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Connect Your Ideas to People: Stepping-stones

A goal properly set is halfway reached.

-Abraham Lincoln

[Many people] assume that only senior executives make

decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter.

This is a dangerous mistake.

-Peter Drucker

In the last chapter, you began the Woo process. You stepped back and assessed your own persuasion styles. In this chapter, we examine your ideas and the situation you face. Where do ideas come from? How can you use your experience to come up with new and better ones? And why is it important to polish them before starting the sell-ing process? To answer these questions, we will tell the story of how an entrepreneur named Reed Hastings came up with an idea for a Web-based movie-rental business called "Netflix" and sold it to in-vestors.

Next, with your idea in hand, you will be ready to map the situa-tion ahead of you, charting the course that will lead to the people who can transform your idea into reality. Finally, as you plan your idea-selling strategy, you will need to set specific persuasion goals for each stage of the process. In some encounters, your goal will be to get in-troductions to key influencers; in other meetings, you will be looking for endorsements; eventually you will be asking for decisions. We con-clude the chapter with a discussion of these goals and the importance

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of bringing sincere conviction, based on belief in your idea, to every interaction.

It All Begins with Ideas

We will start with a story about an entrepreneur and the steps he fol-lowed to come up with an idea for a new business, polish that idea, and sell it to funding sources. At the most basic level, all idea sellers are entrepreneurs. In fact, scholars sometimes call people who spark new initiatives and programs inside organizations intrapreneurs. Inside or outside of an organization, you need to bring lots of energy to the process of developing and promoting new concepts.

The entrepreneur's name in this case is Reed Hastings, and the business concept he came up with is called "Netflix." Netflix rents movies on DVDs using the Internet as its ordering platform and the postal service as the delivery system.

Hastings is a "serial entrepreneur." He specializes in coming up with new ideas for businesses, founding new firms, getting them off the ground, then selling them when they become successful. He had recently sold a software company prior to founding Netflix and was well off financially. But an entrepreneur without a current project is like a child without toys. Hastings was looking for his next big thing.

As he later told the story, the Netflix concept got its start one day when he discovered he had a huge late fee for a copy of the movie Apollo 13 he had rented at his local video store. He had misplaced the cassette, forgotten about it, then discovered he owed the video store $40. His first reaction was embarrassment-he wanted to hide his stupidity from his wife. His next thought was "Am I really going to compromise the integrity of my marriage over a late fee?" He paid the money-and told his wife about his mistake.

Later, as he was driving to the gym, he began to think about the video store's business model. The store charged customers by the rental and penalized those who were late returning movies. The gym he was going to, by contrast, charged a flat fee and did not keep score on his usage. As someone who had just been burned by a big late fee, he liked the gym's business model better.

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As he continued his drive, a question presented itself: would it be possible to run a movie rental business the way the gym worked-by charging a flat fee and not worrying about how many movies people rented or how long they kept them?

Being a serial entrepreneur, this was a familiar feeling for Hast-ings-the connection between an area of dissatisfaction in the mar-ketplace (the movie rental late fee) and a way of reducing that dissatisfaction and making a profit. But could he come up with a compelling business model for a relatively expensive flat-fee video rental business when so much of the competition was charging for one rental at a time? And how could he get customers to return the movies they had watched without assessing a penalty?

Now it was time to do the hard work of turning his insight into a bona fide idea. With the help of friends, his spouse, his lawyer, and others, he worked on the idea until he had developed a full-fledged, formal profit model. The following elements eventually made it into his business plan: a vast library of tens of thousands of DVDs with multiple copies of the most watched films and television series, an online order-placing system accessible 2417, a one- or two-day fulfill-ment-and-delivery system that used the postal service and included convenient envelopes for returning the DVDs at no additional cost, and a flat monthly fee that allowed unlimited rentals-but that lim-ited customers to having only three or four DVDs at a time and re-quired them to return one as a condition of getting the next one on their list. He capped the idea off by obtaining a business process patent on the whole system to discourage incumbent video rental companies from imitating his business model.

This, then, was the idea he sold to venture capitalists to get his funding. There were, of course, some long-term problems. First, his patent might not hold up and a larger competitor might drive him out of business. Second, online downloading of video content would eventually become easier than mailing DVDs in envelopes. But Netflix's online library of titles might become tomorrow's library of downloadable movies, positioning his company as a leader in that new market.

As Hastings' story shows, this final idea-polishing process is very important when it comes to actually selling an idea. One of Winston

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Churchill's top advisers during World War II, General Sir Alan Brooke, once said that Churchill came up with an average of ten new ideas for winning the war every day-"one good, nine bad." Much of Brooke's job was making sure that the nine bad ones never saw the light of day. The entire military then set to the task of making the good one work.

A Technique for Producing Ideas

You may think that Hastings' story is just a random example of idea generation, but it is much more than that. It tracks almost exactly a systematic, five-stage process for cultivating creativity described by James Webb Young in one of the best short business books we have ever encountered: a work called A Technique for Producing Ideas. Young was a successful advertising executive in the early 1900s who retired in 1928 and spent the 1930s teaching part-time at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. He wrote this book in 1940.

Young explains that there is no such thing as a completely new idea-no matter how radical it may seem to an outsider. There are only new combinations of old elements. Thus, the key talent involved

in generating new ideas is an ability to find relationships and patterns among things you already know. All of us have this ability. The trick is to harness it consciously, as Reed Hastings has done. You can do so by following the process Young describes.

Stage 1: Define the Problem

The first stage in generating a new idea is to define the problem you are trying to solve. As we will see in chapter 7, problem definition is also critically important after you have an idea and are trying to con-vince other people to pay attention to it.

