Exercise 8: Reading the Room, and Being Heard in It

What you are producing

The largest exercise in the workbook — about 5.5 hours — because it carries the whole arc from reading the organisation to getting a decision through it.

Seven artifacts for Lintel, in two groups:

Reading and positioning — an organisational analysis · a stakeholder influence map · an antipattern assessment · a positioning statement

Justifying and selling — a decision justification pack · three one-page framings · a ten-slide architecture pitch

Do the first group before the second

The justification pack is addressed to people the influence map identifies, and the pitch answers an objection the antipattern assessment locates. Written in the other order, the second group is generic — which is the single most common way this work fails.

Before you start

Find your Exercise 1 stakeholder map — the v0 you were told would be corrected — plus Exercise 4’s stack selection and the findings from Exercises 6 and 7. The pitch rests on specifics: the cost target that does not close, the regression trigger that sat inside the noise floor.

Group one — reading and positioning

1. Organisational analysis. Structure, culture type, and the observable evidence for your reading. Cite named occasions, not impressions — the discipline is that someone who disagrees could check what you cite.

2. Stakeholder influence map. Revise Exercise 1’s naive version. Separate formal authority from informal power, and name both: the compliance owner’s block is formal, the principal engineer’s veto is not, and the second is harder to work with precisely because it appears nowhere.

3. Antipattern assessment. Centred on the prior failure. What happened, what was absent, and — the part that matters — how it will shape the reception of your proposal before you have said anything.

4. Positioning statement. How you intend to build a remit when you were given none. Concrete enough that someone else could execute it, including the class of decisions you deliberately concede.

Group two — justifying and selling

Justification pack

For Exercise 4’s stack selection.

• Criteria fixed before options are scored, and visibly so — dated, or written where the order is evident
• Options scored against those criteria, with the evidence in each cell
• At least two rejected options with the criterion that killed each, and the condition that would reopen it
• Uncertainty stated rather than smoothed over

Three framings

The same decision, one page each, for the budget holder, the engineering owner and the compliance owner.

They must differ in substance, not tone. Each should omit something another leads with. If all three could be merged without loss, you have written one document three times.

The pitch

Ten slides to leadership.

• Opens with the business problem in business units — no technology named on slide one
• The prior-failure objection answered on slide three, before anyone raises it
• One diagram, and it has a lifespan of this meeting
• Says what you are asking for, by when, and who decides

Rubric

1. Culture cites evidenceNamed occasions, not vibes.

2. Formal and informal power both namedThe map separates authority from influence.

3. The prior failure is an active constraintA named mechanism exists because of it — not a history note.

4. Positioning is executableA plan someone else could carry out, not an aspiration.

5. Position distinguished from interestFor at least one stakeholder.

6. Conway applied to real teamsNamed boundaries, with predictions.

7. Criteria fixed before scoring, visiblyThe ordering is evident in the artifact.

8. Two real rejectionsEach with its killing criterion and reopening condition.

9. Framings differ in substanceEach omits what another leads with.

10. No technology on slide oneAnd the 2023 objection answered by slide three.

Self-check

• Does your culture classification rest on occasions someone could verify?
• Does the influence map name anyone whose power appears on no org chart?
• Is there a mechanism in your proposal that exists because of the prior failure?
• Could a colleague execute your positioning statement without asking you what you meant?
• Did you distinguish at least one stakeholder’s stated position from their actual interest?
• Is it visible in the pack that criteria preceded scoring?
• Do your rejected options include the condition that would reopen each?
• Could your three framings be merged without losing anything? If so, rewrite them.
• Does slide one name a technology? Does slide three answer 2023?
• Is your uncertainty stated anywhere, or did it get smoothed out?

Check your understanding

Return to the questions from the start of the module.

1. Who in an organisation you know could stop a cross-team decision without the authority to? Has your answer got more specific?
2. What happens there when someone brings bad news? What does that imply about which mechanisms you would need?
3. Your pitch goes badly and the room decides against you. Write the two sentences you would say before leaving.
4. Module 9 turns individual decisions into a practice the organisation can run without you. Which of these seven artifacts would you most want to become a template?

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→ The decision has a route to agreement. Next, a practice that keeps working when you are gone. — Exercise 9, after reading Handbook Module 9.