Backers are approached in a chosen order, starting with those whose yes is easiest to win and most persuasive to the next person, so each endorsement makes the following one easier.
An example
Fourteen branches of a private-equity-backed facilities services company each ran their own billing, and the chief financial officer wanted one shared center. He needed four people: the head of the largest region, the head of the smallest, the chief information officer, and the operating partner from the fund, who would sign off on the cost. He worked out who listened to whom. The chief information officer had been asking for a single billing system for two years and would say yes quickly. The small region's head trusted the chief information officer on systems. The large region's head would not move without seeing a smaller region go first, and the operating partner would ask whether the regions were on board. He went in that order, and each conversation began with who had already agreed and why. The operating partner approved the budget on a twenty-minute call.
Why it works
Every endorsement gets easier to win, and the proposal looks better to each successive backer, because the people already on board are ones that backer respects or depends on. A yes from someone whose judgment carries weight answers questions before they are asked, and a later backer who sees support building takes a smaller risk in agreeing. Order matters as much as the people: start with someone hard to win, and an early refusal can travel ahead of you. Getting it right takes a good read of who defers to whom, and endorsements that are real.
The thinking behind it
James K. Sebenius In A Better Way to Negotiate: Backward (2004), Sebenius argues that the order in which parties are approached can decide whether a coalition forms, and advises studying who influences the hardest party and to whom that party defers. In his examples an early endorsement from a respected party raised the value of later approaches. The chief financial officer's chain of conversations, ending with the fund's operating partner, applies that advice directly.
David A. Lax 3-D Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals (2006), by Lax and Sebenius, describes backward mapping: start from the agreement you want and the party whose consent is hardest to get, map the parties and their interests, identify patterns of influence and deference, and decide which earlier agreements would make the final yes most likely. That yields the order of approach, which is why this tactic begins with a chart of who listens to whom.
When it fits
Decisions that need several people's agreement, where those people watch one another, are its ground: a set of division heads, a board with influential members, an investor and the managers it backs. Map who must say yes and who listens to whom, and allow enough time to hold the conversations one after another.
How to use it well
Draw the chain before you make the first call.
- List everyone whose agreement the decision needs, and next to each, the people whose views they weigh most.
- Find the easiest real yes that will persuade someone else, usually a natural supporter whose judgment is respected.
- Work outward along the chain, so each conversation can name someone the listener trusts who has already agreed, and why.
- Leave the hardest and most senior for when the people before them have already answered their questions.
Before each conversation, ask whether the person before has agreed to be named. Mentioning support without permission, or overstating it, is what turns a good sequence into a liability.
What it costs and where it backfires
Sequencing takes planning and time, and the people at the end may resent learning they were approached last. If one link refuses, the chain can break, and the refusal travels too. A sequence that looks too engineered can make later backers feel steered. Real endorsements, accurately described, keep it honest. The move ends where you tell someone that a colleague is on board when they have only listened, or keep a backer's real reservations from the next person in line.
When it is used on you
Approached for support with a list of who has already agreed, check with one or two of them directly: what did they agree to, and on what conditions? Decide on the substance, as if you were first. If you are senior and keep finding yourself last, tell the sponsors you want to be consulted earlier.