The more accurately you define the problem, the better. There is some art to this. If you define the problem too narrowly, you might unconsciously block out creative ideas and options that could prove quite valuable. If you define it too broadly, you will be flooded with irrelevant data and overwhelmed with the complexity of what you face-making it hard to separate the good ideas from the bad ones.

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We observe mistakes in problem framing all the time in our nego-tiation courses. When people define the scope of a negotiation prob-lem as being entirely about the price, they often miss nonmonetary, creative options that might elegantly solve their underlying problem. When they frame the negotiation problem too broadly-so that it encompasses the overall structure of their market or firm-they have trouble coming up with any strategy at all because no single negotia-tion can fix a problem of such wide scope.

Hastings framed his what-shall-I-do-next problem "just right"-not too narrowly and not too broadly. He was looking for a profit-able new business model. That is broader than looking only for a new software business, which would have led him to ignore the con-nection between his video rental and gym experiences. But it is nar-rower than looking for just "something to do."

Stage 2: Research Relentlessly

The next stage is to thoroughly research your problem. The more precisely you frame the question and research the relevant models, data, and options, the better. Hastings was spending most of his time on his business model hunt-but not by going to the library. He was reading trade and business publications, talking to other entrepre-neurs, going on trips, and noticing trends. As the Netflix example shows, a lot of this research work is done for you by simply being fully committed to whatever activity you engage in. Your mind is picking up, retaining, and arranging both generalized and specific data all the time without your even realizing it. But concentrated, purposeful research with reference to a defined problem is extremely helpful when cooking up a new idea. As Young explains, "Gathering raw material … is such a terrible chore that we are constantly trying to dodge it." So this effort makes a difference.

Research prompts lots of different thoughts about how to solve the problem. Young calls this "mental digestion." Some people call this the "brainstorming" stage. Working alone or in groups, you are rewarded with little bursts of half-baked ideas and hit-or-miss no-tions. The point here is to keep at it, even if you become discouraged and are tempted to give up on the process.

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Stage 3: Let It Cook

Stage 3 is crucial: you must trust the unconscious part of your mind to do its part. This part of your mind is great at sifting through the data of your experience to find patterns, combinations, and possible solutions to the problem you have posed to yourself. Having the pa-tience to let a problem "cook" like this is sometimes hard-especially if you need an idea on a deadline. As an experienced entrepreneur, Hastings knew this process well and trusted it to work.

Stage 4: Catch the Idea as It Flies By

Stage 4 is to be alert, because the good ideas will start to come at odd moments-in the shower, as you are waking up, while you are garden-ing, or when you are taking a walk. The ideas will seem to come "out of nowhere," says Young. But we know better. They are the product of this relentless combination process. The job in Stage 4 is simple: catch the new ideas as they come. Don't let yourself forget them; write them down. As a serial entrepreneur, Hastings knows a new idea when he sees one. He is an expert at catching ideas as they fly by. And he alertly snapped up the seemingly random insight he had while driv-ing to his gym and transformed it into a multimillion-dollar business.

Stage 5: Shape and Polish

Stage 5, as we noted above, is the most important part: the shaping and polishing stage. You take the raw material of your new idea, turn it over in your head, adapt it, share it with others, and get feedback. The best ideas-those most genuinely suited to solving problems-will inspire enthusiasm, first in you and then, if you are skilled at the Art of Woo, in others. And as the polishing process continues, it will spur further ideas about how to make your solution more efficient, elegant, and enduring. The Netflix concept began as a way to elimi-nate annoying late fees from the video rental business. It ended with a sophisticated, patented-and profitable-business process.

A good way to see if your idea is really feasible is to have a group of smart, sympathetic friends you can rely on for constructive input.

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History is replete with examples of so-called mastermind groups that have helped creative people shape their ideas, from Benjamin Frank-lin's famous eighteenth-century "Junto" that started many enduring social institutions in the city of Philadelphia to the Bloomsbury intel-lectual circle in England in the early 1900s that included novelist Virginia Woolf, economist John Maynard Keynes, and a variety of artists and thinkers. You don't need to be or know geniuses to exploit the power of collective thinking about an idea. You just need the hu-mility to believe that two heads are better than one.

As you shape your idea, it helps to project it into the future-but to do this in a special way. Cognitive scientists have shown that people can uncover possible problems with new ideas most effectively if they use a technique called "taking a trip to the future." It works like this. Picture yourself in your home or office on the day after you have suc-cessfully sold your idea to an especially knowledgeable and critical au-dience. Then look back on your presentation and imagine the way you introduced your idea to the group. Next, think of the questions the au-dience asked, including the toughest and most challenging ones. If you were Reed Hastings, you might have been asked how you were going to deal with customer complaints that the best movies were unavail-able, or what you planned to do when competitors offered their own, cheaper, by-mail movie rentals. As you reflect on what the audience wanted to know, write down all the issues and concerns that came up.

After subjecting your idea to both real and imaginary criticism,

return to the polishing process. Your goal is to have a fully formed, well-thought-through idea that is ready to sell to decision makers. This polishing activity is never really completed-even fully imple-mented programs get better and better as people think of ways to improve them. But unless you do a good job of shaping the idea ini-tially, it will never get past the first gatekeeper.

From Ideas to Action: Deciding Who to Woo

Once you have a well-polished idea, you are ready to map the influ-ence process you will use to sell it. Even the most unlikely ideas can be pushed through the most difficult environments if you act methodically-one idea, one ally, one e-mail, one conversation, one

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meeting, and one presentation at a time. And sometimes you can get to the decision maker and make a sale in one move-even with a very big initiative.

