An executive seeking approval works out who really shapes the decision, such as former executives on the board or the chief executive's informal advisors, and makes the case to them too.
An example
Three weeks into the job, the new head of strategy at a privately held packaging manufacturer had a forty-million-dollar proposal for a recycled-fiber line and a meeting with the chief financial officer, who formally owned capital requests. She asked everyone she met who else the chief executive listened to on big bets. Four people named the same two directors: a retired chief operating officer who had built the company's last plant, and a former chief financial officer who still lunched with the chief executive every month. She asked each of them for an hour. The retired operator told her the last plant had run thirty percent over budget because of permitting, and she rebuilt the timeline around that. When the proposal reached the board, both directors spoke for it, and the chief financial officer, who had seen every revision, presented the numbers.
Why it works
Mapping tells you where to make the case. Aimed at the people whose views move the decision, the case can be shaped around what they value, so the plan looks better to them and approving it looks easier. Their early objections show where the alternatives are strong and what backing your plan would cost, which you can answer before the formal review instead of during it. A case aimed only at the formal owners often misses the people the chief executive calls afterward. It depends on informal influence being real, stable enough to map, and reachable by someone new.
The thinking behind it
Jeffrey Pfeffer Jeffrey Pfeffer's Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations (1992) argues that getting things done requires diagnosing who has power, where it comes from, and whose support is needed, then building and using power deliberately. Power structure mapping is that diagnosis applied to one decision. His argument is also the case for doing it openly: managers who never map influence lose decisions to those who do.
Mark Granovetter Mark Granovetter's The Strength of Weak Ties (1973) shows that acquaintances spanning separate groups carry new information more than close friends do. Asking everyone you meet who else the chief executive listens to draws on exactly those ties, and the names that recur across separate conversations mark the real map. A newcomer's acquaintances often know more about informal influence than the org chart shows.
Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972) describes symbolic capital, the prestige and recognition that work as a resource because others acknowledge them as legitimate. Former executives on a board often hold symbolic capital well beyond their formal role, earned from the plants they built and the calls they got right. It explains why their views move a chief executive, and why a proposal should reach them early.
When it fits
You need it when a decision is large, the formal approval path is clear on paper, and you are new enough or far enough from the top that you cannot yet tell whose views carry. It costs mostly time and a willingness to ask plain questions. It matters most where former executives, long-serving directors, or close advisors to the chief executive still carry weight.
How to use it well
Ask before you pitch. In your first conversations, ask each person who else the decision-maker listens to on this kind of question, and keep a list; the names that recur are your map.
- Request time with the informal shapers, say why you are asking, and listen more than you present.
- Build their strongest objections into the proposal before it goes to the formal owners.
- Keep the formal owners informed of every such conversation. You are adding voices, and the owners should never feel routed around.
- Ask the informal advisors to give their views inside the formal review, where their support is on the record.
Redraw the map for each major decision, since influence shifts with the topic and over time.
What it costs and where it backfires
Asking who else matters takes time and signals that you know the formal chart is incomplete, which some owners resent. Informal advisors may want something in return for their support. If formal owners learn of the conversations late, they will feel bypassed and may oppose you on principle. Done cleanly, the move widens the conversation and still takes the decision through the people accountable for it. Once you use the informal channel to get a decision made behind the formal owners' backs, it has turned into an end-run, and you will pay for it at the next approval.
When it is used on you
Formal owners who find appeals routed around them to people off the org chart, usually after someone has asked several times who else must be consulted, gain little by fighting the advisors. Write down who holds which decision right, ask the informal advisors to give their views inside your formal review, and record each decision against the named approver.