Learning Skills for Systems Navigation

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Learning Skills for Systems Navigation
Organizational Culture

• LT Jonathan D. White, Ph.D., MSW, LCSW-C
• National Institutes of Health Clinical Center
• Social Work Department

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Disclaimer

• Views expressed in this presentation are the
  presenters and are not represented as official
  positions of the U.S. Public Health Service
  Commissioned Corps, the National Institutes of
  Health, the Commissioned Officers
  Association/Commissioned Officers Foundation,
  the HS-PAC, Marriott Hotel Group, or the good
  people of the city of Atlanta, Georgia.

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In training HSOs to lead
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Are we leaving out a crucial detail?

• The conventional wisdom in providing supervision
  to students and mentoring to junior colleagues is
  to insulate them from office politics.

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Learning Organizational Culture
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Organizational Culture

• Organizational culture shock is a chronic reality
  in the working lives of many USPHS officers.
• An HSO, in the course of her career, may have to
  navigate in organizational cultures as disparate
  as Federal civilian bureaucracies, the
  corrections system, branches of the armed forces,
  state and municipal governments, and Tribal
  governments.

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Key Questions

• What is this organizations missionand what are
  its cultural imperatives?
• What is the currency of power in the
  organization?
• Who has the ability to bring about the outcome I
  am looking for?

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Isnt office politics a gift some people have
and others dont?

• No.
• The ability to analyze an organizational culture
  and
• operate effectively within it is not a gift or
  talent it
• is a concrete set of teachable professional
  skills.

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Skills to Cultivate

• Analyzing an organizations culture
• Power mapping
• Suasion
• Negotiation
• Leverage
• Self-promotion
• Customer service

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Claiming Power
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What is Power?

• Power is the capacity of producing
• intended effects.
• Bertrand Russell

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Power vs. Authority

• Authority is the official, formal scope of
  decision-making and influence assigned to a given
  employee by the structure of the agency.
• Power is a multi-faceted capacity of producing
  intended effects that HSOs create for themselves
  by engaging with the politics and culture of the
  agency and surrounding system.
• Authority can be used to create power, but so can
  effective systems navigation and use of self.

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Tactics for Systems Navigation
More Manipulative
More Coercive
Negotiation
Leverage
Suasion
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Suasion

• You attempt to achieve your goal by
• Asking the Target to take an action by appealing
  to the Targets interests and values.
• Also known as Selling It, Pitching It,
  The Gentle Art of Persuasion

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Effective Suasion

• The three most critical issues determining the
  effectiveness of the suasion tactic are
• The credibility of the one doing the suasion
• The goodness of fit of the suasion with the
  self-perceived interests and actual values of the
  target
• The potential for risk or loss to be sustained by
  the target in acceding to suasion.

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Negotiation

• You attempt to achieve your goal by
• Arriving at a consensual agreement with the
  Target to mutually realize your and the Targets
  divergent interests and goals.
• Also known as You Scratch My Back, Ill Scratch
  Yours, Lets Make A Deal and Playing Ball

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Basics of Interest-based Negotiation

• Dont Bargain Over Positions
• Separate the People from the Problem
• Focus on Interests, Not Positions
• Invent Options for Mutual Gain
• Insist on Using Objective Criteria
• (Fisher Ury, 1981)

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Leverage

• You attempt to achieve your goal by
• Applying power to the Targets vulnerabilities
  with the intent to cause distress until the
  Target complies with your demand.
• Also known as Twisting Someones Arm and
  Playing Hardball

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Leverage is powerif done correctly

• Its not enough to twist an arm. You have to
  twist it in a sensitive spot, so it really hurts.
  
• Its called leverage for a reason. Dont get
  caught in a contest of brute strength only,
  because the other person might have stronger
  arms.
• Leverage works immediately, or not at all. Once
  youve got hold of the arm, dont let go til you
  get what you want.

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The ABCDs of Systems Navigation

• Build maintain ALLIANCES.
• Pick your own BATTLESand the place and time of
  battle as well.
• Anyone youre not actively trying to CRUSH, you
  must actively try to CULTIVATE.
• When a customer needs something from you, DELIVER.