An Engineer's Guide to Influence (Part One)

How to turn your ideas into reality – even without authority

Coming up with ideas and writing them down won’t turn them into life.

You need to refine the idea, discuss it, share it widely, gather stakeholders, and then finally implement it. And wait, you have to share it again. Did I already mention that?

This process is messy, especially when you need others to buy in. In other words, this is also known as influence.

Influence is required as you level up and work with more teams and cross-functional partners. Getting one person on board is simple. Getting everyone to stay consistent and aligned? That’s the real challenge.

There isn’t a perfect playbook for influence, but I’ve spent over a decade refining a method that’s helped me influence top decisions at Meta and Lyft.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll share my six core tips to influence:

1. Understand your stakeholders' goals.

2. Build consensus privately.

3. Make your case using the SCQA framework.

4. Coming next week

5. Coming next week

6. Coming next week

Today's article will cover the first three: understanding stakeholders' goals, building private consensus, and leveraging the Minto Pyramid.

Tip 1: Understand your stakeholders' goals

The first tip to influence: Knowing and understanding your stakeholders.

What are their goals and key objectives? What’s urgent for them? How fast are they trying to achieve these? Aligning with these multiple stakeholders is crucial, especially as seen in these studies.

At the core of this is a key question that you should keep asking yourself: How can I help them?

Dr Robert Cialdini, author of the bestseller Influence, calls this reciprocity. People are obliged to give back to others in the form of a behavior, gift, or service that they have received first. If you want something from others, you have to first give.

Here are four key questions to ask your stakeholders:

1. What is your team's roadmap for this / next half?

2. What are the biggest challenges or blockers you’re facing right now?

3. Which metrics or outcomes are you being measured on?

4. Who else do you need to align with to succeed?

As they answer, listen carefully for collaboration opportunities. Does your project make their work simpler? Can it help them hit a metric they care about? Can you connect something your team is already doing or wants to do with their priorities?

If you find a natural fit, bring it up:

“I've been thinking about Project X. Seems like it might help your team increase revenue, which you referenced as a goal earlier. What do you think? Would you support it?”

Remember: The goal of these questions is to understand your stakeholders better. So when it comes time to pitch your idea, your stakeholders see it as helping them too.

Tip 2: Build consensus privately

This is my favorite tip – but also the most time-consuming. Build consensus privately.

At Toyota, engineers spend 3x more time consulting every stakeholder before they begin implementation. They call this process Nemawashi, or literally "going around the roots" to build consensus.

But why even do this? The idea is simple: get alignment in private before you ever walk into a big review meeting.

By practicing Nemawashi, you create safe spaces. Your stakeholders can voice private concerns or doubts without the pressure of public embarrassment. It's also a chance for both of you to negotiate how the project should be shaped.

But be careful: do not take in everyone's feedback. Not all opinions matter equally. This is where identifying your stakeholders is most important. You don't want this to take forever, nor is it easy to incorporate everyone's feedback. Time-box these 1:1 meetings, 30 minutes or less.

Here’s my usual flow in these private meetings:

1. Introduce what the project is and why I'm advocating for it.

2. Connect it to my previous understanding of their team’s goals.

3. Probe gently to see how they feel.

Some questions to figure out how they feel:

1. What are your thoughts on this project? (See where they land)

2. Any concerns if we go ahead with this, as is? (Hear out their doubts)

3. What would help make this proposal stronger from your perspective? (Gather support and alignment)

If you end up incorporating their feedback, go one step further. In a large review meeting, call it out:

“This idea came from [Stakeholder’s name]."

This does two positive things:

1. It shows social proof that others have vetted this proposal, and

2. It strengthens your relationship with this partner since you gave them credit in front of a large group.

Tip 3: Use the SCQA Method

Once you're done building consensus privately, it's time to bring it to a larger review meeting.

I'm sure you've sat through large reviews where the ask isn't clear. The presenter spends 10 minutes summarizing and presenting diagrams. Everyone’s already super checked out.

Here's a better way: the SCQA method.

It’s a simple way to cut through the noise and make sure your message lands. Invented by Barbara Minto (creator of the Minto Pyramid), the SCQA method is one of the most widely used frameworks for executive communication at consulting and Fortune 500 companies.

The SCQA Method

• Situation – What’s the current context?

• Complication – What’s the challenge, tension, or problem?

• Question – What do we need to solve or decide?

• Answer – What’s the recommendation or next step?

Let's run through an example. Imagine you’re the TL of the monitoring team and you're thinking of using Vendor X's solution.

Instead of saying:

❌ Without SCQA:
“Our system has lots of problems, and engineers are frustrated. But I don't think we've got a good handle on it. We've been throwing so many solutions at the wall, but nothing sticks. Both Vendor X or Y have shown promising solutions too that we should consider.”

Did you catch the proposal? It's hard to grasp what's going on.

Now, let's try applying the SCQA method:

✅ With SCQA:
Our current monitoring system is outdated. (Situation)
Engineers waste hours debugging because of missing alerts, and outages cost us $100k annually. (Complication)
How do we reduce downtime and improve reliability? (Question)
We should adopt Vendor X. It’s reliable, cost-effective (saves us $100k), and our engineers already know how to use it. (Answer)

Notice the difference? In the first version, your ask is not clear. There's no good storytelling, and it's easy to get lost.

In the SCQA version, the audience knows the problem, the decision point, and your recommendation.

Let's practice with a second example. Say you're trying to get your entire team to adopt agile methodology and sprints.

Instead of saying:

❌ “I think what we've been doing isn't too great. We are stuck in endless loops during standups, and development cycles are going on for too long. Has anyone tried this sprint process in their previous company? I heard it might work.

This doesn't show clear thinking or conviction about your proposal. Try this:

✅ We meet often, but we're still missing our ship goals. (Situation)
We're not communicating well, and often not on the same page. Our feedback loops are often too long. (Complication)
How can we shorten our iteration cycle? (Question)
We should try sprints. It's been proven to work well in other companies – leading to increased efficiency and productivity. (Answer)

See how much clearer this is? We're able to organize our thoughts and structure them in a way that makes it easy for the audience to comprehend.

Give it a shot the next time you make an ask, and let me know how it went in the comments.

TLDR:

That's the end of Part 1 of my guide to influence. To summarize the first three steps:

1. Understand your stakeholders' goals: Make sure your project caters to their needs.

2. Build private consensus: Understand concerns before large meetings.

3. Make your case using the SCQA framework: Structure your ask well.

Next week, we'll share the second part of this engineer's guide to influence. Stay tuned!