Invited to co-write the proposal itself, with real authorship and their changes adopted, a respected critic puts their name on the document that reaches the decision-makers.
An example
The vice president of operations at a three-hospital system wanted to move surgical scheduling from each campus to one central office. Her sharpest critic was the director of perioperative nursing at the largest campus, who had written a two-page memo on what centralization had broken at his previous hospital. Her reply to the memo was an invitation to co-write the proposal, with his name on the cover and a free hand on the staffing and escalation sections. He rewrote both. His version kept a charge nurse at each campus with authority to override the central schedule for same-day cases, and it pushed the start date from spring to after the summer vacation season. The vice president accepted every change. At the board's quality committee, he presented the staffing section himself and took the question about overrides. The committee approved the plan in one meeting.
Why it works
Because the person best placed to find its flaws has found and fixed them, the proposal looks better, and his name on it tells decision-makers the objections were heard. Approval gets easier too: the strongest counterargument has been answered inside the document, and a committee seldom overrules a critic who now stands behind the plan. Having written it, the critic also feels bound to defend it. None of it works unless the critic is respected, the authorship is real, and the sponsor will adopt changes that cost something.
The thinking behind it
John P. Kotter Choosing Strategies for Change (1979), by Kotter and Schlesinger, lists six ways to deal with resistance, among them participation and involvement, and separately manipulation and co-optation, each with its own costs. Co-authorship is participation in its fullest form: the critic helps design the change and so has less reason to resist it. The distinction between the two approaches also marks this tactic's line, since an invitation whose edits are ignored becomes co-optation, with the resentment that brings.
Robert B. Cialdini Influence (1984) describes commitment and consistency: once people have taken a position, especially a public or written one, they feel pressure to act in line with it. A critic whose name is on the cover and who presented a section to the committee has taken about the most public and written position there is. That is why co-authors go on to defend the plan, and why the authorship has to be real for the commitment to hold.
When it fits
Reach for it when a proposal has a credible critic whose objections have substance, and you can afford real changes to scope, timing, or design. It suits plans that need the trust of a professional group the critic speaks for. Leave enough time before the decision for a genuine rewrite, and be sure you have the authority to accept what the co-author changes. Critics who object to the goal itself make poor co-authors.
How to use it well
Make the offer real before you make it at all, because the critic will test it.
- Pick the critic whose objections are specific and whose name carries weight with the people who will decide.
- Ask early, while the draft can still change, and say exactly what you are offering: named authorship and ownership of named sections.
- Adopt their changes, including ones you dislike, unless one breaks the core of the plan. If it does, tell them which and why before the draft circulates.
- Let them present their sections to the decision-makers.
Afterward, keep them in the implementation with a say in how their sections are carried out. A co-author who is dropped once the vote is won will remember, and so will everyone who watched.
What it costs and where it backfires
You give up control of the document and some of what you wanted, and the plan may take longer. The co-author's standing rises with the result, so the credit is shared. If the authorship turns out to be cosmetic, with edits ignored and the name used as cover, the critic will say so in public and the opposition returns stronger than before. Everything rests on the changes being real; an invitation that only borrows a name is token inclusion.
When it is used on you
Being invited as the critic, ask for specifics before you agree: which sections are yours, whether your changes will be adopted, and whether your name goes on the final version only after you have read it. Keep your own copy of each draft. If your edits are dropped without discussion, withdraw your name before the decision meeting and tell the decision-makers why.