[Please note that the names of the companies and their personnel have either been changed or withheld to protect confidentiality.]
William (‘Bill’) Coleman’s career at the bank had stalled. His disappointment was deepened by the progress of some newer recruits who overtook him in the promotion stakes. At bank functions he avoided conversation on matters of substance and was embarrassed when asked what he was doing.
‘I was thinking of quitting,’ Bill said. ‘This almost came to a head when I was transferred from Head Office to Didchester. Madge was pregnant again and we couldn’t afford to move house.’
Bill’s new job consisted of checking the paperwork for loan applications in a tiny back office. To career depression was added the boredom of doing work well below his abilities. He mused whether this was the bank’s way of subtly hinting he should seek another career elsewhere.
A few days into his job, with several drafts of a resignation letter crumpled in the bin, the phone rang. ‘Have you anything left for Saturday?’, asked the caller. Bill didn’t know what she was talking about and he assumed she had the wrong extension.
‘Sorry?’, started Bill but she interrupted him. ‘Look, it’s my major customer, so you must do something. He’s a fanatical supporter and I need four tickets for the United match. Do what you can and call me back – I’ll be in the Rodford branch from eleven.’
Bill was puzzled and forgot about the call in minutes. But twenty minutes later, another call came through, this time from somebody he knew from his first month in the bank. She asked how he was doing and they exchanged pleasantries. Then she said: ‘Mark asked me to call when he read of your transfer in the Staff News – congratulations by the way – and told me to tell you that he would regard it as a great favour if you could get him two tickets for the United match.’
‘Look, Moira,’ said the by now totally perplexed Bill, ‘how can I get tickets for United? I don’t even watch football. This is a bank, remember.’
‘I know it is not easy this late to get tickets,’ she said, ignoring Bill’s question,
‘but surely you can do something for an old friend?’
‘Well I’d love to but I can’t.’
‘But Bill – your new responsibility includes the bank’s box at United. Have they not explained that to you yet?’
‘Er, no, not quite’, said Bill.
‘Well Mark says it’s his lucky day with you now at Didchester. Call me back if you get anything.’
He decided to give it a try so immediately he put the phone down Bill searched through his desk for United’s phone number. He found it in a file in the bottom drawer.
It took him a while to read through all the documents and the correspondence in the file. They confirmed what Moira had said. He was in charge of the bank’s private box at United. It sat 12 people per match for lunch and the match, plus another 12, who joined the bank’s lunch table but sat in the open stand.
There were details of every match for the season and some sheets showed some places were already booked. There were many blank spaces, including six for Saturday’s match. Bill sat back and thought about this turn in events. No wonder there was not enough bank business to keep him busy! The hospitality work, he realised, was a major task. As if on cue, the phone rang again, this time for tickets from another branch. Then the Area Manager for East Anglia rang, seeking tickets for later in the month.
It didn’t take long for Bill to see that he was not in a clerical backwater.
He had discretion over corporate hospitality for a major sporting event with potential demand across the bank’s entire network.
Questions
1 How would you advise Bill to take advantage of his discovery about his duties to use it to enhance his profile in the bank?
2 How might Bill build his influencing base in his bank using the United connection?
3 How might Bill extend his base among the clients of rival banks, who also use their own access to United’s hospitality services?
EPILOGUE
Formal titles, job descriptions, organisational charts, detailed procedure manuals and legal statutes do not cover the extent to which people interact on a person-to-person basis within an organisation. True, some behaviours are prohibited by law (racism, sexual harassment, bullying, bribery, coercion and such like) and others are restricted by procedures (against favouritism, requirements of advantageous disclosure, public notice of job vacancies and tenders, double signatures on cheques, annual audits and such like) but there would never be enough laws or means to enforce them to control the myriad interactions of people going about their business.
Influencing flourishes in the gaps between laws and procedures. It is about
‘affecting the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of others who are able to make decisions that affect ourselves and over whom we may have limited or no formal authority’.
Influencing is about managing without power. If you have power – the ability to compel people to do what they otherwise would not – you may not need influencing processes to get what you want, though you can use your power to extend your informal influence over the people that your power does not
reach. If you do not have power or authority (the right to compel people to do what they otherwise would not) you can only get your way by grace of their benevolence or by the exercise of your influence.