I often refer to teams operating outside the tent, most recently in my blog Strategic Influencers. Now it’s time to ask, “Which tent?”

In Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, authors Lafley and Martin preach that the two biggest questions are “Where to play?” and “How to win?” and provide multiple examples from the many successes and some failures of the Proctor and Gamble group over several decades.

Most importantly for you, Lafley and Martin also advocate for support function teams to ask the same questions. The “Where to play?” question is best answered by asking, “Where in the organisation are the most important decisions being made that my team needs to influence?” With the answer to this question, the second question, “How to win?”, becomes the main challenge.

If the most important decisions are being made by one or more business units at their executive team weekly or fortnightly meetings, the best answer to “How to win?” might be for your team member to become embedded in their business unit executive team, which will automatically give them a seat at the table. I saw that approach work well for multiple support functions within an Australian conglomerate I recently worked with. Each business unit had a different priority and, hence, different support functions represented.

Your answer to the ‘Where’ question could be the governance committees, like steering committees or management committees aligned to sub-committees of the board. In this case, you might want one of your team from the centralised core being a formal committee member. Coming from a centralised team, your team member will have the maximum chance of understanding the decisions to be influenced in the broadest context of the organisation.

If you have thought this through, I’d love to hear from you on the nuances of your decision making and if you would like a tailored workshop for your team on strategic influencing, please reach out via info@bryanwhitefield.com.