map. You can mobilize people around an idea but you won’t be able to implement the idea. You’ll excite people about where you want to go, but you’ll end up burning them out, alienating them, and your initiative will collapse.

You’ve Got to Have Both

Take Carly Fiorina and the merger of HP with Compaq. Fio-rina was a highly successful executive. About three years after becoming CEO of Hewlett-Packard, she laid out an ambitious growth agenda for HP that included a merger with Compaq Computer. Fiorina used her strong selling skills and her political competence to build initial support for the proposed merger. In a heated proxy fight, Fiorina’s agenda prevailed over Walter Hewlett’s belief that “the company should expand through innovation and organic growth”⁴ (Hewlett is the son of HP’s cofounder). She was able to get shareholders, Wall Street analysts, and some key HP executives on her side.

From spring 2002 through spring 2005, Fiorina tried to implement the merger, sustain momentum, and deliver the expected growth results. But Fiorina ran into roadblocks. Although she was highly effective at getting people on her side for the boardroom fight with Hewlett, she was unable to keep them on her side.

The a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 | You’ve Got Them on Your Side— But Will They Go the Distance?
• Chapter 2 | Demystifying Momentum
• Chapter 3 | Balancing Leadership for Momentum
• Chapter 4 | Structural Momentum: Maintain Resources and Capacity
• Chapter 5 | Performance Momentum: Monitor and Make Adjustments
• Chapter 6 | Cultural Momentum: Motivate to Sustain Focus
• Chapter 7 | Political Momentum: Mobilize Support and Anticipate Opposition
• Chapter 8 | The Proactive Leader: Get Them and Keep Them on Your Side
• Endnotes