In his autobiography, My Years with General Motors, Alfred Sloan tells a story about how, soon after joining GM as a vice president in 1918, he sold an important idea to his CEO, William Durant, during a single conversation. At the time, public companies were not re-quired by law to be audited, but Sloan thought both GM and its shareholders would benefit from engaging an independent auditor to go over its books on a regular basis. Audits present management with a clearer financial picture of the firm, but they can also pose risks if the auditors uncover irregularities. Mindful of these dangers, Sloan might have vetted his idea to his senior staff or formed a committee to study it before presenting it to Durant. But Sloan knew Durant was an "impulsive" decision maker who did not really understand or care about accounting. And Sloan did not want the idea to get bogged down in office politics-he was convinced it was the right thing to do. So he snuck it by Durant by downplaying it.

"My office was next door to his," Sloan wrote. "One day in 1919 I went in and told him that I thought that, in view of the large public interest in the corporation's shares, we should have an independent audit by a certified public accountant." Durant barely looked up from his work. He "said at once that he agreed with me, and told me to go and get one. That was the way he worked."

One-move idea sales can work even better with lower-level deci-sion makers, provided you have taken the trouble to form good rela-tionships with them. As Peter Drucker noted in one of the quotes that opened this chapter, it is a "dangerous mistake" to think that only those at higher levels make important decisions. The skilled idea seller does not go any higher in an organization for the green light than he or she needs to.

When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on South Africa's notori-ously brutal Robben Island, he survived for twenty-six years by fo-cusing on specific goals for improving prison conditions and scouting exactly who would be the right people to sell his ideas to. One of his first important insights was that the lowest-level employees-the warders-had the most control over decisions related to prisoners'

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well-being. As Mandela learned, "The most important person in any prisoner's life is not the minister of justice, not the commissioner of prisons, not even the head of the prison, but the warder in one's sec-tion." If you needed an extra blanket and went to the minister of justice, "you would get no response." If you went to the commis-sioner of prisons, the commissioner would say, "It is against regula-tions." If you went to the head of the prison, he would respond, "If I give you an extra blanket, I must give one to everyone." But if you were on good terms with the warder, the warder would "simply go to the stockroom and fetch a blanket." In addition, and perhaps most important, when you had a good relationship with the warders, "it became difficult for the higher-ups to treat you roughly."

Thus, if you have access to the decision maker-whether that deci-sion maker is at the top of the organization chart or somewhere near the bottom-and see no need to involve anyone else in the decision process (more on this when we discuss getting commitments in chapter 9), a simple meeting with a straightforward idea pitch is the way to go. But recall a research finding we mentioned in chapter 1: even uncomplicated decisions require contact with an average of eight people in most organizations and complex decisions usually in-volve as many as twenty people. The more typical decision process, therefore, will have multiple stages.

Consequently, you will need to plan what we call a "stepping-stone" influence process, which we describe next.

Crossing the River One Stone at a Time

An example of how to map a stepping-stone process comes from the life of one of our students, a young man from India-we will call him Raj-who faced some sensitive family business issues in connection with an idea he was trying to sell.

As the oldest son of a wealthy Indian family, Raj was the heir to his family's large printing business. His father was eager for him to return home after graduation from college and take up his duties with the family firm. Raj, on the other hand, wanted to stay in America for a few more years and gain what he thought would be valuable business experience working for a global consulting company. How could Raj

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persuade his father to bless a decision to stay in America without trampling on this all-important relationship?

Raj had his idea and knew exactly what he wanted from his next persuasion encounter with his father. The problem was that he had not yet mapped the decision process within his family.

We asked him a simple question to get the ball rolling: how will this decision be made in your family?

"My mother, father, grandmother, and grandfather will all sit down together and discuss it," he replied.

"And of those four, who would be most sympathetic to your view?"

"My mother," he answered immediately. "Does she have clout inside the family?" "In Indian families, the wife is supreme inside the house. But this

issue is both inside the house and outside the house. And she may be afraid that if I stay in America, I will meet an American girl and want to marry. She would be very opposed to that. There is also my grand-father. He founded the business and thinks some experience working on lots of projects for the consulting firm might be useful. But he cannot oppose my father."

"And your grandmother?" "She will agree with my grandfather." With this picture of the decision-making process in mind, we

devised an idea-selling strategy. First, during his trip home over the Christmas holidays, he would have a heart-to-heart conversation with his mother and share his dream of gaining experience and having some freedom before coming home to help run the company. His goal would be to enlist her as his champion. He would, of course, have to convince her that he would commit to marrying an Indian woman.

The next step would be for his mother to approach the grandfather and grandmother in private to sell the idea of an alliance supporting Raj's plan. The three of them would then try to gain the father's ap-proval. Above all: Raj should avoid speaking directly to his father on the issue, especially at any family gathering. Raj would not want his father to become committed in public to a "no" answer.

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When Raj returned from Christmas vacation, he came to visit us. He was beaming. It had worked-but not exactly the way we had anticipated. Our questions had gotten Raj thinking about how deci-sions in his family were really made. So after he got home-but before he spoke with anyone-he asked his older sister for her advice. She approved the plan, but suggested speaking with the grandmother first. It turned out that the grandmother had more influence than Raj suspected. In fact, she was the real power in the family when it came to issues of this sort, though Raj had never been aware of it. Raj was her favorite grandchild-and under her gentle guidance and with some clear commitments from Raj about coming home within two years unmarried, the post-graduation sojourn was approved by the family council.

