As a staff+engineer, you’re at the forefront of driving significant changes and innovations within your organization. Having practical frameworks for prioritizing tasks and communicating your time investments is crucial to aid your efforts, but what happens when you’ve exhausted your time budget and there's still more to accomplish?

The key lies not in expanding your workload but in amplifying your influence. As a staff+ engineer, one critical skill to master is influencing influencers – those key individuals who can amplify your ideas across different domains and teams. Balancing numerous competing tasks is a constant challenge, which is why you should approach your influence like the principles of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. Each method effectively disseminates your ideas within the organization, ensuring your initiatives gain the traction they need to succeed.

Conduction: Influencing in your own circles

Conduction is the transfer of heat through direct contact. Direct influence works in much the same way, where you wield impact within your immediate network. In a small team or company, you can personally convey your ideas, showcase your code, and demonstrate your work. This direct engagement helps you build a strong case for your initiative. By having face-to-face discussions, presenting demos, and receiving immediate feedback, you ensure your team clearly understands and supports your ideas.

For instance, consider introducing hypothesis-driven development (HDD) to enhance your team's development process and outcomes. HDD is a method where development is guided by forming hypotheses, testing them through experiments, and using the data gathered to inform decisions. You start modeling HDD in your work and provide a demo to your team showing how HDD was successfully used in your project. By spending time with your team members, explaining the concept, its benefits, and how it integrates into the current workflow, you help them grasp and adopt HDD. Your team starts using HDD for a new feature, testing hypotheses, gathering data, and iterating based on their findings. Through direct engagement, you secure strong support from your immediate team.

However, once your team embraces HDD, expanding its adoption across the entire organization poses a challenge. Scaling direct support for all teams isn't feasible, so you need to identify key influencers within your network. These individuals can champion your ideas and spread them within their circles. Building strong relationships with these influencers can elevate your influence, transitioning to the convection phase of spreading your ideas.

Convection: Spreading influence through networks

Convection is a term for the transfer of heat through fluid movement. Parallels can be drawn between convection and spreading your influence across various organizational networks and groups. In large companies, geographical or departmental boundaries can limit your reach. This is where it’s impactful to engage with influencers in your network who have strong global connections themselves. These influencers act like fluid molecules in convection, carrying your ideas to different parts of the organization.

Suppose you want to extend the adoption of HDD across multiple teams. The first step is to identify the influential team leads and respected senior individual contributors across departments. Set up informal 1:1s and highlight the benefits of HDD using data such as metrics on faster iteration and reduced risk. You could also outline advantages by recounting personal experiences, for instance, how HDD helped teams quickly pivot to meet user needs or avoid costly development mistakes. Building trust is foundational to any influential relationship, so invest time in creating genuine relationships through regular 1:1s. Show interest in their work, listen to their challenges, and offer support.

If you succeed, these influencers will begin to advocate for HDD within their teams. They start pilot programs, gather data through methods like A/B testing, and share their positive experiences in broader forums, gaining traction across the organization. 

When direct contact and network influence aren’t sufficient to drive broader impact, radiation becomes the next important tool.

Radiation: Broadcast your ideas even further

Radiation is the transfer of heat through electromagnetic waves. Parallels can be drawn between this and broadcasting your ideas widely, even to those you can't reach directly. When direct contact and network influence fall short, leverage tools that radiate your message. 

For your campaign to propose HDD across the entire company, start by writing detailed Confluence or wiki pages that outline HDD, complete with examples, best practices, and tips. These resources should be accessible to everyone in the company. 

Present a series of tech talks to introduce HDD to an even wider group; these will be informal, often interactive presentations where you can explain technical concepts, share experiences, and engage with your audience through Q&A sessions. Record the tech talks for later, on-demand viewing. These efforts ensure your message reaches those you may not interact with directly. If your content is compelling enough – it’s clear, engaging, and able to demonstrate real-world value or address specific pain points – you will see HDD become widely recognized and adopted within the organization.

Radiation isn't limited to internal communication. Share your innovations and insights by attending and speaking at industry conferences, participating in webinars, and writing for publications. This approach amplifies your influence within your organization and shapes industry trends and standards.

Making champions

The underlying aim is to create champions regardless of which of the conduction, convection, or radiation methods you’ve chosen. These are individuals who not only believe in your vision but also actively promote it. To transform influencers into champions, empathize with their needs and challenges. Understand their perspectives and incorporate their feedback into your initiatives. This collaboration fosters a sense of ownership and commitment to your ideas. Engage in open dialogue, listen to their feedback, and make necessary adjustments to your approach. Demonstrating that you value their input and are willing to adapt can significantly strengthen their support.

During this process, you'll encounter detractors – those who might resist your efforts. Engage with them constructively, understand their concerns, and address them transparently. Often, detractors provide valuable insights that can refine and strengthen your proposals.

Adopt an iterative approach to implementation. Continuously deliver value in small increments, ensuring your initiatives align with the organization’s goals and demonstrate tangible benefits. This approach builds trust and credibility over time, solidifying the support of your champions and gradually winning over skeptics.

Final thoughts

Thriving as a technical leader requires strategically influencing influencers to amplify your ideas. By harnessing conduction, convection, and radiation, you can effectively spread your vision and gain the support needed for implementation. Build strong personal connections, leverage broader networks, use comprehensive documentation for wide dissemination, and create champions who will advocate for your initiatives. Mastering these techniques allows you to budget your time effectively and drive significant impact within your organization.