IC Influence Lab

Help individual contributors drive outcomes without formal authority.

Use Cases

Individual contributors who coordinate across teams; new or growing orgs where dependencies, priority shifts, and ambiguity create friction; and teams that need faster decisions, fewer escalations, and cleaner follow through.

Outcomes

  • Managing up, and setting clear update and escalation patterns.

  • Planning and having difficult conversations to address issues early with respectful, direct language.

  • Setting stakeholder expectations, shared definitions of done, risk identification and communication, and evaluating trade-offs.

  • Strategies to break impasses for faster agreements using interest-based negotiation and options.

  • High meeting quality, fewer re-hashes, and tighter readbacks/commitments.

Format

  • 3 - 4 weeks, 3 x 90-120 minute sessions. Up to 25 ICs.

  • Virtual or in-person.

  • Conversation planners, stakeholder map, update templates, agreement toolkit, meeting prompts included. Optional office hours.

Outline

  1. Baseline pulses and goal-setting.

  2. Managing up and setting expectations.

  3. Difficult conversations.

  4. Moving from stalemate to agreement.

Measurement

  • Pre/post pulse

  • Behavior adoption percentage at 30 days using 3x3 updates, readbacks, and decision logs.

  • Qualitative feedback, e.g., “impasse to agreement” stories and time-to-decision anecdotes.