The Politics of Design

Almost everything you do as an architect is "selling".   Through your influence, you are selling executive management on architectural strategies and developers on architectural approaches.  You are convincing project managers that your approach is the right one, and business managers that the solution will meet his requirements.  All the fancy design artifacts serve the design need, but for many stakeholders, they are simply marketing collateral.

Sales is a numbers game.  A percentage of the people are going to buy what you are peddling, so reaching out to more folks is the key to increasing your sales.  Every sales presentation has a limited amount of time, and it's tough to touch all of the folks, so you need a strategy.  What's your approach?  When you leave an architectural presentation, how do you make sure that the largest number of people are bought in? 

It doesn't matter what or how you sell...

It really doesn't matter what you are trying to propose.  It might be an approach for a new system.  It might be a process change.  It might be the roll out of a new development framework.  Sooner or later, you have to sell it to your whole organization.  This might be done in small groups at a time.  It may be one on one conversations with each stakeholder.   On the rare occasion, it might be a the grand presentation complete with slides and handouts.  In each case, you need to assess your audience and understand its make up.

There are 3 subsets of people in your audience, and interestingly enough, selling to two of them is a complete waste of your time and energy.

It matters "Who" you sell...

About 20% of your audience is already bought in.  Selling to the "Believers" feels good.  When you're making eye contact with them, they're nodding.  They're sitting in the front row.  They're receptive and it's actually fun to sell to them.  They get it, and they're willing to add the enthusiastic "Hallelujah!  Amen, brother!" responses at all the appropriate intervals.  If you spend time selling to them, you are not moving the needle at all.  They're sold, and any further selling to them is only just reinforcing your ego, and wasting everybody's time.

Another 20% of your audience are the "Non-believers".  They have their arms crossed.  They look like they want to be somewhere else, and on occasion they may even roll their eyes at your presentation.  No matter if you're the most dynamic salesman with the most compelling story ever told, they are simply not going to buy it.  It is easy to be trapped into thinking that if you can sell them, you can sell everyone.  Concentrating on cracking these hard shells is a challenge and if you believe in your proposal, it's difficult to ignore it.  You want them to believe so bad!  They don't.  They never will, and further selling to them is, again, just wasting everybody's time.

Sell the "Center 60".

The remaining 60%, the center 60%, is where your focus should be.  They're not nodding, and they're not shaking their heads.  They are listening.  They are trying to understand the proposal better.  They are looking for the advantages and disadvantages and weighing the pros and cons.  They are the people you should be looking at and making sure that they are understanding each point.  Your time is limited, and spending it concentrating on these people is the best use of it.  Your ability to sell this "Center 60" can ultimately be the difference between failure and success.