Workplace influence exercises: the version that survives contact with reality

You cannot ask people whether they consult you, because the answer is shaped by having been asked. So every exercise below uses something else: a calendar, a sent folder, a document's history, a written prediction, or an observation you make without anybody knowing you are making it.

Each takes between fifteen minutes and a month, and each ends with something you can look at.

What to take away

1. The tense count

Time. Thirty minutes with a month of messages.

Collect every message where somebody told you about a decision in their area. Sort them into two piles: "I am about to" and "I did".

What it reveals. Whether you are consulted or informed, as a ratio rather than an impression. The second pile is the honest measure of where you are not yet, and it usually has names clustered in it, which tells you where to start.

2. The document trace

Time. Twenty minutes.

List everything you have written that other people still open: a template, a checklist, a how-it-works page, a decision record. For each, find out when it was last edited and by whom.

What it reveals. Two things. How much of your standing rests on written artifacts, which is usually more than people expect. And which of those artifacts have gone stale, which is the fastest way to lose standing you already have.

3. The prediction file

Time. Ten minutes to start, then a quarter.

Write down three narrow predictions with dates. Narrow means checkable: this supplier misses the second milestone, this integration takes longer than the estimate, this request comes back in March. Put them somewhere dated. When each resolves, write what happened, including when you were wrong.

What it reveals. Whether your judgment is worth what you think, and it gives you the only form of evidence that other people can verify. Three resolved predictions change how your view is treated more than a year of good work does.

4. The flow audit

Time. Forty minutes with a calendar.

List every recurring meeting, queue, and thread you sit in. Mark each one according to whether it gives you information before other people have it, at the same time, or after.

What it reveals. Your actual position in the flow, which is usually worse than assumed. The output is a short list of places to volunteer for: the intake, the triage, the cross-team meeting nobody wants to run. The intake, the triage and the cross-team meeting are the moments where workplace influence techniques do most of their work.

5. The dull thing inventory

Time. Fifteen minutes.

What it reveals. The available positions. Every unowned item on that list is standing that nobody is competing for, and taking one is the only move on this page that a newcomer can make immediately.

6. The consultation absence test

Time. One month of noticing.

Each time you learn about a decision in an area you know about, note whether you were asked and, if not, who was.

What it reveals. Who currently occupies the position you want, which is useful and slightly uncomfortable. It is usually one or two people, and the reason is nearly always identifiable: they wrote something, they sit somewhere, or they were right about something checkable. Being right about something checkable is also the core of influence without authority exercises, which end in a written record.

7. The formal review read-across

Time. An hour, once.

Read whatever your organization writes down about how work is assessed. In many places this is a documented cycle with stated stages, in the way the federal service publishes its performance management cycle. Compare what it measures against the four sources of standing.

What it reveals. Where the formal system and the informal one disagree, which is nearly everywhere. That gap explains why people who score well are sometimes not consulted, and it tells you which of your efforts are being recorded and which are not.

8. The launch retrospective you write anyway

Time. An hour, after the next thing ships.

Write a short honest account of what happened, including the parts that went badly, whether or not anybody asked for one. A retrospective written by the person who says what actually happened becomes the document people open before the next launch.

What it reveals. Two things at once: it is an exercise and a technique. What you learn is how much of the account you are willing to make accurate, and the artifact does the rest of the work on its own.

The set together

Start with the tense count and the dull thing inventory. Together they take under an hour, one tells you where you stand and the other tells you what is available, and between them they decide whether the rest are urgent.

The four sources' origins are in workplace influence, and the moment-by-moment version is in workplace influence techniques. Spending what you build on a specific request is influence without authority, and if authority also arrives, the equivalent exercises differ and are in leadership influence.

The account written in exercise 8 is upward communication as much as a record. Its shape is covered in executive communication.

Common questions

The tense count needs messages. Most of my work is spoken.

Then keep a tally for two weeks instead, one mark per conversation. The ratio is what matters and it does not need a large sample; twenty conversations is enough to see which of the two piles is larger.

Writing predictions down feels like setting myself up.

It is, deliberately, and that is why it works. A prediction that cannot be wrong is worth nothing. Keep them narrow, keep them few, and say plainly when one fails, which costs far less than people expect and is most of what builds the record.

What if the consultation absence test names a friend?

Then ask them how they ended up in that position, which is a normal question between colleagues and usually gets a straight answer. It is also the fastest version of the whole exercise, because they know exactly which of the four sources they used.

Is the dull thing inventory not just volunteering for more work?

It is volunteering for specific work with a known return. Pick something with a defined end or a defined handover, do it visibly well, and hand it on after two quarters. The knowledge it gives you outlasts the job by a long way.

How long before any of this shows up?

The audits tell you where you are today. The changes they suggest take a quarter to show a first sign and about a year to compound, which is why starting with the cheapest two matters more than doing all eight.