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>How to influence another team to use your solution instead of writing their own Yeah I'd love to figure out how you do that. 99.9% of the time that is a cultu

>How to influence another team to use your solution instead of writing their own Yeah I'd love to figure out how you do that. 99.9% of the time that is a cultural and political problem that you aren't going to solve by being some incredibly persuasive engineer. Oh and management won't care enough to intervene. I think one of the things that a lot of these articles lack is something along the lines "Be clear about what you can acheive and what you can't". It doesn't matter how good your solution is, if the guy writing the replacement isn't receptive to advice that's fine, you've got better things to do.

Dove 5y ago
The ingredients to doing that, in my opinion, are: - Actually be right -- it really is to the other team's advantage to use your solution. - Find people on the other team receptive to the idea and talk to them. Informally, privately, in small meetings, and in large ones -- different settings will be appropriate in different social contexts. - Have a lot of social capital already. In this context, what this means is have a reputation for getting the other team recognition and making them successful, working with them when they want to do things their way, and going out of your way to help individuals with their own (unrelated) projects. - Put in all the work to make the advantage of your solution easy to see. Do the integration work for them, if you can. Set up a demo, if you can. Do the legwork, make the slides, do the research, solve their problems. Install it for them, if they'll let you! - Shut up about your part in their subsequent success. All you ever wanted was for them to succeed, and they made a smart call, and that's the important thing. At least that's the way I do it. :) I once saw an extreme master of the technique use it to convince an entire team of 50+ people including engineers and two layers of management to change an existing piece of infrastructure (our change control system) to something better. He did it by meeting privately with every individual touched by the process, explaining the advantages and the costs, getting individual buy-in from each one. He then put together a presentation outlining the change and held a big meeting to review the proposal -- with all the people he'd already talked to, who privately were behind the idea but thought nobody had the power to change it. Once everyone saw that everyone was in, it was a done deal. And that's how you solve impossible political problems. :)
- technofiend 5y ago
  To summarize your excellent examples: consensus building and having technical authority.
BeetleB 5y ago
> Yeah I'd love to figure out how you do that. 99.9% of the time that is a cultural and political problem that you aren't going to solve by being some incredibly persuasive engineer. You answered your own question: Get better in the social/political/psychological sphere. Handling/tackling cultural and political problems is sort of a prerequisite to being a senior engineer. :-) This is sort of "standard career advice". If you think going "political" is a betrayal of your values, then your thought process is part of the problem.

Dove 5y ago

The ingredients to doing that, in my opinion, are: - Actually be right -- it really is to the other team's advantage to use your solution. - Find people on the other team receptive to the idea and talk to them. Informally, privately, in small meetings, and in large ones -- different settings will be appropriate in different social contexts. - Have a lot of social capital already. In this context, what this means is have a reputation for getting the other team recognition and making them successful, working with them when they want to do things their way, and going out of your way to help individuals with their own (unrelated) projects. - Put in all the work to make the advantage of your solution easy to see. Do the integration work for them, if you can. Set up a demo, if you can. Do the legwork, make the slides, do the research, solve their problems. Install it for them, if they'll let you! - Shut up about your part in their subsequent success. All you ever wanted was for them to succeed, and they made a smart call, and that's the important thing. At least that's the way I do it. :) I once saw an extreme master of the technique use it to convince an entire team of 50+ people including engineers and two layers of management to change an existing piece of infrastructure (our change control system) to something better. He did it by meeting privately with every individual touched by the process, explaining the advantages and the costs, getting individual buy-in from each one. He then put together a presentation outlining the change and held a big meeting to review the proposal -- with all the people he'd already talked to, who privately were behind the idea but thought nobody had the power to change it. Once everyone saw that everyone was in, it was a done deal. And that's how you solve impossible political problems. :)

technofiend 5y ago
To summarize your excellent examples: consensus building and having technical authority.

BeetleB 5y ago

> Yeah I'd love to figure out how you do that. 99.9% of the time that is a cultural and political problem that you aren't going to solve by being some incredibly persuasive engineer. You answered your own question: Get better in the social/political/psychological sphere. Handling/tackling cultural and political problems is sort of a prerequisite to being a senior engineer. :-) This is sort of "standard career advice". If you think going "political" is a betrayal of your values, then your thought process is part of the problem.