by Elmer S Soriano
How can a skilled but younger leader influence political outcomes in disproportionate ways, without threatening her superiors?
Many young and intelligent leaders find themselves in this position. They are smart enough to diagnose the adaptive challenges facing their organization. They are connected well enough within social systems to shape outcomes, through betweeness centrality, able to shape the signals that are communicated through the network, and they have just enough informal authority to engage actors who matter through conversations.
Nodal governance defined by Burris et al as "a variety of actors operating within social systems interact along networks to govern the systems they inhabit" shall be used as the conceptual peg for this article.
Imagine a mid-twenties technical staff with a masters degree working at UNICEF. She's assigned to various technical working groups across multiple projects, reports to and is trusted by top influentials in the country office, and is able to see and hear many signals that don't reach her bosses.
She wants to influence outcomes and sees some ripeness and resonance of some issues, but the different leaders in her network don't see her ideas as the priority. She's doesn't have enough formal authority to make things happen.
Questions this person may ask in order to define her strategy:
1. What is my preferred reality? How would I like this system to look like after six months, one year, or three years?
2. What networks of associated ideas will need to ripen and be considered valid in order for the scenario in no.1 to happen? Which decision-makers influence no.1, and who influence these decision-makers?
3. Map the social relations and ideas within the network. Click here for example.
4. Diagnose the disposition of 3-5 key influentials in the social network.
5. Deploy Boundary Spanning Leadership in cycles of four weeks.
6. Close triangles to increase validity of ideas.
7. If there is emerging consensus behind a certain point or concept, point that out to your boss or another senior officer with convening powers, and allow that person convene a meeting or have a one-on-one conversation to swing a decision to advance no.1.
If not, go back to no.2.
8. If No.1 has been achieved, close this advocacy project and identify the next preferred reality.
Sources:
Information and Contact-Making in Policy Networks: A Model with Evidence from the U.S. Health Policy Domain http://www.hks.harvard.edu/davidlazer/files/papers/carpenter_esterling_lazer_information_contactmaking_us-health-policy.pdf
Nodal Governance SCOTT BURRIS, PETER DRAHOS AND CLIFFORD SHEARING
http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/phrhcs/salzburg/Nodal_Governance_Article.pdf
Boundary-spanning Leadership
http://www.ccl.org/Leadership/pdf/research/BoundarySpanningLeadership.pdf
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