An Engineer's Guide to Influence (Part Two)
Six concrete tips on how to turn your ideas into reality
Welcome back! We recently crossed 5100+ subscribers (!!). This week, we're continuing our series on An Engineer's Guide to Influence.
Influence is necessary as you level up and work with more teams and cross-functional partners. It helps you turn your idea into reality. But it's often not clear. If you haven't read the first half, check it out here.
In today's piece, I will outline the last three key tips for you on how I achieve influence.
Here's my six tips, including this week's three:
Understand your stakeholders' goals.
Build private consensus.
Make your case using the SCQA framework.
Go big on marketing.
Harness consistency.
If not today, plan for next time.
Tip 4: Go big on marketing.
If you've gotten alignment from using the SCQA method in Tip 3, it's time to go big on marketing.
To do that, you need to inform the rest of the company of what you're up to.
Post on your internal chats, groups, and emails. I like to get the word out by
Announcing a kickoff through meetings, emails and posts
Sharing weekly updates, and
Leveraging your teammates to evangelize your project
I also like to codename a project so that it's memorable. Stick to one that has two syllables or fewer. For instance, call your initiative Project Radiance. This will help people quickly label the project and associate Project Radiance with you. Here's a list of codenames.
Why go big on marketing? There are two key reasons:
Social Proof: People tend to follow the crowd. If colleagues see that others have embraced your idea, they’ll be more inclined to join you.
A hospital study showed that one of the most persuasive messages to get visitors to wash their hands was "Our hospital visitors regularly disinfect their hands. Please disinfect yours!".
Scarcity: If your project affects more than just the key stakeholders, you can emphasize what other teams might stand to lose if they don't adopt your proposal.
Studies have shown that scarcity has a strong persuasive effect. You want to be clear that your offer is for a limited time and in short supply. This will rapidly increase the attractiveness of your proposal.
For instance, if you're encouraging teams to migrate to a new framework, say:
"We will extend support for Framework X for only three more months. Teams Comet and Diaspora have already migrated and shown 50% less failures. Four spots left for this year. Reach out to us by this Friday if you want to have guided onboarding.”
Tip 5: Harness consistency.
One of the most powerful tools for future alignment is to invoke consistency with past commitments. Studies have shown that people have a strong inner drive to appear consistent in their beliefs and actions.
How do you harness this consistency technique to influence others?
Start small: Make small asks. Get your foot in the door. If a stakeholder has ever indicated support for your general approach or acknowledged a shared goal (remember who your stakeholders are from Tip 1?), referencing that can significantly increase their buy-in.
✅ Example: You're hoping to leverage the Web team by building a web version of your checkout feature. First ask: “Would it be useful if mobile checkout features were more aligned with your web roadmap?”
Once they nod yes, you’ve established a baseline of agreement. In a follow-up meeting, remind them of this answer. When you talk about resourcing, they’ll feel more inclined to stay consistent with their earlier answer, and might end up lending resources to help.
Remind them of a previous successful partnership: Because people enjoy consistency, if you or your team has proven yourself, leverage that to your advantage. By pointing back to past successes, you’re nudging them to think, “We worked well together before, so of course we should support this again.”
✅ Example: “Remember when we partnered on the payments migration last year? We hit every milestone, and your team’s goals were met ahead of schedule. This new proposal builds on that same collaboration model.”
Tip 6: If not today, plan for next time.
One time, a relationship that I'd been trying to build took me multiple years to land. We courted them over dinner, played to their pain points, but I was still ultimately rejected.
Failure will happen. You might have utilized every tip in this guide, devoured books on influence, and still fail to convince someone. It is important not to get discouraged, but instead use this to your advantage.
Learn from what went well, and what could go better. There are two steps that I usually take here when I fail:
Utilize the if/when/then method: If or when X happens, I should take Y action. These are designed to help get us ready by registering certain cues and then associating these cues with the actions we want to take.
For instance, if your discussion didn't work out today, this should be your internal monologue:
✅ Next half, two weeks before planning begins, I want to reach out to the payments platform team. When I reached out this year, post-roadmapping season, their roadmap had already been locked in.
Leverage unity: Show up as a partner. Robert Cialdini mentions that people are much more likely to say yes to those whom they consider “one of us.” Keep tabs on what that team is working on. Attend each other's offsites. Understand their goals and roadmaps and how they change.
✅ Even though my pitch didn't work out this time, I'm going to stay abreast of the infra team's roadmap. I'll keep tabs on their updates and continue to meet regularly with the managers. Hopefully, this shows that I am genuinely interested in helping them.
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TLDR:
To summarize all six tips in my Engineer's Guide to Influence:
Understand your stakeholders' goals: Make sure your project caters to their needs.
Build private consensus: Understand concerns before large meetings.
Make your case using the SCQA framework: Structure your ask well.
Go big on marketing: Leverage social proof and scarcity to get the word out.
Harness consistency: Start small. Get your foot in the door, and then remind them of previous commitments.
If not today, plan for next time. Sometimes, plans don't work out. But you can continue investing in your future influence.
If you're interested in further reading, I highly recommend Robert Cialdini's books on Influence and Pre-suasion, which inspired a lot of this post and how I influence at work.
How do you practice influence at work?