Issue #130

The Only Way Is Up

When you work in a corporate environment,, someone above you controls budget, priority and air cover. That is the reality, and you can moan about it or just learn to handle it.

Managing up is a critical commercial skill in selling, in your career and even within social groups.

People above you are not thinking about you very much at all, let’s get that out there straight away. They are thinking about exposure, political fallout and return on capital.

Your workload issues and holiday plans come about tenth on a list of eight things they care about.

A Couple Of Key Facts

A study by the University of North Carolina found that senior executives underestimate operational risk raised by middle managers by a wide margin.

Not because they do not care, but because information arrives filtered and diluted as it moves upward.

Secondly, board directors in the UK carry personal legal liability under the Companies Act 2006 for certain failures. That shapes their behaviour.

When your manager hesitates, it may not be cowardice. It may be risk calculation with their own name attached. Here's what you actually do.

1. Get (Their) Perspective

Your boss operates inside a web of constraints, not just their comfort zone.

Every decision they support takes political capital and exposes them to scrutiny. Every pound allocated to you is a pound not allocated elsewhere.

If you want backing, make trade offs explicit:

• What are we stopping to do this?
• What risk are we reducing?
• What return justifies the attention?

Do the initial sorting work for them and they will see you as an equal in all but risk.

2. Practical Judgement

Bring structured thinking to the party and avoid temptation to exaggerate to get an emotional reaction.

Define the problem in commercial terms:

• Quantify impact.
• Show timing.
• Present options with cost, risk and likely outcome.

Then recommend one and state why the alternatives are weaker.

You know from enterprise sales that vague value gets crushed. The same dynamic exists internally.

If your case is fuzzy, it will be reduced to cost and quietly shelved. Spending money for the sake of it is never a priority.

Match your format to their bandwidth. Some want a one page brief, some want numbers first, narrative second. Watch what they respond to and adjust.

3. Reality Check

Ask yourself three direct questions before you walk in.

1. Is the trade off clear and in my favour?
2. Have I defined the financial impact?
3. Can I outline the political and reputational risk?

If the answer to any is no, you are not ready. Get your arguments ready first time because if you don’t there is no second time.

If your boss has stopped listening, they may be in th wrong mode of thinking, you need to be able to spot that. I wrote about it in this Linkedin post, click here.

Get the carousel here: Elaboration Liklihood Model C.pdf​

4. Mistakes to Avoid

Do not seek validation, seek commitment. Validation makes you feel good, commitment gets the job done.

A polite nod in a meeting means nothing. Real support shows up as budget released, time allocated, public endorsement and obstacles removed.

If you want that level of backing, equip your manager to defend the decision without you in the room.

Make sure they have:

• Clear rationale.
• Clean numbers.
• Known risks.

And never surprise them with information that should have been shared earlier. Senior people remember who makes them look exposed.

If there is one cardinal rule of corporate life it is this: never make your boss look bad.

Here's an article covering the reasons big deals die, these reasons can be applied internally just as easily as externally - click here.

5. If You Lead A Team

Make it easier for your team to manage you, this idea of “managing up” works the other way too.

State your priorities openly, so everyone knows them, put them in writing if it makes it easier.

Explain how you make decisions so they know what makes a proposal strong in your eyes.

Encourage early escalation of bad news. Punishing messengers creates silence and silence creates failure.

Reward and promote people who think commercially and present structured options rather than complaints.

Ask your team one blunt question: what do I do that makes it harder for you to bring me clear proposals?

If you want influence inside large organisations, stop hoping to be understood and start making it easy to support you.

Enterprise sales often involves as much internal selling and managing up as customer facing time. This is because projects require big investments of time, resource and money.

You cannot avoid this for big number sales projects, so start to develop it instead - if you want more help or just a chat about it, get in touch by email or on LinkedIn.

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