Raj's simple story illustrates a profound truth. To devise an idea-selling strategy, you must start with three key questions:

1. How do decisions like this get made in my organization?

2. Whom should I woo first to gain entry into that process?

3. What follow-up strategy should I use?

Social Networks

To answer these questions, you need to know something about how your organization really works. In groups of all kinds, people get things done through informal social networks. The extent of your network constitutes your "social capital" and is one of your most important career assets. The "social intelligence" you have about how these networks actually operate is one of your most valuable knowledge assets. Indeed, researchers have confirmed that people who are knowledgable about the advice-giving and influence network within their organizations are seen by others as more powerful.

As Raj's story shows, social networks can operate in ways that are very different from the chain-of-command relationships identified on a standard organization chart. Raj's father was the nominal head of both his household and his business. Raj thought his mother was the

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major influencer within this system, but it turned out that his grand-mother was the real power behind the throne for the type of decision he wanted made. Raj's sister turned out to be a key adviser on how this system worked.

So the first move in a stepping-stone selling campaign is to deter-mine what the actual decision process looks like. Nelson Mandela's experience on Robben Island is again instructive.

By winning over the most sympathetic guards, one by one, Man-dela advanced toward his overall goal of improving treatment for all the inmates. He was, in effect, using the Chess Player role we studied in the last chapter for a decades-long campaign to influence the prison hierarchy. The secret to influencing his jailers lay neither in challenging their authority, which increased their anger, nor in un-conditionally submitting to them, which decreased their respect. In-stead, he wooed them by understanding their mind-set: their language, values, and history. He learned to speak Afrikaans, think in Afrikaner terms, and appreciate the best and most popular Afrikaans books. This made it much easier for him to strike up casual conversa-tions with the warders and learn even more about their culture.

The hardened antiapartheid prisoners at the island quickly learned from observing the success of Mandela's efforts. One of them com-mented: "I realized the importance of learning Afrikaans history, of reading Afrikaans literature, of trying to understand these ordinary men … how they are indoctrinated, how they react." Mandela knew precisely why this was important: "You must understand the mind of the opposing commander … you can't understand him unless you understand his literature and his language."

When it came to influencing the most senior officials, by contrast, Mandela relied more on his political skills and his knowledge of how power tends to corrupt the people who have it. The Robben Island commander for many years, Colonel Piet Badenhorst, was particu-larly brutal and made a game of trying to provoke Mandela, shouting in Afrikaans when he saw him in the yard: "Mandela, you must pull your finger out of your arse." But Mandela said nothing in response to these taunts, knowing that reacting would make it harder to get what he wanted. He realized that with Badenhorst there would be no relationship-based persuasion. It was all about power.

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Mandela eventually won this battle by orchestrating Badenhorst's departure from Robben Island. It was the culmination of a carefully plotted stepping-stone process. First, Mandela and his allies got word of Badenhorst's prisoner abuse to friends on the outside, who pub-lished their stories in the press. Mandela was an international figure by this time, and the South African government knew the world was watching what happened on Robben Island. The government re-sponded by sending three investigative judges to the island to make a report. They requested a face-to-face conversation with Mandela. But Mandela, to everyone's surprise, took step two of his plan and insisted that Badenhorst be present. In true Chess Player fashion, Mandela was setting Badenhorst up for his own fall.

The final move came at the hearing itself. As Mandela described a recent beating to the judges, Badenhorst could not restrain himself, just as Mandela had anticipated. "If you talk about things you haven't seen," Badenhorst interrupted angrily, "you will get yourself in trou-ble." Mandela declined to address his foe directly. Instead, he ad-dressed the judges, pointing to the horrors that occurred when visitors departed.

"If he can threaten me here, in your presence," Mandela said qui-etly, "you can imagine what he does when you are not here."

Mandela's well-timed comment hit home. The judges left the island and reported that abuses were, in fact, taking place. And three months after the meeting, Badenhorst was transferred-along with a gang of the most violent warders. Over time, as the force of Mandela's per-sonal character pervaded the entire prison, he became, in the words of his biographer, a "star attraction" among the more enlightened ward-ers. They would share meals and even play tennis with him.

By the time Mandela was released from Robben Island, he had so thoroughly transformed the situation that it was the South African government that was trying to sell him an idea-the idea that he should leave the prison. Mandela resisted this offer, realizing that his own incarceration had become an important bargaining chip in the fight for equality. It was only when his antiapartheid principles had been completely agreed to that he consented to be set free.

Mandela's story illustrates just how important it is to accu-rately map the decision process you face so that you can execute the

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appropriate strategies. Books such as Duncan J. Watts's Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (and other social network texts in the bibliography at the end of the book) provide additional resources on exactly how you can do this within your own organization. In the

meantime, we will give you a visual illustration of how it works. Social network expert Rob Cross once conducted an analysis of a

large oil company and created a map of the differences between the

formal organization and the informal one that existed below the surface (see Figure 3.1).

Look at the formal organization chart at the top of Figure 3.1.

Imagine yourself in Cohen's position, at the top of Group A of the

production division. Suppose you wanted to sell an idea to the senior vice president of manufacturing, Jones. The obvious path based on

the formal reporting relationships (the diagram at the top) would be to sell your boss, Williams, and then get Williams to help you sell it to his boss, Jones. And that might work-but mapping that pathway for your idea would not be a wise use of either your social capital or

social intelligence. The social network diagram at the bottom of Figure 3.1, which

shows people's informal relationships with one another rather than

the formal hierarchy, reveals that an employee named Cole, who is near the bottom of Group A, has stronger social network relation-ships to both Williams and Jones than you do. In fact, Cole knows

someone in every unit in the division. Because Cole is so well con-nected, you would do well to enlist him as an ally in explaining your

idea to others across the group.

