Volunteering for the uncertainty the organization fears most, such as a failing system or a regulatory deadline, and handling it gives a manager's unit influence no one else can supply.
An example
Ten months was the deadline an aviation regulator gave a regional airline to inspect a wing component across its fleet, and the summer peak meant no aircraft could be grounded for it. The heads of engineering and operations each said the other should own the problem. The manager of maintenance planning volunteered. Her team built a schedule that tied the inspections to existing overnight checks, arranged parts with a repair station, and reported weekly to the chief operating officer. The fleet met the deadline with two weeks to spare and no summer cancellations. Over the following year, the planning group was consulted on every schedule change, fleet decision, and maintenance contract, and when the airline set up a fleet strategy committee, she was given a seat on it.
Why it works
Power inside an organization goes to the units that cope with its most critical uncertainty, especially when they are hard to replace and central to the work. A unit that takes on the problem everyone fears, and handles it, becomes the one others depend on, so its views look better on everything near that problem, and that dependence turns into influence. It depends on the problem mattering, on the unit actually coping with it, and on the result being visible to the people who decide.
The thinking behind it
David J. Hickson A Strategic Contingencies' Theory of Intraorganizational Power (1971), by Hickson and colleagues, holds that a subunit's power rises with its capacity to cope with uncertainty for others, its nonsubstitutability, and its centrality in the workflow, each necessary and none sufficient alone. A planning group that solved the fleet inspection deadline coped with the airline's most pressing uncertainty, from a central position, and became hard to bypass afterward.
Michel Crozier The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (1964) argues that where rules fix most outcomes, people gain power by controlling the zones of uncertainty that remain; in the factory Crozier studied, the maintenance men who alone could fix breakdowns held real power. The lesson for this page is double: owning the uncertainty brings influence, and hoarding the know-how is how that influence turns against the company.
Gerald R. Salancik Salancik and Pfeffer's Who Gets Power, and How They Hold On to It: A Strategic-Contingency Model of Power (1977) argues that power inside an organization goes to the subunits and people who can cope with its critical problems, as a legal department gains power when lawsuits arrive. Volunteering for the inspection deadline put the planning group in that role.
When it fits
Managers with the skills and capacity to take on a problem others are avoiding can use it: a failing system, a regulatory deadline, a customer crisis, a technical risk. You need the competence to succeed, the capacity to absorb the work, and the backing to get resources.
How to use it well
Find the uncertainty the organization fears most and that nobody wants to own.
- Make sure your unit can really handle it; failing in public costs more than not volunteering.
- Volunteer openly, with a plan and the resources you will need.
- Agree at the start what success looks like, by when, and what authority you need to cross unit lines.
- Report progress regularly to the executive who cares most.
- Deliver, and document how.
Keep the know-how written down and shared. Influence that rests on hoarding it does not last, and it hurts the company.
What it costs and where it backfires
Failure is the main risk, since a hard problem can sink the unit that volunteers. Success can also bring more hard problems than you have staff for, and others may resent the influence you gain. The clean form ends where you keep the problem unsolved, or the solution secret, to stay indispensable.
When it is used on you
Credit another unit that gains influence by handling a problem you avoided, and learn from how it did it. If its influence spreads beyond its competence, raise that specifically. The stronger answer is to take on the next hard problem yourself.