4 Proven Ways To Influence Your Organization From The Outside

How are you going to harness the power of influencing your organization in 2018?

Today’s workplaces are so highly matrixed that anyone who wishes to attain professional success must first learn to influence others. When seeking to influence organizations, most people begin by influencing from the inside. But what’s an influencer to do when this traditional approach falls flat?

Traditional Influencing from Inside Works – Until It Doesn’t

An inside influencer becomes ineffective when individuals are too focused on a specific desired outcome. This “tunnel vision” prevents parties from fully considering the situation at hand. An influencer may still acquire their desired short-term outcome, but without fully considering the situation, their plan will often fall apart in the long run, possibly even causing long-term damage to the organization. This creates an atmosphere of distrust, where people lose confidence and simply stop listening. When influencing from the inside breaks down, the potential for progress or innovation is significantly diminished.

Try Influencing from Outside When Influencing from Inside Fails

How can we avoid the “tunnel vision” effect that comes with traditional influencing from inside? Building alliances and finding ways to influence from inside is certainly a good idea, but to truly garner legitimacy and proper support, some pressure from outside works. Organizations that consider outside factors are less prone to tunnel vision because they consider a wider variety of aspects, such as the general and task environment.

To influence from the outside, you must adhere to a strategy that includes: community building, publishing, speaking/evangelizing, and being identified as an expert. Although you may be a strong influencer from the inside, your new-found status as an outside expert may be even more convincing to inside stakeholders. Here are four proven ways to influence your organization from the outside.

  1. Build a community of like-minded professionals. Connecting with a community of like-minded professionals is vital to being seen as an outside expert. Focus on getting to know the people you need to influence and ally with. Customs, values, and demographic features indicate the services, products, and standards that a community values. Identifying the services and products that a specific community needs can help you build connections and rally a community together.
  2. Publish in areas where you want to direct change. Instead of doing all your messaging internally, focus on publishing your perspectives and game plans to a wider audience. For example, if you want to change your organization’s board hiring policies, consider publishing articles about board service. Publishing offers a valuable opportunity to regulate, control, or influence an organization’s practices and policies. External messaging will also help your organization to see how the wider community values your influence.
  3. Speak publicly about topics you want to see transform. Speaking is another way of communicating your concerns. When you communicate your message through external speaking opportunities, there is an added social dimension to your influence. In order to keep a company sound and alive, organizations must pay close attention to which speakers their customers and employees are engaging with. For example, if you do interviews and make public presentations about board service, you can get customers and employees on board with your cause. This influence will make its way to your organization, which will be unable to ignore your public impact.
  4. Become known and identified as an expert in the field you want to influence. Being an external expert doesn’t mean being separate or isolated from your organization. Rather, to be identified as an expert, you need to not only be influential from the outside, but also strive to assist the organization in all possible ways. Find strategic partners who can benefit the organization from outside on your behalf. For example, if you want to impact your organization’s board hiring, make connections and build credibility with board-matching services. You can later leverage these relationships to influence your organization positively.

Sponsored

So, how are you going to harness the power of influencing your organization in 2018?


Olga V. Mack is an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor at Berkeley Law, and entrepreneur. Olga founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to serve on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. Olga also co-founded SunLaw to prepare women in-house attorneys become general counsel and legal leaders and WISE to help women law firm partners become rainmakers. She embraces the current disruption to the legal profession. Olga loves this change and is dedicated to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and inclusive than before. You can email Olga at olga@olgamack.com or follow her on Twitter @olgavmack.

Sponsored