That raises another strategy question. Should you follow the short-est social network route and ask Cole to take your idea directly to

the overall boss, Jones? Probably not. Formal reporting relationships are very important in terms of status within most groups. You report to Williams and Williams may resent your attempt to go "over his

head" to Jones without first consulting him. Balancing the considerations raised by both the formal and the

informal diagrams, you might map your strategy for this idea as follows: (1) enlist Cole as an ally, (2) have Cole approach Andrews to

be part of your alliance, (3) ask for a meeting with your boss,

Williams, at which both Cole and especially Andrews support your

I Production

Williams I

I I Group A Group B

I I Cohen Cross

I I Smith Andrews

I Hughe1i

I Ramirez

I Bell

I Cole

I Hussain

I Kelly

Figure 3.1

Manufacturing Senior Vice President

Jones

I Quality Taylor

Sen

I Moore

I Miller

I Inventory

Riley I

I I Group A GroupB

I I O'Brien Shapiro

I Paine

Cross

Adapted from Rob Cross and Andrew Parker. The Hidden Power of Social Networks

(Harvard Business School Press, 2004), 5.

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idea, (4) then have Williams represent your collective views to Jones in whatever way Williams deems best. As an investment in the future, you would also want to use this occasion to strengthen your social ties with both Williams and Jones. And if you were advising Jones as a leadership coach, you would probably tell him to spend more time getting to know the people who work for him on a personal level.

Four Key Roles: Boundary Spanners, Connectors, Peripheral Players, and Subgroups

Take another look at the social network diagram on the right of Figure 3.1. Social network experts have discovered that there are four distinct types of actors within the "informal" organization: boundary spanners, connectors, peripheral players, and subgroups.

Boundary Spanners. Boundary Spanners are people (such as Cole in our example) who have relationships with members of different Subgroups within an organization or who bridge your organization with outside groups. If you look closely at the diagram on the bottom of Figure 3.1, you will notice that Cole has informal relationships with at least one person in every Subgroup. Boundary Spanners can help you understand the perspective of specific functions outside your specialty ("What do the lawyers generally think?"), assist with gain-ing access to people in other parts of your organization ("Can you introduce me to someone in marketing?"), and advise you on your idea-selling strategy by helping you map the informal systems they know about.

Sociologists have found that, in communities as well as companies, certain well-connected people play the "bridging" role between groups. This accounts for the well-known "six degrees of separation" phenomenon. Pick any famous person at random, and you will often find that you are no more than six relationships away from them (i.e., you know someone, who knows someone, etc., who knows the person in question). Do this experiment repeatedly, and you will begin to find that one or two people's names frequently come up in the chain of relationships that connect you to others. These people are the central switching points within your social network. When

connect your ideas to people: stepping-stones 75

you view your organization through a social network lens, you will see how such Boundary Spanners can help you to communicate and to gather important political intelligence across organizational boundaries.

Professional politicians are, of course, the ultimate Spanners. Their success in politics depends on their relationships within two distinct networks. First, to get elected, they must know people from as many groups as possible who may vote for them. Second, once elected, they need to build personal bridges with as many other elected officials as possible to get things done. A famous Louisiana politician named Earl Long once summed up his talent as a politician as follows: "The kind of thing I'm good at is knowing every politician in the state and remembering where he itches."

But you don't have to be a politician to exploit the benefits that come with spanning social networks. Studies of such communities as the high-tech world of California's Silicon Valley, celebrity-studded Hollywood, and the political infrastructures of major cities show that a handful of people-sometimes no more than 100 to 200—control a disproportionate amount of the actual decision-making power in these areas. These "super" Boundary Spanners serve on multiple boards for both private companies and important local charities, are regulars at high-profile social events, and, when they are not holding impor-tant jobs themselves, are advising those who do. They may have no actual decision-making power of their own, but their position in their networks gives them enormous influence over a wide range of decisions.

Rock star Bono, lead singer of the group U2 and a social entrepre-neur whom we will meet later in the book, has an interesting strategy for locating the key Boundary Spanners when he is raising money for his causes. When he first approaches a new government group, indus-try association, or nonprofit network, he asks everyone he speaks with a key question: "Who is the Elvis here?" He wants to find his way as quickly as possible to the pivotal person who controls the actual influ-ence in the network.

Interestingly, this same insight into the importance of centrality within an informal network forms the foundation for the ranking system used

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by one of the best and most widely used Internet search engines-Google. When you conduct a Google search, the sites that appear at the top of the list are not the ones that pay the most money to Google or that some expert has determined is the best site for your query. They are simply the sites with the most network centrality-the ones with the most links between them and the rest of the Internet.

Connectors. In addition to being a Boundary Spanner, Cole is also a Connector, someone who has a wide set of relationships within his own group (he is tied in with Cohen, Kelly, Hughes, and Hussain within his own "C&G" business unit). While Spanners are people who help bridge the gaps between groups, Connectors are the people who have wide sets of ties within their own units and can use those ties to help you navigate inside them. Raj's sister was a Connector within her family. In business, it is not uncommon for a Connector to also be a Boundary Spanner who bridges to at least one outside group.

