Being near the decision-maker, in the meetings, and early in each discussion lets your positions arrive through the channel the executive trusts most, and makes rivals work harder to be heard.
An example
With a decision due in June on how to bid its next hospital job, the chief executive of a commercial builder had two proposals in front of him, and the project director who favored prefabricated modules worked from a field office two hours away. In April she moved her desk to the headquarters floor, three doors from his. She came to the weekly operations meeting, where she had no agenda item, and spoke first on the bid each time, briefly, with a cost comparison she updated every week. She was at the coffee bar on Tuesday mornings when he arrived. The director who favored the traditional approach worked from his job site and booked formal time. When he got his hour, the chief executive had already read four of her updates. The modular approach won.
Why it works
Steady presence near the decision-maker reads as loyalty, reliability, and shared awareness, so your positions carry a credibility premium. Speaking early compresses the airtime in which a rival's framing can land, so their position arrives late and under time pressure. Being in the doorway raises the friction for any rival who has to schedule formal time to reach the same person. It works when the decision-maker has discretionary, informal decision rights, when presence is observable, when rivals are remote or busier, and when nothing in the culture discourages drop-in attendance.
The thinking behind it
Erving Goffman Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956) treats social life as performance before an audience in a front region. Constant presence near the decision-maker is a sustained performance of loyalty and reliability for an audience of one, and positions delivered in that setting borrow its credibility. The performance has to carry content, or the audience starts to see only the performance.
Daniel Kahneman Tversky and Kahneman's Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (1974) describes anchoring, where estimates adjust from a starting value and the adjustment is usually too small, and availability, where what comes easily to mind seems more likely. Speaking first sets the anchor for the discussion, and short weekly updates keep your case the one that comes to mind when the decision is made.
Jeffrey Pfeffer Pfeffer's Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations (1992) argues that getting decisions carried out requires diagnosing who has power and whose support is needed, then building and using power deliberately. Presence is one of the plainest forms of that work: access to the decision-maker during the window when a decision takes shape.
When it fits
Informal decisions suit it best: the decision is discretionary, the decision-maker is reachable in person, and your rivals are remote, located elsewhere, or busier. You need a position worth hearing, time to spend in the room, and something substantive to say each time you are there.
How to use it well
Go where the decision is made, and bring something each time.
- Put yourself near the decision-maker during the window when the decision forms: a desk on the floor, attendance at the recurring meetings, availability for the minute before and after.
- Speak early and briefly, with substance: a fact, a number, an update. Going first frames the question.
- Keep a running written update the decision-maker can read in two minutes, so your presence has content behind it.
- Ask for the decision-maker's concerns in person and answer them the same week.
Step back once the decision is made. Presence that continues afterward, or that has nothing to say, starts to read as not doing real work.
What it costs and where it backfires
Time in the room is time away from the work, and once the decision-maker notices, being seen everywhere reads as not doing real work. A decision-maker who insists on agenda-driven meetings and written input will discount it. Overused, it earns you a reputation as a hallway operator. Access is where the clean form stops: once you stand between the executive and your rivals, misroute their requests, or keep them out of meetings they belong in, you are blocking access, and colleagues will remember it long after the decision.
When it is used on you
Answer a rival who is winning on presence by putting your positions in writing ahead of each decision, and ask the decision-maker for asynchronous steps: a written round, a deadline for input, a formal decision meeting with an agenda. Show up in the forums that matter, briefly and with substance. Check whether you have been underweighting presence, since people who do lose decisions they should win on merit.