Here are some examples of Influencing Goals my clients have chosen to focus their stakeholder management on…
- Achieve planning committee approval for the new building in Regent Street.
- Increase requests for advice from internal clients fivefold by the end of this year.
- Remove Compliance Department’s opposition to our new marketing strategy.
- Gain positive feedback from at least six directors within the next four months.
- Become widely recognised as Samantha’s successor.
- Increase Market Share to 12% next year.
- Be appointed chair of the Networking Group at the next Annual General Meeting.
- Secure $250k additional funding for my product line.
- Get Jerry’s buy-in to my proposal before the next board meeting.
- Achieve a clear go/no go decision at the next Steering Committee meeting in July.
As you can see, there is a wide variety here. Most of them make it clear who has to be influenced, although some are implied. Nearly all require a campaign of action over a period of time and the agreement of more than one person.
Goal six is an interesting one because it implies that the market needs to be influenced and is also a high-level goal. In order to achieve that influence, the individual I was working with broke it down into a series of different Influencing Goals. The marketing department needed to be persuaded to sign off the development strategy; the board needed to be convinced to allocate enough advertising budget, etc. So under this big goal was a series of Influencing Goals.
The important thing to note here is that you need to select an Influencing Goal which is at a level that is helpful to you right now. Sometimes, people need to move either down in scale or nearer in time to get moving. It is impossible to say which is right for you, but what I can assure is that most people discover the right level of goal within a few iterations of the process. If you’re focusing too high, Step 6: Maintaining Momentum should flush it out, and you’ll then be able to adjust your focus in a more practical way.