The book
How Power
Actually Moves
A Government Affairs Function That Outlasts Its People
The manuscript is complete. Print and ebook editions are in preparation.
Read an excerpt
The organization did not know the answer. A person did.
See. Map. Move. Remember.
See.
Recognize that something has changed before the change becomes obvious to everyone.
Map.
Understand where power actually sits, not where the org chart says it does.
Move.
Act while options still exist.
Remember.
Preserve enough of the right things that yesterday's experience can change tomorrow's decision.
The first three verbs determine what an institution can do today. The fourth determines whether tomorrow's institution inherits anything from today.
Lines from the book
Chapter 1
Real influence does not mean getting your way. It means your position changes the shape of the decision, even when the final answer is no.
Chapter 2
You cannot systematize trust. You can systematize continuity.
Chapter 5
The signal is rarely hidden. Its meaning is.
Chapter 6
Power is not only the authority to decide. It is the ability to change what a decision-maker believes can be decided.
Chapter 7
Consensus describes what everyone believes. Movement requires knowing who decides what happens next.
Chapter 8
Without memory, experience accumulates in people. With memory, capability accumulates in the institution.
Chapter 8
The organizations that compound power are not the ones that never lose. They are the ones that refuse to pay twice for the same lesson.
Chapter 13
Discretion protects relationships. Memory protects continuity.
Excerpt
The Day the Map Walked Out the Door
At 8:17 on a Tuesday morning, Frank Delaney resigned.
He did not make a scene. He did not storm out carrying a cardboard box. He walked into the chief executive's office, closed the door, and explained that a company two states over had offered him a larger title and a number he was not going to turn down.
By 8:39, the CEO had called an emergency meeting.
Meridian Water was a mid-sized utility serving about a million and a half customers across three states. It was a good company. Boring in the way utilities are supposed to be boring, which is a compliment.
The company had a government affairs team of nine people. It retained lobbyists in all three states. It belonged to every trade association worth belonging to and several that were probably still receiving dues because nobody remembered how to cancel them.
It had a legislative tracking system that produced very thorough summaries of what had already happened.
It had stakeholder spreadsheets.
It had briefing decks.
It had consultants.
It had Frank.
For twenty-two years, Frank had worked inside the political and regulatory systems surrounding Meridian. He knew every commissioner, senior staff member, consumer advocate, legislative chair, governor's aide, trade association executive, and local official who mattered.
More important, he knew how they mattered.
Frank knew which commissioner should never be called first. He knew which one wanted to hear from the CEO and which one considered a CEO call an act of aggression dressed as courtesy.
He knew that a staff attorney three levels below anyone whose name appeared in Meridian's executive briefings could determine whether a filing lived or died. She read everything. The commissioners trusted her judgment. If she believed the company was hiding the ball, the company could spend the next six months proving it had not brought a ball into the room.
Frank knew that the loudest consumer advocate in one state produced excellent headlines but had little influence inside the commission.
He knew that the quiet advocate in another state could make one call to a legislative chief of staff and turn a technical dispute into a political emergency by lunch.
He knew who returned calls.
He knew who returned favors.
He knew who remembered being embarrassed ten years earlier and had no intention of forgetting.
None of this made Frank magical. He had simply spent twenty-two years paying attention.
By 10:00 that morning, Meridian's senior leadership was gathered in a conference room to discuss continuity.
The first few minutes were reassuring.
Frank had files.
The team had access to his shared drive.
His calendar was visible.
His contacts were in the company's database.
His deputy had attended many of the same meetings.
The state lobbyists were still under contract.
Nothing, the general counsel said, needed to fall through the cracks.
That sentence aged quickly.
Meridian had four hundred and twelve stakeholders listed in its government affairs spreadsheet. Each entry included a title, organization, email address, phone number, jurisdiction, and relationship owner.
The spreadsheet told the new acting vice president everything except what she needed to know.
It did not explain which twelve people mattered to the company's current priorities.
It did not explain why they mattered.
It did not show which relationships were strong, which were merely cordial, and which looked strong because Frank had been too polite to describe them accurately.
It did not say that one commissioner still resented how Meridian had handled a service interruption nine years earlier.
It did not say that another commissioner's closest adviser had quietly warned Frank against combining two cost-recovery requests in the same proceeding.
It did not say that the company had promised a community leader an executive meeting before announcing its next capital project.
It did not explain why the meeting had never happened.
Meridian had the names.
Frank had the map.
There is a difference.
A list of streets tells you where the roads are. A map built through experience tells you which streets flood, which ones are blocked, which intersection has been under construction since the first Bush administration, and which back road gets you to the highway before everyone else realizes traffic has stopped moving.
Meridian had preserved the streets.
The map had accepted a better job two states over.