Peripheral Players. People at the edges of a network (like Jones in our Figure 3.1 illustration) are less connected than either Boundary Spanners or Connectors. Indeed, sometimes these Peripheral Players are self-consciously isolated. People at the edges of the informal orga-nization may be specialists who can give you a quick course on a technical aspect of your idea when you need it ("Can you explain in a few words how this machine really works?") but who have no in-terest in organizational politics. They may be people who are trying to achieve a better work-life balance and have checked out of the social networking system within an organization. Alternatively, their role in the organization may call on them to be isolated so they can maintain a certain distance or perspective on the rest of the organiza-tion. Sometimes an organization's lawyers or accountants are asked to stay on the periphery for just this reason.

An example of how astute use of a Peripheral Player can help in an idea-selling campaign comes from American politics in the 1930s. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president, he took a big step toward gender equality in his administration by appointing the first woman in American history to occupy a major cabinet position-a social activist named Frances Perkins, whom he named secretary of labor. As part of the drive to create the Social Security system (we will tell the story about how Perkins sold this idea to Roosevelt in the next

connect your ideas to people: stepping-stones 77

section), Roosevelt asked Perkins to chair the committee he charged with formulating this program. The group had six months to come up with a working proposal for a national social insurance program.

One of the biggest problems the committee faced was a legal ques-tion: would a social insurance system of any kind pass muster under the Constitution? Lawyers differed in their opinions, and Perkins was worried that the entire system might ultimately be struck down by the courts unless they built it on the right legal foundation.

Perkins used her social network to get some help on this issue by arranging to consult with a Peripheral Player in the political process-Justice Harlan Stone of the U.S. Supreme Court. Within the U.S. gov-ernment, the Supreme Court is formally set apart to act as a referee for the other two, more political branches, Congress and the Office of the President. The Court also constitutes a distinct Subgroup (more on this below), and it is highly improper for members of the Court to comment informally on cases or other matters that might come before them. But Justices are people, too, and they play roles in the elaborate social system of Washington, D.C. This makes them part of Washing-ton's informal social network, albeit at the periphery.

Perkins exploited this social reality to get help with her Social Secu-rity initiative. Her first step was to get invited to tea with the wife of Justice Harlan Stone, a woman she knew from other social occasions in Washington. She knew that the tea would be scheduled for late in the afternoon, when Justice Stone was likely to be home. She arrived at the Stones' house at 5:45 P.M., and Mrs. Stone took Perkins upstairs where a large group of people had gathered. The Justice was just getting his cup of tea as she approached the tea table.

"How are you getting on?" he inquired. "All right," Perkins replied. Then, realizing that she might not have

another opportunity to pop her question, given the social obligations that came with being a guest at this event, she got right to her point.

"Well, you know we are having big trouble, Mr. Justice," she said. Justice Stone looked at her with new interest. Perkins went on to describe the legal debate the commission was

having. "We are not quite sure, you know, what will be a wise method of establishing this law. It is a very difficult constitutional problem, you know."

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Stone leaned toward her and looked around to see if anybody was listening. Then he signaled her to come a little closer.

"The taxing power, my dear, the taxing power," he said quietly. "You can do anything under the taxing power." At the time of this conversation, there was an important debate going on within the Court over the proper reach of congressional power to regulate busi-ness under such Constitutional provisions as the Commerce Clause and the Due Process Clause. But the Court had steadfastly held that Congress had broad powers to levy taxes, even when such taxes fell unfairly on one economic group at the expense of another. Justice Stone was giving Perkins a hint: pitch the Social Security system as a tax program and it was sure to avoid this legal debate.

At the next meeting of her committee, the legal question came up for discussion and Perkins advocated firmly for basing the Social Security legislation on "the taxing power." The committee endorsed her idea, though Perkins never told anyone where her new-found conviction on this issue had come from. When, years later, a legal challenge to the Social Security system finally made its way to the Supreme Court, the law passed with flying colors as a valid exercise of Congress's power to tax. Reflecting years later about the founding of the Social Security system, she said, "The taxing power of the United States-you can do anything under it. And so it proved … "

Subgroups. The fourth and final type of social network player is the Subgroup (like the inventory group of Riley, O'Brian, Shapiro, and Paine in Figure 3.1 or the U.S. Supreme Court in the Perkins story). Subgroups may form on the basis of function, role, hierarchy, gender, or any number of factors. These groups can represent impor-tant political constituencies for you if your idea impacts them in some way. They tend to support or oppose new ideas or initiatives as a block. We will explore this dynamic later in chapter 9, when we dis-cuss organizational politics and the problem of gaining commitment to new ideas.

Setting Specific Persuasion Goals for Each Encounter

The stepping-stone process for selling ideas requires you to persuade different people to do different things at different stages. Thus, you

connect your ideas to people: stepping-stones 79

will need to set specific, somewhat different goals as you move from one encounter to the next. Research shows that people with specific, high aspirations tend to accomplish more than people who have vague, do-my-best goals. And people who commit themselves to their goals by writing them down and discussing them with others tend to achieve more than people who keep their goals to themselves. You will want to bring these habits to the process of setting goals in an idea-selling campaign.

Early on, you may simply be trying to introduce your idea and get key people thinking about it by floating "trial balloons." Later, you may be seeking input to help shape your idea into a final prod-uct. Finally, you may be asking for specific forms of cooperation as you work through your social network toward the ultimate deci-sion makers. Each of the four social network players, for example, presents opportunities to advance distinctive goals: information goals with Boundary Spanners and Peripheral Players, endorsement goals with Connectors, and coalition formation goals with Sub-groups. Eventually you will ask for approval and action from deci-sion makers.

