Navigating Revenue Organizations & Sharing Power
- Dan Greenberg
- Mar 20
- 3 min read
I’ve mentioned my nerdy infatuation with the reality shows Survivor and Big Brother in the past, and I’d like to provide another reference related to those shows to help contextualize this post. Specifically, we can learn a lot about organizational dynamics, and power sharing from these shows; here’s how.
Let’s start with this question. Why do I care so much about these shows? I don’t really. I mean, they are entertaining to me. But more so than caring about the results, we can look at life as a training ground for sales, business, and organizational awareness. These shows give us a unique vantage point that allows us to get a glimpse of people’s thought processes in competitive situations, and gain some insight into how decisions are made. So much of the behavioral ability that we need in sales doubles as social skills that we use everyday in life. And, so much of the behavioral ability that we need to navigate and manage organizations doubles interpersonal skills that govern our relationships. This means that we as sellers, leaders, and managers get to learn from everything; including pop culture, and silly reality shows.
In reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother power can shift quickly based on the circumstances, and a person who had power one day can be the most likely to be voted out the next, while a person who had no power very recently can sometimes find themselves being looked to by others as the outcome decider. Most often, when people on these shows gain power, they become fixated on executing a very specific plan that they have envisioned, to the exclusion of all else. They find themselves in a position of power, and then falsely calculate that executing their own plan, including voting out the people that they believe threaten them, is the best way to hold on to that power. And sure, to their credit, if they did have perfect influence and could make sure that the exact people they wanted to be voted out were, in fact, voted out, there would be some merit to this. But that is not how life works, and there are other people with independent brains in the game, just as in life. Regardless, they push forward trying to exert maximum influence on their alliance, or within their sphere of influence, hoping to be able to execute perfectly on their plan.
As a person starts to develop power, they are in the perfect situation to strategically share power and democratize certain parts of the strategic decision making to other people in their sphere of influence. This can earn the person loyal supporters who trust that they are heard and valued by that person. Without a title, or any form of structure, power will inevitably shift again, and if the person who just found themselves in a position of power misses that opportunity to strategically share power, they will find themselves in a much worse position when they no longer hold the same level of power.
Even if they are right, and their plan is best, a suboptimal plan with buy-in from the team, that is well executed, will achieve far superior results compared to an optimal plan with limited buy-in and subpar execution. You see, the second part of the equation is that buy-in from the team actually improves results even if the plan is not perfect. It is not that people on the team all need to get their way, that is impossible, but they need to feel heard, and valued, and their ideas accounted for. If that process takes place, then the majority of people will be more bought-in to the plan and share the vision and work harder and smarter to achieve it. This will mean that even sub-optimal plans yield better results than optimal ones that are not well executed.
Basically, the point here is that sales organizations are full of very persuasive people who think of themselves as influencers and might be considered to be stubborn when looked at in a less generous light. This means that there can be a fair amount of personality clash and power struggle within these organizations, but the key is to remember that many of the persuasion tools that we use to make sales can also be used to build consensus internally, and the goal is not always to get ‘your way’, but rather, to find a ‘good way’ that satisfies the group, and can be well executed. This type of organizational operation will build social cohesion, and position a person well to lead groups and projects. So, even though sharing power may seem like a way to disperse influence, if the results are good, the effect will be increased influence.
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