Influence Without Authority
About this book
Cohen and Bradford model influence as exchange, arguing that you obtain cooperation by trading things the other person values rather than by holding power over them. The book sets out the currencies people trade in, covering inspiration, task support, position, relationship and personal currencies, then gives a process for working out what a potential ally actually cares about. There are chapters on influencing your boss, on peers and cross functional partners, on colleagues you find difficult, and on shifting a whole organisation from a position in the middle of it. The third edition adds material on influencing in networked and distributed organisations. Read it when persuasion by argument alone has stopped working.
Description via Product Digest.
Topics
Related concepts
- Negotiation in projectsScope, resources, schedule and priority inside the project manager's own organisation account for most of what gets negotiated on a project, and almost none of it is called negotiation.
- Organisational change managementGetting people to work differently once the thing is built, which is where most of a project's value actually sits and is a separate discipline from controlling changes to the baseline.
- Removing blockersWhat counts as an impediment, why most of them are organisational and few are technical, and how a log turns a run of bad days into a visible pattern.
- Project stakeholder engagementFinding the people a project affects, understanding where each of them stands, and closing the gap between that and where the project needs them.