To help you think more strategically about what you might want from each encounter, here is a list of seven specific goals to think about as you map the decision process that lies ahead:

• Brainstorming or Idea-Polishing Goals: You want someone to help you think about your idea. This does not require them to endorse it or even like it.

• Facilitative Goals: Again, without asking for someone to en-dorse your idea, you need him or her to help you map the proc-ess or gain access to someone who is a stepping-stone on your map. Successfully achieving this sort of goal might involve per-mission to use someone's name to approach someone else whom you do not know.

• Attitude Goals: Now you are trying to actively persuade-to alter people's minds in a positive way about your idea. An atti-tude is a point of view or predisposition toward some idea, issue, or action. You want your persuasion partner to say-and

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believe-that "this is a good idea." The more tightly you can hitch your idea to an existing, positive attitude held by your partner, the better.

• Authorization Goals: You want approval for resources needed to advance your idea to the next stage. This is more difficult and normally requires a person who controls resources to have a favorable attitude about your idea. We will see in the next chapter that your personal credibility is vitally important to achieve this and the remaining three goal types.

• Endorsement Goals: You are looking for allies who will sign on to actively support your idea-either privately, in public, or both.

• Decision Goals: You want approval for your idea from a person or committee charged with making a decision. This generally requires both positive attitudes and endorsements.

• Implementation and Action Goals: You want to transform an approval into specific forms of action involving concrete steps on a timetable. This requires commitment of resources. Note that, at implementation, you may be required to sell your idea all over again to the people who will implement it.

Of course, you can have more than one goal for any given encoun-ter. For example, you should always be trying to create favorable at-titudes toward your idea even if you do not absolutely need such an attitude to get brainstorming or facilitative help. In addition, the ear-lier you are in an idea-selling campaign, the more strategic and politi-cally sensitive you need to be in approaching people. For example, when developing an idea that will require time and resources, you may need to talk to the ultimate decision maker early on to get per-mission to explore an idea further. When you do this, you should be careful to assure the decision maker that his or her preliminary en-dorsement to invest resources in no way implies approval for the final product. A second story about Frances Perkins' effort to establish the Social Security system in the United States illustrates the limited scope of idea-selling goals early in an idea-selling process.

connect your ideas to people: stepping-stones 81

Perkins had compiled an impressive record by the time she was named secretary of labor, emerging first as a leader of social causes in New York City and then serving as industrial commissioner under FDR when he was governor of New York State. As her career devel-oped, she dreamed of creating an extensive plan for national labor and economic security. This had crystallized into the idea for the Social Security system by the time Roosevelt asked her to join his cabinet.

It was early 1933, just after the election, when Roosevelt called Perkins to a meeting at his Manhattan town house. Because she had not yet agreed to serve, Perkins knew that this was her moment of maximum leverage with the president-elect. On the other hand, she did not want to overplay her hand by demanding a full commitment from Roosevelt on something as daring and untested as Social Secu-rity. Her specific goal for the meeting was therefore to get something important but modest-authorization to explore the idea.

As they sat together, Perkins laid out her ambitious vision and asked, "Are you sure you want these things done? Because you don't want me for secretary of labor if you don't."

Roosevelt was understandably startled when he understood the scope of her goals.

"Well, do you think it can be done?" asked Roosevelt. "I don't know," Perkins replied frankly. But then she observed:

"Lots of other problems have been solved by the people of the United States, and there is no reason why this one shouldn't be solved."

"Well," Roosevelt pressed, "do you think you can do it?" "I want to know 1 have your authorization," Perkins said. "I won't

ask you to promise anything." "All right," said the president, "I will authorize you to try, and if

you succeed, that's fine." Roosevelt said nothing about what would happen if she failed, but it was clear enough in the code of politics: Perkins would take the blame.

At this early stage of Perkins' idea-selling campaign, she did not seek her boss's commitment to her program-simply his "authorization." She avoided asking for resources, an agreement that Roosevelt would serve as an idea champion, or even a preliminary commitment. She knew that powerful people and groups passionately opposed social insurance of

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believe-that "this is a good idea." The more tightly you can hitch your idea to an existing, positive attitude held by your partner, the better.

• Authorization Goals: You want approval for resources needed to advance your idea to the next stage. This is more difficult and normally requires a person who controls resources to have a favorable attitude about your idea. We will see in the next chapter that your personal credibility is vitally important to achieve this and the remaining three goal types.

• Endorsement Goals: You are looking for allies who will sign on to actively support your idea-either privately, in public, or both.

• Decision Goals: You want approval for your idea from a person or committee charged with making a decision. This generally requires both positive attitudes and endorsements.

• Implementation and Action Goals: You want to transform an approval into specific forms of action involving concrete steps on a timetable. This requires commitment of resources. Note that, at implementation, you may be required to sell your idea all over again to the people who will implement it.

Of course, you can have more than one goal for any given encoun-ter. For example, you should always be trying to create favorable at-titudes toward your idea even if you do not absolutely need such an attitude to get brainstorming or facilitative help. In addition, the ear-lier you are in an idea-selling campaign, the more strategic and politi-cally sensitive you need to be in approaching people. For example, when developing an idea that will require time and resources, you may need to talk to the ultimate decision maker early on to get per-mission to explore an idea further. When you do this, you should be careful to assure the decision maker that his or her preliminary en-dorsement to invest resources in no way implies approval for the final product. A second story about Frances Perkins' effort to establish the Social Security system in the United States illustrates the limited scope of idea-selling goals early in an idea-selling process.

connect your ideas to people: stepping-stones 81

Perkins had compiled an impressive record by the time she was named secretary of labor, emerging first as a leader of social causes in New York City and then serving as industrial commissioner under FDR when he was governor of New York State. As her career devel-oped, she dreamed of creating an extensive plan for national labor and economic security. This had crystallized into the idea for the Social Security system by the time Roosevelt asked her to join his cabinet.

