Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas. Now available in Kindle e-book. The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in the current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others. College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers.
In my book, I talk a great deal about the chasm between the technology wizard and the decision maker. The wizard likes to stay in the laboratory, stare at the computer, and massage the controls of a favorite machine. The decision maker is not so. If you plan to persuade decision makers, you must enter their world. When in Rome …
The Harvard Law School and the London School of Economics analyzed the daily schedules of 65 Chief Executive Officers (CEO) to measure how they spent their work week. The study found that, on the average, CEO’s work about 55 hours a week. There is an equivalent set of technologists who also work 55 hours a week. So, in that respect, the two might not be so different.
Once we categorize what the two sets do with those 55 hours, we quickly spot the differences. In the study, the CEO’s exhausted over 33% of their entire work week in meetings. Since CEO’s are in control of their own time and actually schedule those meetings, one must conclude they consider them a primary engine of their enterprise. In contrast, technologists generally feel that every minute spent in a meeting is a minute wasted.
CEO’s conduct much of their business over informal lunches and meals, about 10% of their work week. At these meals, they make decisions, exchange information, and network. By comparison, technologists also work during lunch, generally attacking a burger or quietly reducing the contents of a brown bag. Their work is staring at a machine or clicking the keys of a computer. Both sets are working during the meal, the decision makers and technologists, but their tasks are different.
CEO’s spend about 10% of each week on the phone. My experience is that technologists do similarly, networking with someone, connecting to get information, but generally do this with digits rather than by voice. I would estimate that technologists spend closer to 30% networking with counterparts.
About 4% of the CEO’s time is spent making public appearances. This is no counterpart to this for the technologist.
Some 36% of the CEO work week is spent in travel, personal appointments, and other short segments that add up to a large number of hours, but are not calendar-scheduled. Technologist may not travel as much, but their time also is eaten up by unproductive segments that accumulate.
Only 11% of the CEO work week was spent working alone. Contrast this to many technologist who spend almost all their hours working with their closest friend, that is, a computer or a machine of some sorts, maybe pencil and paper.
This data was collected for CEO’s, but it applies to almost all managers, regardless of level. In spite of that, most technologists will read the above and say, “So, what?”
Here’s what. If you want to persuade decision makers, enact the following:
1. Decision makers consider meetings their prime method of information gathering and decision making. Your occasional meeting with one must gain in priority with you. You must elevate those opportunities to the top tier of your thinking.
a.) So, stop commenting to your fellow wizards about how meetings waste time, get nothing done, etc, etc. This only sets you up as someone who does not understand the real world (and you do not). Understand that the walls have ears. Your attitude will be broadcast to every decision maker in your chain of command. They will label you naive, immature, and not a team player. All of which dissolves your powers of persuasion.
b.) Make the most of the meetings you hate. Observe people. Learn something that will help you in your business. Contribute. Learn to add, not subtract, multiply, not divide.
2. Executives spend little time in private contemplation. If you want to get their attention and persuade them, do NOT send an email or other written correspondence, which is easily misconstrued, and more often than not, misinterpreted.
a.) Technologists are particularly inept at wording effective emails and memoranda. Their attempts are usually missiles of self-destruction. Schedule face time with a decision maker and put time and effort into properly making your case. Executives and managers do not like their own words in print so they are loathe to respond with text. You consider texting essential – see the mismatch?
b.) I had one technology director whom I forbade to write ANY emails after 6:00 PM. She was a wonderful, aggressive director, but by the end of the day her emails were nuclear bombs; it would require half the next day to repair the damage.
c.) Learn to be personable and do things, in person. Yes, it takes longer and is more difficult. HOWEVER, it gets you the positive results you seek.
Persuasion is a skill you acquire with much effort, but your effort needs to be directed.
Contact: lgivens@thepersuasivewizard.com