It was early 1933, just after the election, when Roosevelt called Perkins to a meeting at his Manhattan town house. Because she had not yet agreed to serve, Perkins knew that this was her moment of maximum leverage with the president-elect. On the other hand, she did not want to overplay her hand by demanding a full commitment from Roosevelt on something as daring and untested as Social Secu-rity. Her specific goal for the meeting was therefore to get something important but modest-authorization to explore the idea.

As they sat together, Perkins laid out her ambitious vision and asked, "Are you sure you want these things done? Because you don't want me for secretary of labor if you don't."

Roosevelt was understandably startled when he understood the scope of her goals.

"Well, do you think it can be done?" asked Roosevelt. "I don't know," Perkins replied frankly. But then she observed:

"Lots of other problems have been solved by the people of the United States, and there is no reason why this one shouldn't be solved."

"Well," Roosevelt pressed, "do you think you can do it?" "I want to know 1 have your authorization," Perkins said. "I won't

ask you to promise anything." "All right," said the president, "I will authorize you to try, and if

you succeed, that's fine." Roosevelt said nothing about what would happen if she failed, but it was clear enough in the code of politics: Perkins would take the blame.

At this early stage of Perkins' idea-selling campaign, she did not seek her boss's commitment to her program-simply his "authorization." She avoided asking for resources, an agreement that Roosevelt would serve as an idea champion, or even a preliminary commitment. She knew that powerful people and groups passionately opposed social insurance of

82 the art of woo

any kind, calling it wishful thinking, anti-American, and even commu-nistic. As the story about Perkins' whispered conversation with Supreme Justice Harlan Stone (recounted above) indicated, some supporters wor-ried that it might be unconstitutional. It was too soon for Roosevelt to approve an idea that had so many details yet to be specified. The time for formal endorsements and decisions would come later.

When the Social Security system finally came up for a vote in Con-gress in 1935, Perkins had done such a fine job selling the idea to the country that Roosevelt was happy to throw the full weight of his presidency behind it. The law, which passed by overwhelming ma-jorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, went down in history as one of Roosevelt's signature accomplishments.

A Word About Commitment and Conviction

As we conclude this chapter, we want to emphasize an important point that has been implicit throughout all the examples we have shared with you above-from Reed Hastings' discovery of the Netflix business model and Frances Perkins' campaign for her Social Security idea, to Nelson Mandela's strategy for easing the suffering of prison-ers on Robben Island and Raj's lobbying to delay returning to his family's business. In all these examples, the persuaders brought an optimistic, energetic attitude to each influence encounter-even when, as in Mandela's case, the situation was unimaginably difficult and the odds of winning remote.

This is not a coincidence. President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "What convinces is conviction." And Abraham Lincoln, in a eulogy to the great American orator, Henry Clay, stated that the secret of Clay's eloquence "did not consist, as many fine specimens of elo-quence" do, in the "elegant arrangement of words and sentences; but rather of that deeply earnest and impassioned tone and manner, which can proceed only from great sincerity and a thorough convic-tion in the speaker of the justice and importance of his cause."

One of the reasons that we spent time at the beginning of this chap-ter showing you where ideas come from was to lay the foundation for what we will say here: people tend to believe you more when you yourself believe in what you are selling. By engaging in a thorough job

connect your ideas to people: stepping-stones 83

of searching for, discovering, and shaping your idea, you will have a much better story to tell about it as you present it to others. It will be a story you can believe in and that very belief will help make you more persuaSIve.

We will be discussing credibility in more detail in the next chapter, but for now we will leave you with this important thought. The Art of Woo, as the name suggests, contains an important element of pas-sion. As you develop your ideas, map your strategy, and set goals for each encounter, remember to bring your sense of purpose and persis-tence with you. These are qualities that will animate everything you say and do. And your audience's sixth sense will pick that up without even being aware of it and attend to your ideas more carefully.

Conclusion

This chapter completes our look at Step 1 of the Woo process-Survey Your Situation. This stage requires you to:

• Develop your idea into a polished concept,

• Map the decision-making system, and

• Devise a stepping-stone strategy for your idea-selling campaign, determining whom to call on and in what order.

Finally, prior to each meeting or contact, you need to set specific

persuasion goals related to getting input, gaining access, changing attitudes, obtaining authorizations, winning endorsements, making decisions, or achieving implementation. You also should think carefully about your own persuasion style to see if some adjustments might help you communicate more effectively as you move up the chain of command to the decision maker.

With all this effort, you might think your job is almost done. And many unskilled persuaders do, in fact, stop here. That is why so many good ideas fail to attract the attention they deserve and end up in the "reject" file.

When you see your idea from your own point of view, you get excited. But to sell an idea, you need to get other people just as

84 the art of woo

excited as you are, and that requires you to see it from their perspec-tives. If you want to get your young kids enthused about the new car you are planning to buy, don't talk to them about the heated front seats. Talk about the DVD player in the back-where they will spend all their time.

The next three chapters will help you see the world as your coun-terpart sees it by introducing Step 2 of the process: Confront the Five Barriers. We start in chapter 4 with two personal factors that can be either showstoppers or turbochargers for any idea campaign: rela-tionships and credibility. Subsequent chapters treat communication problems, contrary beliefs, and conflicting interests.

As you sit down to sell your idea, will other people be predisposed to listen to you or will they have doubts about you as they look across the table?